World War II had a profound impact on the fashion industries of Europe and America and consequently on the design of clothing. With the German invasion of Paris in June 1940, the international capital of fashion became cut off from the rest of the world. Chanel had already shut down the year before, and other couture houses now began to close their doors. Jacques Heim, who was Jewish, went into hiding, and Molyneux and Worth moved to England. Mainbocher and Schiaparelli left for the United States, though Schiaparelli kept her Paris salon open. Among the more than ninety houses that carried on business as usual were Lelong, Patou, Rochas, Lanvin, Ricci, Fath and Balenciaga.
Some of these couturiers showed small collections throughout the Occupation, and the design of Parisian haute couture clothing continued to evolve from the styles of the 1930s. Because rationing would be of benefit only to the occupiers, no attempt was made to conserve materials or labour and dresses were long and full-skirted. Many were corsetted and some included late-nineteenth-century revival-style bustles. They were accompanied by outlandishly tall and lavishly decorated hats.
Since none of this was visible to the outside world, Paris’s hegemony of fashion effectively came to an end and the rest of Europe and North America, which had traditionally looked to the French capital for stylistic guidance and inspiration, suddenly found themselves forced to rely entirely on domestic design talent. Moreover, their designers had to meet the challenge of shortages brought about by the war.
In Britain, a rationing system was introduced in the summer of 1941, regulating the quantity of clothing which could be purchased. The following year, the British Board of Trade introduced the Utility Clothing Scheme, a system of controls on the amount of fabric and number of trimmings used in clothing. The Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers (known as Inc. Soc.) – led by Molyneux, and including among others Hardy Amies, Norman Hartnell, Digby Morton and Victor Stiebel – took on the task of creating a prototype range of clothing which met these requirements, using minimal material and labour resources. Four basic lines were produced – coat, suit, dress and blouse – from which thirty-two individual designs were selected for manufacture. These were mass produced and bore the CC41 Utility label. The look was simple but stylish, with good proportion and line. It incorporated padded shoulders, a nipped-in waist and hems to just below the knee.
Textiles were also strictly controlled. Because silk was needed to make parachutes, there was a ban on its use for hosiery and clothing. Nylon, introduced by Du Pont in America in 1939, was not yet widely available, so manufacturers offered stockings in rayon, cotton and wool. When these materials also became difficult to obtain, women took to wearing ankle socks in the summer months or, when all else failed, staining their legs and drawing a mock seam down the back of the calf. The stockings shortage helped to increase the popularity of trousers, which were enthusiastically adopted by many younger women working in factories and on the land.
282 Typical wartime outfit: tailored suit with square shoulders, nipped-in waist and skirt reaching just below the knee, typically teamed with a small hat and functional bag and shoes. It was a style that gave civilian women a somewhat military appearance.
In an attempt to counteract the severity of the Utility lines, dress fabrics were brightly coloured, though printed and woven repeat patterns were kept small to avoid wastage when cutting. A government campaign known as ‘Make-do and Mend’ encouraged women accustomed to discarding worn or out-moded clothing to remake and update it. Despite the fact that hats were unrationed, many women preferred to wear turbans, snoods and headscarves.
In 1940 in the United States, the isolation from Paris coincided with an exploitation of domestic talent. Mainbocher – the first American designer to run a successful house in the French capital – was back in New York, as was Charles James. Two new talents also appeared on the scene: Norman Norell and Claire McCardell, both of whom had worked with Hattie Carnegie, the country’s best-known ready-to-wear designer. Throughout the war years, Norell showed many simple yet sophisticated designs, including in 1942 his trendsetting sequinned evening sheaths (using unrationed sequins). The field of sportswear, in which the United States was to excel, found its quintessential exponent in McCardell, whose hallmarks were simplicity and practicality. When in 1942 the American War Production Board (WPB) imposed limits (the L85 laws) on the use of certain textiles required for the war effort – mainly wool and silk – McCardell turned to cotton, using denim, seersucker, ticking and jersey to produce a range of attractive, easy-to-wear designs, many of which have become classics. Her wrap-around ‘popover’ dress, first shown in 1942, continued to be produced throughout her career.
