1965: The miniskirt

Sensitive to the youthful revolt against established values, two designers in particular produced clothes which epitomized the 1960s look for women: Courreges in France and Mary Quant in Britain. Both expressed the spirit of the age and its desire for physical and social freedom in deceptively simple, pared-down garments with abbreviated skirts (christened by the British press "the mini") and, in Courreges' case, pants suits. Both created a complete look, with tights (essential with the mini), shoes, boots, hairstyles and even sunglasses and make-up. Quant appealed directly to the very young; Courreges, possibly because he was in essence a couture designer (having worked with Balenciega for eleven years before opening his own house in 1961), to a slightly more mature woman.

     -- From "Fashion in Costume, 1200-2000" (Joan Nunn, 2000): @

     -- Image from an advertisement for an Indiana department store in August 1965, showing just how quickly the look took hold throughout the United States

* Mary Quant page (Victoria and Albert Museum): @

* "Why Mary Quant's Swinging Sixties London Look Still Holds Sway" (Vogue, 2015): @
* Andre Courreges article (Victoria and Albert Museum): @
* "Andre Courreges: The Couture's Space Captain" (House of Retro): @
* Jacques Tiffeau article (Fashion Designer Encyclopedia): @
* "Skirts for Fall To Be Shorter" (United Press International, July 1964): @

* "Up, Up, Up Go the Skirts: The new look is the knee look -- but there's controversy" (Life magazine, December 18, 1964): @
* "The Lord of the Space Ladies: Andres Courreges is the new powerhouse of Paris Fashion" (Life magazine, May 21, 1965): @
* "Negro Women have the prettiest knees" (Jet magazine, July 8, 1965): @

* "The man who launched the miniskirt remains aloof" (Sydney Morning Herald, August 1969): @
* "On June 4, 1965, Puritan Fashion Co. launched Youthquake" (On This Day in Fashion): @

* "On September 1, 1965, Mary Quant introduced the miniskirt" (On This Day in Fashion): @
* Excerpt from "Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now" (Valerie Steele, 1997): @

* Excerpt from "Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible" (2012): @ 

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September 1964: "Notes on 'Camp'"

New York critic and intellectual Susan Sontag (1933-2004) made her name as essayist with the collection "Against Interpretation," a series of writings on contemporary culture and art (twentieth century, and postwar mainly), with which she provided an alternative for the then prevailing modes of interpretation New Criticism, and Modernism. Calling attention to challenges to the canon of high art, Sontag wrote passionately about popular culture (movies, theatre, literature, fashion, arguing for it to be taken seriously as high art. Her political activism penetrated her writings, giving them a pressing topicality, and demonstrating how popular culture embodies its times' ethos. "Notes on 'Camp' " is an attempt to tackle a very visible but nevertheless ignored fascination for forms of art that by all standards would be considered failures (sometimes close to achievement but never quite), but are nevertheless championed by patrons. Sontag claims that camp is an aesthetic sensibility that is characterized by a high degree of, and attention for stylization, artifice, travesty, double entendre, extravagance and unintentional badness. According to Sontag, we find this sensibility especially towards types of art that are closely associated with popular culture, like movies, fashion, design, or television. Sontag claims that in the twentieth century (since Oscar Wilde, she says) the appraisal of camp has taken the form of a cult, of a dedication that aims to challenge the distinctions between good and bad taste. Camp is "good because it's awful." Because, as Sontag writes, "camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation -- not judgment" it can put itself in an outsider position. As such it can be the flea in the fur of proper taste -- a form of buffery, dandyism, or snobbery free from responsibility. Camp is not limited to political and cultural boundaries -- in fact it challenges these by pretending to be about pure aesthetics only. What distinguishes camp from true art is that it fails in its achievement on enlightenment (an argument similar to that of Benjamin). But instead it manages to hold up a mirror to the pretensions and prejudices of the art establishment. And in that sense it is very political.

     -- From "The Cult Film Reader" (2008)

Note: Sontag's essay appeared in the Fall 1964 edition of Partisan Review. While the exact date of publication is uncertain, the edition contains an advertisement of upcoming classical music concerts at New York's Carnegie Hall. The earliest date listed on the ad is September 28, so I'm assuming Partisan Review was published earlier that month.

