Swinging Sixties

In  the 60s simple to be young was to be fashionable.Teenagers no longer wanted to dress like their parents.The fashion revolution was youth oriented and youth driven and began in the streets rather than in the old line couture houses, street style had taken over to such an extent that Balenciaga retired in 1968 announcing that couture was dead. The Baby Boomers were coming of age.
 In Britain, musical taste and style of dress were closely linked and it was the mod look which first popularized the simple geometric shapes typical of the 1960s. Slim fitting, brightly colored garments were sold cheaply in boutiques all over ''Swinging London'' and had tremendous influence trough Europe and the U.S. In 1965, Dianna Vreeland, editor of Vogue magazine said ''London is the most swinging city in the world at the moment''.

Street Fashion, 1960s

                                                                  
The miniskirt was the mast eye-cathing garment of the decade, designed for an ideally skinny female form. Woman's Mirror magazine had been searching for models who were young and exceptionally thin, and found their ideal match in Lesley Harnby.Twiggy was the decades leading model, her gawky, knock kneed androgynous look became a significant style element of the 60s, and she was on the cover of every major fashion and teen magazine.

                                          

Twiggy-Vogue, July 1967

                                                         
The sixties saw major changes in the newspapers and magazines industry, with advert of color supplements for papers and the first 'tabloids' appearing, while many of the older papers were either taken over or creased publication. One of the best-known and longer-lasting regular addition was by the Daily Mail in 1968. Called Femail, examining, discussing and enlarging on aspect of what they perceived to be the interests of their female readership. Magazines, too, took on whole new look to match the changing culture, as the sixties marked a time when a women were starting to became more independent . Women's magazines like Nova, were very much more visually inventive, as were Vogue and Queen, using photo-lithography to adapt type to fit around picture.

Veruschka-Vogue, Febrouary 1969

                                                    

Queen carried articles about the latest jet-set upper class ''fashion icons'' using famous photographers such as Cacin Beaton,Cartier Bresson and Norman Parkison but also importantly, dealt with social issue. It was the first magazine to do an in-depth feature on ''social'' drug usage and was at the forefront with feminist issues. Furthermore, Mass Media not only contained more references to sex in 1950, but the media had also shifted from a ''conservative, restrictive, or rejecting'' attitude concerning sex to a more ''liberal, permissive, or accepting'' one (Scott and Franklin, 1972, p.80).

Twiggy-Queen Magazine, 1960s

The 1960s was a decade of sweeping change throughout  fashion  world generating ideas and images which still appears modern today.