283 A British World War II propaganda poster urges women to economize and be resourceful in order to conserve scarce clothing resources.
Although restrictions in America affected many aspects of dress – the cut of men’s suits, width of women’s skirts, heights of heels, colour of shoe leather, etc. – they were not as stringent as those in effect in Britain. Moreover, they did not last so long: restrictions came to an end in the United States in 1946 but rationing dragged on in Britain until 1948.
By the end of the war, British and American designers had a much sharper international profile. In both countries, too, significant developments had been made in the area of ready-to-wear clothing. Mass-market manufacturers had improved their skills – often in the mass production of uniforms. In America, the WPB sponsored a nationwide survey of women’s measurements from which to create basic guidelines for much-needed standardized sizing.
In the immediate postwar years, both Britain and the United States hoped to lead world fashion, but neither was to succeed. After the Liberation, Paris couturiers abandoned the brazen extravagance of the years of Occupation and returned to a simpler look. But the French couture establishment knew that it needed to win back overseas buyers, especially those from the United States, who now felt less tied to Paris and its influence. In 1945, in a push to revive the couture industry, French artists and designers collaborated to produce the Théâtre de la Mode, an exhibition of wire-frame miniature mannequins dressed in couture clothing – precise copies of the Spring/Summer collections of that year – which was used to publicize French fashion as it travelled to London, Barcelona, Stockholm, Copenhagen and several cities in America.
During the postwar years, Balmain, Balenciaga and Dior were to emerge as the most eminent of Parisian designers. The latter was to put the French capital firmly back at the centre of the fashion map in February 1947, when, as a newly independent designer, he showed his first collection, the Corolle line. Immediately nicknamed the New Look, it was to achieve unprecedented attention worldwide, not all of it favourable.
284 Archetypal New Look elegance: Patricia ‘Bambi’ Tuckwell in a corsetted, full-skirted cocktail dress by Christian Dior, 1949.
The New Look was in fact not new at all, but simply an exaggeration of late 1930s and Occupation styles, yet it was the very antithesis of the clothing produced in both the UK and the United States during the war. Soft, rounded shoulders emphasized the breasts; waists were heavily corsetted; hips were padded. Skirts – and herein lay the scandal – were billowing, reaching almost to the ankle. Most used as many as fifteen yards of fabric.
To much of the war-weary population, the New Look symbolized hopes for a more prosperous future. Others saw it as reckless waste at a time when fabric was still in short supply. Some women feared that its anachronistic, prewar shape – its out-and-out femininity – heralded a return by women to a less active role in society. But, despite the mixed response, it was eventually to win general support and would dominate the design of women’s clothing until 1954.
Throughout the 1950s, women wanted to appear mature, elegant and sophisticated. High fashion remained formal, with etiquette demanding special clothes and accessories for every occasion. Tailored suits, twinsets and shirtwaister dresses were worn during the day and cocktail dresses and immaculately constructed full-length gowns for evening. Perfect grooming was essential at all times. Most women either wore their hair in a softly waved pageboy or had regular perms, to achieve one of the shorter, curly styles. Chignons and french pleats were also popular. Make-up was heavy: a pale base was highlighted with rouged cheekbones; eyebrows were finely arched; eyes were accentuated with dark liner, coloured eye-shadow and mascara; lips were stained dark red.
Though the basic fashion silhouette remained the same throughout the early years of the decade, this was a period of intense fashion activity, with top designers creating new collections twice a year. As the decade progressed, clothing became less structured and straighter in cut – a development that can be seen subtly taking place in Dior’s collections of mid-decade, which included the H-line, the A-line and the Y-line. In 1954 Chanel reopened her house and reintroduced her relaxed, wearable suits and dresses, with hemlines reaching just below the knee. Balenciaga also rebelled against the lines of the New Look, showing tunic tops over long, straight skirts and softly tailored suits with stand-away collars and three-quarter-length sleeves. In 1957 he introduced the ‘chemise’ or sack dress, a shape which was to be taken up by other designers, including Givenchy and Jacques Griffe, and which would become the dominant line of the 1960s.