* Partisan Review, Fall 1964 (Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University): @

* "Against Interpetation: And Other Essays" (Sontag, 1966): @

* Entry on camp (The Chicago School of Media Theory): @

* Susan Sontag Foundation: @

* "Susan Sontag: A Biography" (David Schreiber, 2014): @

* Review of biography (Brain Pickings): @

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Friday, June 19, 1964: Carol Doda

Carol Doda, a waitress at The Condor nightclub in San Francisco, first dances in a topless bathing suit (designed by Rudi Gernreich). Her fame increases along with her bust size, as she soon goes from a 34B to a 44D through a series of silicone injections. Many other San Francisco bars follow The Condor's lead in offering topless entertainment.

-- 1969 photo from Corbis Images. Caption: "Five years ago, a go-go dancer named Carol Doda descended bare-breasted from a hole in the ceiling of a discotheque called The Condor club. Carol is seen here performing her 'topless dance' to the accompaniment of the rock 'n' roll duo of George 'n' Teddy."

* "The First Monokini: Trying to make the Topless Swimsuit Happen in 1964" (from www.messynessychic.com): @

* "Me? In That!" (Life magazine, July 10, 1964): @

* "The West Passes the Topless Test" (Life magazine, March 11, 1966): @ 
* "Varieties of Topless Experience" (Arthur Berger, San Francisco State College, 1966): @

* "North Beach: Hotbed for the Bizarre / Where Topless Go-Go's and Booming Bands Bustle" (Billboard magazine, May 6, 1967): @

* "Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show" (Rachel Shteir, 2004): @ 
* The Condor summary (from www.mistersf.com): @ 

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Sunday-Monday, May 17-18, 1964: Mods vs. Rockers

LONDON -- About 1,000 teen-agers battled at the Coastal resort of Margate on Sunday, shattering shop windows and breaking into holiday villas. The new outbreak of youthful holiday violence began when the youngsters arrived at the southern England resort for the Whitsun -- Pentecost -- holiday weekend. They camped on the beach all night and fighting soon broke out between "mods" and "rockers." The first are young people who dress stylishly, the second in leather outfits for motorcycling.

     -- Associated Press, May 19

The Rockers were usually in their 20s or 30s; Elvis-loving bikers rooted in 1950s Teddy Boy culture. The teenage Mods' culture, which flourished in the early '60s, was based on continental clothes, Italian Vespa and Lambretta scooter and the music of soul and jazz musicians.

     -- "Mods v. Rockers!" (Daily Mirror, April 2014; link: @)

Note: The rivalry and violence were the basis of The Who's 1973 album, "Quadrophenia" (official site: @)

-- Photo by Terrence Spencer, Time Life Pictures/Getty Images. Original caption: Pair of Rockers, British youths into leather & motorcycles, zip past a rival group of Mods, British youths into fashionable clothes and fancy scooters.

* "I Predict A Riot: Panorama on Mods and Rockers" (BBC): @

* "1964: Mods and Rockers jailed after seaside riots" (BBC): @

* "Wild Ones 'Beat Up' Margate" (Daily Mirror, May 18, 1964): @

* "Charge of the Mods at Margate" (Daily Mirror, May 18): @

* "Wildest Ones Yet" (Daily Sketch, May 19): @

* " 'astings hain't 'ad it so bad since 1066" (Life magazine, September 18, 1964): @

* "Mods and Rockers" (British Library): @

* "Mods and Rockers" (Subculture list): @

* "Folk Devils and Moral Panics" (Stanley Cohen, 1972): @

* "Mods, Rockers, and the Music of the British Invasion" (James E. Perone, 2009): @

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Wednesday, January 15, 1964: Whisky a Go Go

The Los Angeles club's opening night features Johnny Rivers as the headlining act. The club quickly became famous for its music (rock 'n' roll), dancing (the patrons on the floor and the go-go dancers inside elevated glass cages) and the Hollywood celebrities it attracted.

