The Rags Of the Hippies

Burner, David. Making Peace With The 60s. 1996. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. (Photograph by Ken Heyman at Woodstock, 1969.)

 

The Hippie movement was as much about fashion statements of natural fibers, leather, hair headbands, and plenty of sincere skin (LIFE: The '60s 1989) as it was one of ideals and beliefs brought about by prior events of the country, mainly that of the Vietnam War. Terry Anderson had called the war the “engine of the sixties,” claiming that without the war, “the decade would have remained a liberal reform era, not a radial decade, not the 60’s” (Dominick 1999). As the war dragged on year after year, people began to lose faith in their leaders. This loss of trust and faith was met with a response of dropping out of society, and either joining the alternative one of the counterculture, or leaving the mainstream altogether by selectively adopting certain elements of hippie lifestyles (Dominick).

 

These Beat descendants and Hiaght Ashbury originators offended the mainstream with not only their creed of peace, love, and personal freedom, but with their mere fashion alone. According to the California governor, Reagan, they were once said to be those that: “dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like a Cheetah” (Our American Century Turbulent Years: The 60s 1998).

 

While offensive, the statement was somewhat true, these people had lost all hope in the society of their day, were tired of standards and an establishment that had let them down, they sought to escape and reject that which had disappointed them in every form. So the material was abandoned for the natural and second hand. The focus on appearance was left behind for long and minimally up-kept hair and usually no makeup for women. They sought to reject all that embodied that which had disappointed them (Our American Century Turbulent Years: The 60s 1998).

 

However, interestingly enough in their attempt to escape fashion, for a brief time, despite the distaste of others, they caught designer’s eye. The new sanitized versions of the look’s patch work skirts, flowered dresses, and elegantly tie-dyed pants suits, underwear, and nearly everything else, suddenly appeared. However, both consumers and designers alike soon realized that the hippie of ideals and no materialism prevailed over their fashion alone, and spending $300 on a designer tie-dye pants suit would take anyone from as far from hippie as possible. Thus the decade was ended with its signature uncertainty in all, even fashion, as the years to come would see the appearance and then sudden disappearance of one fad after another (American Decades: 1960-1969 1995).

 

The above picture is one of a hippie couple at Woodstock, the perfect embodiment of the signature raggedness of these people.

 

American Decades: 1960-1969. 1995. Edited by Richard Layman. New York: Gale Research International Limited.

 

Dominick, Cavallo. A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History. 1999. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

 

LIFE: The '60s. 1989. Edited by Doris C. O'Neil. Boston: Bulfinch Press.

 

Our American Century Turbulent Years: The 60s. 1998. Edited by Sara Brash and Loretta Britten. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books.

 

 

Further information discussing "hippies": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie

 

Further information discussing Woodstock: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Done