In America, most custom designers, including Norell, James Galanos, Pauline Trigère, Valentina and Anne Klein, were branching out into ready-to-wear. Claire McCardell continued to produce her stylish denim and cotton seersucker wrap-over dresses and dirndl skirts, and introduced jersey pedal-pushers with matching tops so short that they bared the midriff.
In the field of elegant sun- and swimwear, America excelled, especially in one-piece swimwear. Two-piece swimsuits were less widely worn, and though the bikini was introduced in France as early as 1946 and became popular there in the following decade, it was not commonly seen in the United States until the mid-sixties. American women often looked to Hollywood‘s film stars for inspiration, with Doris Day offering a ‘girl-next-door’ look and Elizabeth Taylor a more overtly sexual image.
285, 286 By the later 1950s designers were reacting against the tight-waisted, full-skirted style of the postwar years and had begun to present less structured clothing. The ‘sack’ dress, shown RIGHT in the 1958 version by Jacques Griffe, was to take over as the prevailing look of the next decade. Chanel’s easy-fitting suit, reintroduced in 1954, also provided more comfort and wearability. The style was to prove a classic. The example LEFT is a Chanel-style suit in specked wool tweed by Dan Millstein, 1962.
The 1950s also witnessed the rise of Italian designers. Emilio Pucci was noted for his bold prints in swirling abstract patterns and acidic colours from which he created elegant tapered trouser suits and shift dresses. Roberto Capucci made his name as a master of form, producing dramatic, sculptural dresses and ballgowns. Italy also led the world in fashion footwear and other fine leathers.
In the field of postwar menswear, the most dramatic development took place in Britain, where, in 1953, young working-class men began to adopt the ‘Edwardian’ style of dress that had been introduced by Savile Row tailors in the late 1940s. The ‘teddy boys’ took this upper-class, somewhat dandified look – the chief elements of which were a long draped jacket and narrow ‘drainpipe’ trousers – and exaggerated it, adding crepe-soled shoes and narrow ‘maverick’ ties. What was important in this development was not the adoption by the working class of an upper-class style, but the fact that young men from poor backgrounds could now afford relatively expensive clothes and accessories and had the confidence to make them part of their own distinctive style.
In the 1950s a separate market came into being catering specifically to young people with large disposable incomes. Although many teenagers wore the same style of dress as their parents, there was in general a pronounced relaxation of dress codes among the young. Hollywood film stars James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized jeans and the motorbike jacket and also transformed the T-shirt into a fashionable item of clothing. There was a vogue for sideburns and greased hairstyles.
Teenage girls wore tight sweaters and cardigans over pointed brassières, with circular skirts held out stiffly by layers of nylon petticoats. Tight trousers or jeans with oversize jumpers were also popular with both sexes as part of the art school/beatnik look, which featured large quantities of black. Young people around the globe danced to the new American rock ‘n’ roll music, and it was from this date that the fashion and music industries became inextricably linked.
From the mid-1950s, Italian clothing – tailored menswear in particular – began to represent the ultimate in modernity. Soon, Italian clothes were imported into Britain and America, and domestic tailors proudly proclaimed that their own versions of these short-cut, single-breasted suits with tapered trousers were in the ‘Italian style’. These were worn with narrow – often horizontally striped – ties and fine quality, Italian leather shoes, with pointed toes.
The 1960s can be split into two distinct periods. The first embraces the years 1960 to 1967 (‘the swinging sixties’), when fashion focused almost entirely on youth. Though Paris continued to lead in couture and at the most exclusive levels of ready-to-wear, London spearheaded the design and retailing of fashionable teenage styles. The boutique became the dominant retail fashion outlet, providing an enticing combination of small runs of up-to-the minute clothes, young, fashionably dressed assistants, loud pop music and gimmicky interiors.
The chief fashion story of the period was the miniskirt. Hemlines rose just above the knee in 1961 and had reached the upper thighs by 1966. Stockings and suspenders were replaced by brightly coloured tights, and underwear was reduced to brief, unstructured bras and pants.
