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From Dolly Birds to Birkenstocks
Keds sneaker
January 20, 1961:
Washington, D.C.
John and Jacqueline Kennedy were by far the best-looking couple to ever inhabit the White House. The morning of the inauguration the air was absolutely bitter—the thermometer read twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, but with the windchill, it felt like an unforgiving seven—but the handsome forty-three-year-old president and his regal thirty-one-year-old wife didn’t let the weather impede their style as they took their places before the crowd. The president-elect chose a traditional, almost throwback look: a dark overcoat and a silk top hat, which he removed for his famous “Ask Not” speech. On the other hand, the fresh-faced first lady wore an of-the-moment taupe Oleg Cassini wool dress with a matching three-quarter-length-sleeve overcoat, with a round, high collar and oversize wool buttons down the front. As her husband spoke of the “torch [being] passed to a new generation of Americans,” she stood by him, the picture of youthful elegance, accessorized in a pillbox hat (designed by an up-and-coming milliner named Halston), pearl earrings, a fur muff, and low-heeled black pumps—which she’d later swap for a pair of form-fitting fur-trimmed black boots to march through the snow-covered streets for the inaugural parade.
That year, America found a new fashion icon. Jackie Kennedy wasn’t a movie star, but she certainly had star quality, complete with a collection of oversize dark sunglasses. Like Audrey Hepburn, she was a natural brunette with an innate sense of poise, and from the moment she stepped out onto the campaign trail she debuted her signature style: a kind of elevated casual that looked fashion-forward but was still appropriate for her role as the president’s wife. From her collection of Hermès scarves, which she wrapped effortlessly around her chin-length hair, to the Capezio flats she paired with everything from tailored skirt suits to brightly colored A-line dresses, to beatnik-friendly black turtlenecks with cropped white stovepipe pants, Jackie’s personal style set the tone for the nation. The Kennedy presidency would be classy but cutting-edge. The young couple had their fingers on the country’s collective pulse, responding to the beat for change, change, change.
While the American electorate picked a leader who reflected its positive energy and optimism, fashion’s old guard was due for an overhaul. After losing his job at Dior and surviving a hellish stint in the army, Yves Saint Laurent launched his own label in 1962. He was confident that he had been onto something with the Beat Look, even if it wasn’t appreciated by his shortsighted peers, lost in the gossamer folds of haute couture.
Even from the posh address of 30 rue Montaigne, Saint Laurent could recognize a paradigm shift in his industry, a fundamental change in the way fashion was being consumed. Since the advent of couture, the tastemakers and trendsetters had always been the aristocracy, the class of men and women who could afford to update their wardrobes with cutting-edge pieces that were hand stitched to the specifications of top designers: the crème de la crème. The role of youth was to admire and covet the older generation’s acquisitions until one day, when their economic profiles allowed, they joined their parents in the pursuit of luxury. Fashion has always been a tool of systematic social demarcation, but traditionally it catered to the seasoned consumer and regarded younger generations only as potential clients. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, the quality of that upward glance from teenagers to their parents changed significantly as the younger generation questioned whether older generations were setting a desirable example.
What this meant for style was a breakdown in the vertical system that presumed fashion trickled down generationally, and that kids wanted to dress like their elders. “People are talking about . . . Vietnam and the Negro Revolution . . . and Youthquake . . . the eruption of the young in every field,” editor in chief Diana Vreeland wrote in American Vogue in 1965, coining a term that would go on to define the character of 1960s trends. Possessed by the thrill of newness—of new fabrics, materials, colors, and silhouettes—the youth culture dominated the fashion landscape, forcing designers to adapt to these shifts in cultural values. One of the preeminent designers to recognize and ultimately benefit from the redistribution of trendsetting power was the British Mary Quant, a clothes lover who opened her first London boutique in 1955. If Dior’s New Look defined the sartorial point of view of the 1950s, Quant’s unstructured dresses, splashy prints, and lighthearted styling were an inspired fit for the ordinary girl she set out to target. In fact, part of Quant’s democratic appeal was her lack of couture pedigree. A self-starter, she had no formal fashion training and even made the rookie mistake of buying fabric retail at Harrods, rather than wholesale like the in-the-know designers. “I have always wanted young people to have a fashion of their own,” she once wrote. “To me adult appearance was very unattractive, alarming and terrifying, stilted, confined and ugly. It was something I knew I didn’t want to grow into.” One way Quant made this perspective manifest was by selling clothes that highlighted the legs rather than the breasts. The bosom, seat of maternal womanhood, went out of style, and in its place appeared straight hips and miles of girlish stick-thin legs. Prefigured by Audrey Hepburn, willowy London gamines like Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton became the new It Girls, gazing at the camera with big, wide-set eyes and pouty mouths.
