Newspaper Fashion Column 1971 Mini Skirt Big Hair

Flowing Skirts, Velvet Bell-Bottoms, and Exuberant Afros: The Style of 1967

Joni Mitchell in Beverly Hills, 1968.

19 threescore-seven: rarely has in that location been a 12-calendar month period when young American women changed so dramatically. The year earlier had seen the helmet-haired, Pucci-clad Jacqueline Susann promoting Valley of the Dolls to best-seller condition. It saw California beach-coating movies . . . and Truman Capote's Blackness and White Ball, at New York's Plaza hotel. Earlier in the year, miniskirted Nancy Sinatra Jr. had turned calf-high leather footwear—the kind that Matriarch Mary Quant, pioneer of the miniskirt, made famous—into a meme, thanks to her No. ane single "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'. "

But a radically different look and sensibility were showtime to take root. The long-gowned, direct-haired Judy Collins would presently brand a Top 10 striking of "Both Sides Now," a plaintive, self-examining, gut-honest ballad by an unknown songwriter—the long-gowned, straight-haired Joni Mitchell. The song would become the canticle of a new kind of woman: content to live alone but not lonely, sexually open merely not "promiscuous." (That judgmental give-and-take would be banished.) Nineteen sixty-seven too ushered in the and then-called Summer of Love, when tens of thousands of young free spirits flocked to San Francisco. The females in this cohort, every bit critic Janet Maslin in one case put it, were the "butterfly bohemians," who had all of a sudden sprung upwardly in the Bay Expanse, Los Angeles, New York, and London, marker a revolution in women's manner, attitudes, and sexuality. In a single yr, Mad Men babes had been overtaken by incense-burning soul seekers.

For women of colour, there were stylistic changes as well. A stunning Detroit daughter, Donyale Luna—the start black model to appear on the covers of major fashion magazines—became a fellow member of the Andy Warhol crowd and dated Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. In London, Marsha Hunt, a Berkeley student turned British Vogue model, would star in the U.Thousand. production of Hair (the 1967-defining rock musical), date Mick Jagger, and serve as inspiration for the Stones vocal "Brown Sugar." Hunt's huge, resplendent Afro visually augured the look that would exemplify 1968 and the Black Power movement.

Model Donyale Luna, 1967.

From Time Life Pictures/Pix Inc./The Life Film Collection/Getty Images.

This new solemnity, tinged with a new kind of glamour, had been earned. "Every young adult female who lived through 1967 deserves to be admired for getting through it," says extra Peggy Lipton. "When nosotros finally ran the gamut of the 'free beloved' stuff, it was 'I take to feel secure and proficient about myself or I will die.' "

Here'south how some of the women of that hour retrieve the exhilarating—and bumpy—ride across a yr that, one-half a century later, still marks the divide betwixt "so" and "at present."

NANCY SINATRA, singer, actress, activist:

I knew information technology ["These Boots Are Made for Walkin" '] would exist important from the moment the ring played it through. I had shopped at Mary Quant'southward bazaar before the tape was released, and the clothes fit the mental attitude the song portrayed.

DAME MARY QUANT, British fashion designer:

The miniskirt had evolved, getting shorter and shorter. Eventually, I had mannequins designed to expect like Jean Shrimpton rather than "Mrs. Average," with her tight curls and red lipstick. People banged on the window of Boutique, our bazaar on Male monarch's Road, and traffic came to a standstill!

NANCY SINATRA: The timing was perfect . . . . I think Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton and I captured the fashion of the time best.

Dame MARY QUANT: The early 60s were a frenzied tornado of free energy, and the overriding mood was 1 of fun and excitement. Sexual freedom had arrived with the pill, giving women option they had never had before. Everyone loved the mini—information technology made people feel happy! It was a big breakthrough.

NANCY SINATRA: Music changed radically, a reflection of the Vietnam War . . . . And parties involved drugs and bedrooms. I never took part in any of that stuff, but my friends did.