It was a style best suited to a skinny, pre-pubescent physique – epitomized by the teenage model Lesley Hornby, known as Twiggy. And despite the much publicized sexual revolution, young women of this period often looked like children, in baby-doll dresses with puffed sleeves, schoolgirl pinafores and gymslips, knickerbockers and the ubiquitous miniskirt.
The designer most often credited with introducing the ‘mini’ was Mary Quant, who had opened her boutique ‘Bazaar’ in London’s King’s Road in 1955.[287] Rejecting the constraints of seasonal shows, she produced as many as twenty-eight collections during her early years, creating simple, practical, often mix ’n’ match designs which had an element of classlessness perfectly suited to the mood of the sixties. Other designers of the new generation who made their names creating stylish fashions for the affluent youth market included Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb, Marian Foale, Sally Tuffin and Jean Muir.
It was a period when designers of both clothes and textiles celebrated modernity and scientific progress. Space-age silvers and whites were mixed with primary colours. Pop and Op Art had a profound influence on textile design. New fashion materials were introduced, including shiny, wet-look PVC, easy-care acrylics and polyesters.
Women wore their hair either long and straight or cut short (ideally by Vidal Sassoon) into a sculpted bob or wedge. Foundation and lipstick were pale, eyes enlarged with eyeliner and dark eyeshadow.
Men’s clothing also received attention from inventive young designers during the 1960s, becoming more informal, more flamboyant and notably more colourful. ‘Hipster’ trousers, high-collared shirts and ‘kipper’ ties were fashionable. Jeans remained popular and denim was also used for shirts, jackets and hats. Teenagers and students patronized army-and-navy surplus clothing outlets. Vince, opened by Bill Green in 1954, was one of the first menswear boutiques in West Soho. The shop’s continental-style clothes were specifically aimed at gay men and were also available through their mail-order catalogue. Three years later the influential menswear designer John Stephen opened the first of his chain of cutting-edge menswear boutiques in Carnaby Street. He was initially patronized by Mods – the dominant subcultural group of the time – who favoured the modern ‘Italian style’. By 1962 West Soho had become famous for its small specialist menswear shops, including John Paul‘s ‘I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’, which sold ex-military uniforms and clothing emblazoned with Union Jack designs.
287 Mary Quant’s simple checked mini-dress with dropped waist, mid-1960s.
288 Sixties top model Jean Shrimpton in a lace mini-dress with matching lace tights, 1965.
289 The menswear shop ‘I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ opened in Carnaby Street, Soho, in the early 1960s. This photograph, taken outside the shop towards the end of the decade, shows the miniskirt at its upper-thigh level. Courrèges’ influence is still visible in the woman’s boots. The man’s trousers demonstrate the wide cut of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Although American men were generally more conservative – the most common outfit being a combination of Ivy-League-style tapered trousers and three-button single-breasted jacket – some concessions to the new trends were apparent by the mid-sixties.
290 Models wearing red-and-black ready-to-wear fashion by André Courrèges, also featuring the designer’s trend-setting white boots, 1965.
The most extreme 1960s fashions were shown by Paris designers André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro and Yves Saint Laurent. Courrèges’ Spring/Summer 1964 ‘Space Age’ collection featured ‘astronaut’ hats and goggles, white and silver PVC ‘moon girl’ loon trousers, catsuits and white patent or kid leather, mid-calf-length boots. Courrèges’ clothes and those of Ungaro and Cardin were precision-cut and unadorned. Paco Rabanne was noted for his unconventional use of materials: his first ‘body jewelry’ collection in 1966 consisted of shift dresses constructed from plastic or metal discs and tiles, linked with wire or chain. Yves Saint Laurent, who had designed at Dior, started under his own name in 1962, and became an iconoclast of 1960s style, reflecting Left-Bank influences and contemporary art movements. Copies of his 1965 ‘Mondrian’ dress, composed of bold blocks of colour, appeared in high street shops within days.