The early 1960s became the era of the miniskirt,* which opened the door to fantastic new footwear possibilities. By mimicking what she saw the “dolly birds”* wearing on the streets of London, Quant helped to resurrect the boot, which in the age of the stiletto went largely ignored. Twiggy was a convert—but admitted that prior to this boot renaissance, she and her friends would go “through whole winters with [their] legs frozen to the bone because you just wouldn’t wear boots . . . nobody wore boots. Boots meant ankle boots, brown with a zip, the sort of thing old ladies wore.” Quant paired miniskirts and dresses with shiny, pop art–inflected boots in a rainbow of colors, most notably in her 1963 “Wet” collection, which used cutting-edge waterproof materials like vinyl and PVC. Similarly, French designer André Courrèges, in his “Moon Girl” collection of 1964, showed wide, flat pull-on boots that not only looked thoroughly modern but also rejected the prevailing viewpoint that a woman needs to teeter in heels in order to look sexy and feminine. In fact, even in the highest fashion houses, vertiginous heels were going the way of the girdle. After founding his eponymous label, Yves Saint Laurent teamed with Dior’s go-to shoe designer Roger Vivier to design a shoe to match the series of color-blocked shift dresses he planned to show, inspired by the geometric paintings of Piet Mondrian. The father of the stiletto unveiled a simple square-toed pump with a low heel and a large silver buckle on the vamp. Vivier’s Pilgrim Pump was an instant hit, selling 200,000 pairs and reaching icon status via Jackie Kennedy, who wore them often, and Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film Belle de Jour, starring Catherine Deneuve as a bored housewife turned high-class call girl.
Even high-end designers like Vivier reached for a shiny artificial leather called Corfam after DuPont debuted it at the 1963 Chicago Shoe Show. The availability of this and other new, inexpensive materials inspired more experimentation on the part of shoe designers, and a reciprocal willingness to test-drive styles on the part of the consumer. As man-made leather substitutes flooded the footwear market, an era of disposable fashion emerged, in which buyers willingly traded long-lasting, classic purchases for inexpensive, trendy items that could be worn only as long as they remained at the forefront of chic. Unlike their mothers who had lived through miserable periods of rationing, this younger generation was more than willing to pay for products that held no promise of extensive wear. For instance, the knee-high go-go boot, which gained in popularity through the mid- to late 1960s, would have been significantly more expensive to manufacture if the only option had been to craft it entirely out of leather. Were this the case, the go-go boot would have remained accessible mostly to older, wealthy patrons, who aren’t generally known for their willingness to sample unconventional trends. An experimental shoe made in durable leather is a good investment in one sense but proves riskier in terms of retaining its value in fashion currency. By using materials like Corfam and PVC, manufacturers enabled more adventurous, and less affluent, customers to try out the look. With its free-form shapes and eye-catching colors and prints, 1960s fashion was a huge departure from styles of the past and caught on in no small part because the lower price point made it more democratic. Thus innovative go-go boots became acceptable street wear for the mod: a new type of fashion-conscious, independent, sexually and politically liberal woman.