Note: Some references list opening night as Saturday, January 11. I went with January 15 based on comments by Johnny Rivers (linked below) and a January 5 item in The Los Angeles Times announcing the opening date as January 15 (thanks to Larry Harnisch of The Daily Mirror, a site about Los Angeles history, for providing that clipping).

-- Photos by Julian Wasser (website: @)

* Entry from "Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture" (2012): @ 
* Video (clip from 1992 documentary "Twist"): @
* "Live at the Whisky" (David Kamp, Vanity Fair, November 2000): @

* "Discotheque Dancing" (Life magazine, May 22, 1964; Page 97): @
* "A G0-Go Can Get Mighty Tiresome" (Peg Bracken, May 1965): @
* "Johnny Rivers, Jimmy Webb celebrate Whisky a Go Go's 50th anniversary, plus a look back at the Sunset Strip" (Rob Lowman, Los Angeles Daily News, January 2014): @
* "Straight Whisky: A Living History of Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll on the Sunset Strip" (Erik Quisling and Austin Williams, 2003): @
* "Riot on Sunset Strip" (Domenic Priore, 2007): @
* "From Whisky A Go Go to the Royal Studios: Conversations with Johnny Rivers and Paul Rodgers" (2013): @
* Whisky a Go Go website: @ 

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Undated: Vidal Sassoon's bob haircut

British hairdresser Vidal Sassoon updates and popularizes the bob haircut, most notably in his work with fashion designer Mary Quant and with actress Nancy Kwan (for the movie "A Wild Affair"). 

Photo of Sassoon and Quant, 1964.
* BBC documentary (2011): @

* Sasson explains the Five-Point Cut: @

* "Remembering Vidal Sassoon" (from Vogue.com): @

* Photo gallery (from Vogue.com UK): @

* Photo gallery (from Telegraph newspaper): @

* "After Vidal Sassoon Britain never looked the same again" (Telegraph, 2012): @

* "Vidal Sassoon remembered by Mary Quant" (The Guardian, 2012): @
* Mary Quant website: @ 
* "Vidal" (Pan Macmillan, 2010): @

* "The Bob: the history of a hairstyle" (from V is for Vintage): @
* "Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History" (Victoria Sherrow, 2006): @ 

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April 1962: 'Young Idea Goes West'

The April 1962 issue of British Vogue magazine features photos of English model Jean Shrimpton, taken by David Bailey. The photo spread, called "Young Idea Goes West," was shot in New York in January; it was heralded as changing the course of fashion photography as well as typifying a more youthful popular culture.

* Entry from onthisdayinfashion.com: @

* From www.radiotimes.com: @

* "Two Take Manhattan" (2007 article from The Guardian newspaper): @

* "Style file -- Jean Shrimpton" (from www.vogue.co.uk): @

* "Icon: David Bailey" (from www.gq-magazine.co.uk): @

* Excerpt from "Body Dressing" (2001 book by Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson): @

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Tuesday, March 27, 1962: Shirt collars

From an Associated Press story dated March 27:

It might have been expected, what with the decline of the mustache and the watch chain, that the separate shirt collar also would go.

"For all practical purposes the separate collar is no longer a part of the American scene," said Phillips-Van Heusen Corp. today in announcing it was dropping the line after 60 years.

Cluett-Peabody & Co., another large manufacturer, declined comment on its competitor's announcement.

Phillips-Van Heusen was certain of its course.

"For several years," said a spokesman, "the company has been making separate shirt collars strictly as a service to the few who still wear them."

The company said it was saddened over what it believed to be the passing of an era in the men's wear field, but "demand has diminished to the point where the cost of continuing this service is prohibitive."

The collar was worn widely during the turn of the century, but it was in the dashing Twenties that it reached a peak of popularity.

In its more proper styles it made thin men look very refined but fat men rather confined. It wasn't as comfortable as it was neat, but it always was very distinguished.

Phillips-Van Heusen says the separate collar has, in recent years, been almost wholly supplanted by the collar-attached shirt. In 1924 it sold 24 million a year, in 1961 just 18,000.

Illustration from 1919 Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog.

* "The Shirt and Collar Industries" (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1916): @

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