Fashion was also becoming increasingly unisex, reflecting a gradual breaking down of long-established traditions of gender dressing. For the first time men and women shopped at the same boutique for jeans, trousers, jackets, sweaters and shirts. In Paris in 1966 Yves Saint Laurent launched his famous ‘smoking’ jacket for women, followed in 1967 by his knickerbocker suit, a year later by culottes and in 1969 by his trouser suit.[292–4]
By the mid-1960s ready-to-wear was dominant. Designers acknowledged that many young women did not want to spend time having lengthy couture fittings, or pay high prices for clothing that they intended to wear for a short period only. The traditional couture clientele continued to patronize Dior (where Marc Bohan had taken over from Saint Laurent), Balenciaga, Lanvin and Chanel. The master couturier Balenciaga retired in 1968, recognizing that a market no longer existed for this fine couture.
From 1968 the optimistic social and economic climate of the early 1960s started to fade as unemployment and inflation rose, most notably in Britain. People began to question the human and environmental consequences of technology and women began to rebel against imposed ideals of feminine beauty.
Fashion has sometimes been criticized for lacking direction in the years following the ‘swinging sixties’, the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. But it was in fact this period which paved the way for the stylistic pluralism of the present day. Individuality and self-expression were paramount. Clothing was often customized with embroidered, appliquéd and patch-worked designs. Tie-dye T-shirts became popular. Colours were muted and textiles predominantly made from natural fibres. In Britain, at the top end of the market, Bill Gibb became famous for his stunning appliquéd and embroidered designs and Zandra Rhodes for her exquisite, ethereal, hand-screened silk and chiffon garments. In Italy the Missonis did much to elevate the status of knitwear in fashion, incorporating subtle patterns and blends of colour.
291 Art has often influenced fashion, though rarely as directly as in Yves Saint Laurent‘s 1965 cocktail dress, inspired by a painting by Mondrian.
The ethnic look predominated. Hippies were the first to adopt Afghan coats, fringed suede garments, caftans, headbands and beads as part of their rejection of Western consumerist society. And as European and American societies became increasingly multi-cultural, the clothes and hairstyles of Afro-Caribbean, Asian and African-American communities injected a lively new ingredient into all levels of Western dress.
In the late 1960s hemlines dropped to mid-calf, a move resisted by many women, who continued to wear the miniskirt. The full-length maxi, however, which was introduced in 1969, was widely adopted. From 1971 shorts with bibs and straps – popularly known as ‘hotpants’ – offered an alternative to the mini. By the following year skirts and dresses had become longer, fluid and more romantic, and the ‘futuristic’ fashions of the early 1960s had given way to nostalgia.
292–4 Yves Saint Laurent designs from the 1960s: Knickerbocker suit, 1967 (LEFT); Culottes, 1968 (CENTRE); Trouser suit based on the cut of menswear, 1969 (RIGHT).
295 This handpainted and handprinted dress from Zandra Rhodes typifies the move in the 1970s away from the rather geometric futuristic look of the previous decade towards a more loose and flowing style. Ethnic elements are also beginning to enter high fashion.
Styles of the 1930s in particular were revived, with many designers cutting their clothing on the bias and exploiting fluid fabrics, especially satins. In London’s Kensington, Barbara Hulanicki’s new art deco emporium, Biba, which opened in 1973, exulted in pastiche 1930s Hollywood glamour.[296] Authentic period clothing also became desirable and specialist shops opened to cater to this demand. A 1940s influence was apparent in both men’s and women’s shoes, which were designed with dangerously high platform soles from the early to the mid-1970s.
In the United States in 1971, Ralph Lauren, who had made his name with his ‘Polo’ line for men, produced a line of tailored suits for women. Calvin Klein also designed stylish women’s clothes along masculine lines.
In the early 1970s trousers were cut very wide, into ‘flares’ or ‘bags’. ‘Flares’, which subsequently became the chief symbol of the fashion of the period, were tight around the thigh and widened from the knee downward. ‘Bags’ were loose, reminiscent of 1920s and 1930s styles. From 1975, trousers were cut narrow and straight.
By the early 1970s, the first wave of Japanese designers had arrived in Paris. Challenging Western traditions of tailoring, Kenzo (Takada) and Issey Miyake presented an approach to dressing which concentrated on layering and wrapping, swathing the body in loose, unstructured garments.[300] Kenzo introduced peasant-style, wide-legged drawstring trousers, quilted jackets and tabards. Miyake’s inspired, uncompromising clothing was constructed by working his fabrics directly onto the body, to create softly sculptural garments.
