Everyday Fashions of the Sixties As Pictured in Sears Catalogs by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486134239
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-07-18T04:00:00+00:00

THE YOUTH MOVEMENT

The spotlight on children, the result of the baby boom, is plainly visible in Sears. Not only are numerous pages dedicated to their garb, it is as fashionable as that of their grown-up siblings and parents. Stretch pants, fishnet tights, ensembles by the foremost children’s dress designers of the era, and hats by Coty Award-winning women’s millinery designer Sally Victor were featured in Sears. Not unlike Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, which even published separate back-to-school issues entirely devoted to children’s fashions, many of the sixties catalogs allotted their prized opening pages to children’s wear. Every trend seen in adult sizes was available for the younger set, sometimes under the Winnie-the-Pooh label, the one Sears bestowed on its most expensive and sophisticated apparel. Children were precocious consumers, thanks in large measure to television, which bombarded them with advertising for such products as Barbie, the grown-up doll with an extensive wardrobe, introduced by the Mattel Toy Company in 1959. The characters in Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip were responsible for $50,000,000 in sales in 1969 alone, where they adorned such items in the Sears catalog as boys’ pajamas (see page 46).

Color defined the decade as much as the youth movement, pants, and the miniskirt. Brightening the apparel of both sexes, as the sixties advanced, ice cream pastels intensified to Day-Glo and “acid” colors. Prints ranged from batiks and madras to leopard and splashy tropical flora in citrus colors, hot pink, and turquoise. In the latter years of the decade, textile design was dominated by the swirling patterns of Emilio Pucci and the psychedelic artist Peter Max, and by the black-and-white oscillating geometries of the Op Art movement, accessorized with the ubiquitous shiny white patent-leather boots or vividly colored patent-leather flats.

The dark side of the sixties is reflected in the Sears catalog through an inordinately blurred mirror. Vietnam, assassinations, riots, the civil rights movement, the counter-culture revolution, student strikes, and Woodstock in 1969—all appear to have had little influence on Sears’ ever-cheerful models. Long-haired hippies and “flower children” dressed up in garb evocative of another time and place were decidedly too unkempt for the Sears’ image. In addition, since much of their clothing was antique, ethnic, recycled, or fragments of military surplus uniforms, it was a disastrous trend for any retailer to encourage. Although Alan Shepard made the historic first U.S. space flight in 1961, space exploration’s influence is seen only on boys’ playwear in 1964 (see page 46). Rather, the dominant influences were the Kennedys, who provided the model for middle America, and London, where the youth cult originated.

The impact of London on both men’s and women’s fashion is evident from the middle of the decade (see page 67). The styles typified by the long-haired Beatles attired in single-breasted, collarless, Pierre Cardin suits with narrow, cuffless trousers, and the “Mod” look, launched by British designers such as Mary Quant, were young, hip, and totally unlike the conservative all-American “preppie” with crew-cut hair and white buck shoes.

While Sears was promoting couture exclusives by French designers, J.

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