Around the same time, another kind of flat-soled shoe was slipping its way into street style: the sneaker. Natural rubber–soled shoes had been used by the aristocracy for recreation since the days of Henry VIII, but it wasn’t until the American inventor Charles Goodyear patented the process of vulcanization in 1839 that they entered into the mainstream. Vulcanization, in which heated rubber is combined with sulfur, helped manufacturers overcome some of the organic material’s drawbacks: sticky, not particularly durable, and sensitive to both hot and cold temperatures. Shoes with vulcanized rubber soles were then popularized by the U.S. Rubber Company in 1916, when it debuted a proprietary line of tennis shoes called Keds (a mix of “kids” and “peds”); an advertising executive at New York’s N. W. Ayer & Son first described them as “sneakers” because the quiet, bouncy soles allowed wearers to “sneak up” on their friends. For decades, Keds dominated the market for tennis shoes, but in the 1960s, they were embraced as a casual alternative for fashionable gamines like Audrey Hepburn and fearless trendsetters like Jackie Kennedy. Keds weren’t the only game in town; beatniks had gravitated toward the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star, which was another simple canvas shoe with laces and a white rubber sole, this one designed for basketball. It was introduced to the market in 1917, and like most sneakers, it was originally intended to appeal to athletes looking to improve their performance. In 1921, just a few years after he won the shoes notice by choosing to wear them on the court, basketball legend Charles “Chuck” Taylor officially joined the Converse team, signing one of the nation’s preeminent sports celebrity endorsement deals. In the 1950s, this affordable, comfortable shoe found life off the court, thanks to the growing popularity of rock and roll, and in the early 1960s, the brand debuted a low-top, oxford-style version of the high-topped original to appeal to nonathlete clients who didn’t require ankle support. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, slip-on Vans gained a following. A family company founded by Paul Van Doren in 1966 with two business partners, it specialized in washable canvas sneakers with a thick, flat vulcanized rubber sole. Vans also attracted the counterculture, in this case disciples of the Pacific Ocean and beach culture—surfers and skateboarders—who valued high-quality, no-frills footwear.
Sneakers were a fixture within youth culture and the underground, but they were systematically pushing their way into the mainstream. By May 1962, sneaker sales had jumped from a modest 35 million pairs a year during the 1950s, to a stunning 150 million. The New Yorker noted “a revolution that seems to be taking place in footgear,” while a U.S. Rubber representative announced in Newsweek that sneakers “are socially acceptable now. . . . They’re like hot dogs, part of America.” It wasn’t until 1964, with Philip “Buck” Knight, a track star who sold running shoes out of the back of his car at college meets, that rubber-soled sneakers took a turn toward the high-tech. Knight and his coach William J. Bowerman imported “Tiger” brand shoes from Japan, which sold well with athletes until the pair had a falling-out with their Asian supplier. A few years later, Bowerman and Knight would decide to take matters into their own hands, and go on to found Nike.
For some women, ditching the high heels and hiking up their skirts was all it took to feel liberated, but for others, it was like putting a Band-Aid on a gushing wound. To Betty Friedan, whose The Feminine Mystique was published on February 19, 1963, the idea that women should be led by their consumerist impulses was inherently flawed and served to stifle their ambitions by distracting them with targeted advertising: “The buying of things drains away those needs which cannot really be satisfied by home and family—the housewives’ need for something beyond themselves with which to identify. . . . The store will sell her more . . . if it will understand that the real need she is trying to fill by shopping is not anything she can buy there.” Friedan’s treatise gave voice and context to the limitations of traditional married life and put a name to a condition experienced by so many 1950s housewives, characterized by a gnawing, hollow feeling that she’d been sold a bill of goods when she signed up to sacrifice herself to house and home. Women who loved their families, and took pleasure in taking care of their own, still suffered under the burden of disappointed expectations and the dull suspicion that one’s lifetime contribution needn’t be confined by a white picket fence surrounding a manicured yard.