296, 297 A nostalgia for 1930s styling is revealed both in Barbara Hulanicki’s early 1970s designs for Biba (LEFT) and in Jean Muir’s fluid dress design of 1973 (RIGHT).
The anarchic Punk style, which appeared on the streets of London during the mid-1970s, and which spread in diluted form throughout Europe and North America, was to have an enormous impact on both streetwear and high fashion. It was a style which consciously sought to shock, combining – for both sexes – black tight trousers and striped mohair sweaters with customized leather jackets and heavy-duty Doctor Marten boots. Some female Punks wore miniskirts, fishnet tights and high stiletto-heeled shoes. Fetishistic leather and rubber were an integral part of the Punk look, as were trousers with bondage straps from knee to knee, and bondage collars. Clothes were slashed and ripped, embellished with safety pins, zips and studs. T-shirts were printed with aggressive, anarchistic slogans. The most famous retail outlet for Punk garments and accessories was the shop Seditionaries in London’s King’s Road, run by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren – key figures in the visual styling of the Punk movement.[299]
In complete contrast to the artificially pale and unhealthy look of the Punks, there was a strong swing in the late 1970s towards health and personal fitness. Dance studios and gyms sprang up throughout Europe and North America and specialist clothing became an integral part of this trend. In the late 1970s the American designer Norma Kamali was instrumental in bringing sportswear into the fashion arena, introducing sweat-shirting ra-ra skirts, bandeau tops, jumpsuits, leotards and leggings.[301] Stretchy Lycra yarns, developed by Du Pont in 1959, were in use by the 1970s and did much to improve the appearance and fit of sports and fashion clothes. Another significant originator of the sportswear trend was the reggae musician Bob Marley, who appeared on stage in football gear and tracksuits from the late 1970s. By the early 1980s tracksuits and training shoes had become a fashionable uniform among young urban black youth and were subsequently adopted by both sexes and all ages, as comfortable leisure wear.
298 Punks in London’s King’s Road, 1980. Although Punk was a visually menacing and provocative youth style, it was to have a widespread and lasting influence on all levels of dress, including high fashion. Elements of the Punk look continued to appear on catwalks throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s.
299 Vivienne Westwood, creator of much of Punk style, began to show her collections in 1981. Underwear worn as outerwear featured in her influential Buffalo collection of Autumn/Winter 1982/83.
At the top end of the fashion trade, the boom years of the early 1980s witnessed a dramatic rise in the demand for luxurious haute-couture and ready-to-wear clothing. Much of this increased business came from wealthy Americans as well as from a new, oil-rich Middle-Eastern market. At this time fashion was still clearly directional, with seasonal trends publicized by an ever-expanding international fashion media. In the main, styles were either short and fitted or voluminous and layered.
For evening, many of the more traditional Parisian houses, such as Balmain, Dior and Givenchy, revived the structured, highly decorated garments for which they had always been known. Thierry Mugler and Azzedine Alaïa offered a more youthful, bold and overtly sexual image, producing clinging, body-conscious clothes, which sometimes drew on fetishistic corsetry and lacing.[302, 303]
300 Issey Miyake’s layered look from 1982, comprising wrap, shirt and dirndl skirt.
301 Fashion designer Norma Kamali, 1981.
At the House of Chanel – that bastion of the establishment – dramatic changes were made with the appointment of Karl Lagerfeld as designer in 1983. Lagerfeld’s brief was to increase sales by attracting a new, youthful market, while retaining the loyalty of Chanel’s traditional customers.[304] From the outset he exploited Chanel’s signature designs, sometimes paying homage to her classic styles and at other times parodying them without mercy. Within a year the House of Chanel was once again in the forefront of fashion.