In the 1960s the world was changing rapidly and, in some cases, abruptly. Friedan’s book came at the perfect moment, dovetailing with a prowomen groundswell that was gaining in visibility and momentum. That same year a prominent activist named Gloria Steinem published an undercover exposé of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy clubs, which launched her into the limelight as an outspoken leader within the women’s movement. The moment for breathy, helpless femininity, à la Marilyn Monroe, was passing—and, in fact, Monroe had died the year before of a tragic overdose, plagued by rumors that she was having affairs with both the president and the attorney general, Kennedy’s younger brother Bobby. The notion that JFK could have cheated on his radiant, stylish wife—even with Hollywood’s number one sex bomb—shocked the nation, but that was nothing compared with the events of November 22, 1963, when a man who seemed untouchable was murdered in plain sight.
The world order was being upended, and while there would be many more unforeseen casualties, participants in the civil rights and feminist movements believed fervently in the power of change. If the suffragettes were considered the first wave of American feminism, this group, committed to the policies of reproductive rights and equal pay (as well as larger, nonlegislative issues of gender, family, and sexuality), represented the second. They rejected fashion wholesale as an insidious tool of the patriarchy: the stereotypical image of a hard-nosed Second Waver is a woman with messy, grown-out hair and unshaven legs and armpits; she wears no makeup, burns her bra, and marches in Birkenstocks. Embraced by women’s libbers for their comfort and practicality, these German, earthy, foot-friendly sandals were introduced to Americans in 1966 by German-born Margot Fraser, who fell in love with them on a trip back home. It took a health food store owner to recognize their charms; one shoe store proprietor rejected them as “hideous” before Fraser found them a place in the States. Caricatures aside, Second Wavers used their collective appearance to convey the story of gender emancipation from rigid beauty standards and laws that inscribed their status as second-class citizens. If the medium is the message, this message was written on the flesh.
Women weren’t the only ones experimenting with their physical appearances. With the scent of permissiveness and rebellion in the air, young men felt freer to express themselves via clothing as well. After a decade of starched collars and pressed blazers, mods in London started wearing tight-fitting pants, longer (though not yet long) hairstyles, and jackets with eye-catching trim and skinny ties. Stateside, similarly adventurous male dressers were inspired by urban, African-American street style, which incorporated flamboyant, even feminine, accents like hats, necklaces, fur, and feathers. Masculine self-adornment was dubbed “peacocking” for the way it sought to attract attention, yet it had the surprising effect of emphasizing a guy’s masculinity rather than detracting from it. Still, the Peacock Revolution—as this moment in fashion was dramatically christened—was a niche, largely metropolitan trend until a group of talented English mods appeared on the music scene.
In 1964, when they made their stateside debut, John, Paul, George, and Ringo had already undergone at least one total makeover, prompted by Lennon after he enrolled in art school and encouraged the boys to trade their leather jackets and skinny jeans for tight polo sweaters, professorial tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, and winklepickers: ankle boots with a long, pointy toe. These shoes, worn by both male and female rock and rollers in England, featured broad but sizable heels known as Cuban heels, which are flat in front and tapered in the back, and are traditionally worn by male dancers. In 1961, on their way back from a nightclub tour in Hamburg, John and Paul had walked by the famous London shoe shop Anello & Davide, pausing to admire a pair of Chelsea boots—modified riding boots that hit the leg at low to midcalf—on display. They commissioned four pairs to be made but specified that they wanted them done with a lift: et voilà, the bespoke Beatle boot was born. The boys from Liverpool went international with their new look, touring as clean-cut kids with an edge. Like their simplistic, four-chord songwriting, this style didn’t last too long for the group, but the boots were unique enough to cause imitators to line up in front of Anello & Davide to buy their own pairs, and to go down in fashion history as forever associated with the band.
The 1960s became a watershed moment in the democratization of footwear, when young, adventurous buyers—no longer looking to their parents for fashion advice—sought out stylish role models elsewhere. The music industry supplied rowdy voices of dissent, as well as cool, attractive stars whom their legions of fans rushed to emulate.