For daytime, padded-shouldered suits – with trousers as well as skirts – became the mainstay ‘power-dressing’ wardrobe for the professional woman and it was in this field that the Italians excelled. Milan had been established as Italy’s fashion capital by the mid-1970s and Italian designers continued to be acknowledged for their specialist use of textiles. In 1982 Gianni Versace worked with a modernistic, pliant metallic mesh and in the same year Giorgio Armani created an international vogue for crumpled suit and dress fabrics, particularly linen. Franco Moschino gained a reputation as the bad boy of Italian fashion, with his irreverent collections featuring dresses covered with bras or teddy bears.[305]
302 Azzedine Alaïa started showing his collections in 1981. From the beginning he focused on the shape of the female form, producing body-hugging, clinging garments which were overtly sexual in their appeal. This dress, made even more revealing by the use of side-lacing, is from his Spring/Summer 1986 collection.
In America there was a move towards a traditional look for both men and women. Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis and later Calvin Klein created fashions which often embodied the style of 1920s British aristocrats and American pioneers, a highly successful formula which they have retained to the present day.[306, 307] Donna Karan dressed the businesswoman in comfortable, stylish and versatile clothes for all times of day.
The 1980s also saw many designers expand their ranges to embrace menswear. These included Mugler (1980), Comme des Garçons (1983), Jean-Paul Gaultier (1984) and Karl Lagerfeld (1989). With this trend came special menswear shows and designer collectives, such as the Fifth Circle Group in London, whose members included Joe Casely-Hayford and John Richmond. Running parallel with seasonal changes in menswear, and headline-hitting styles such as Gaultier‘s sarongs for men, was the continued popularity of ‘authentic’ American workwear, collegiate Preppy styles and sportswear at all market levels.
303 Thierry Mugler’s vampish tailored suit pays homage to glamorous femininity, Autumn/Winter 1989/90.
304 Karl Lagerfeld continues the Chanel tradition of tweeds and leather-entwined chains, but teams them with white cotton Y-fronts, Spring/Summer 1993.
305 Moschino’s advertising campaign for Autumn/Winter 1988/89 featured Violetta Sanchez modelling the designer’s famous teddy-bear dress.
306 Ralph Lauren’s 1989 outfit of long riding coat and boots looks back to the early twentieth century.
307 Calvin Klein’s oversized jacket, 1974.
The clothes of innovative Japanese designers, who continued to show in Paris, offered a stark and often startling alternative to Western styles. The second wave of Japanese designers, including Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, began to show their collections in Paris in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[308, 310] Their oversize garments for men and women were often cut asymmetrically, with oddly positioned sleeves and pockets. Predominant colours were black, ink blue, neutral creams and beige with a hint of bright red. Some garments were inspired by traditional Japanese ceremonial clothes and workwear, while others celebrated modernity. Designs ranged from T-shaped garments in indigo-blue linens to Issey Miyake‘s moulded silicone bustiers in bright primary colours. However, on the whole, Japanese designer clothes were, and still are, characterized by their loose fit, which conceals the natural contours of the body.
308 The unstructured Japanese look continued in this oversize design from Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Autumn/Winter 1983/84. Kawakubo favoured black and dark blue and used mainly natural materials.
309 Giorgio Armani‘s broad-shouldered tailored suit for Spring/Summer 1989.
Paris has held on to its international fashion status and, in addition to Japanese designers, many European couturiers also present their collections there. These include Britain’s Vivienne Westwood and Hussein Chalayan, the Belgian designers Dries van Noten and Raf Simons and the experimental Dutch duo Viktor & Rolf. France has always supported and actively promoted her fashion industry and the opportunities for high-profile licensing agreements which fund the fashion houses are still ripest in Paris. Fashion houses, often headed by international conglomerates, make substantial financial losses on their haute couture collections, but these highly publicized, glamour-laden events provide the label prestige which makes their numerous licensed goods so commercially lucrative. Diffusion lines, consumer products, and – most significantly of all – perfume sales, continue to earn top designers high salaries.
310–13 Missoni knitwear in signature shades for Autumn/Winter 1987/88; Stark simplicity from Yohji Yamamoto, Spring/Summer 1989; Christian Lacroix‘s drawing for his ‘Bazar’ collection, Autumn/Winter 1994/95; Teddy-boy-style suits in bold checks from Paul Smith, Spring/Summer 1994.
From 1986 the fashion industries suffered another slump, but as always there remained a small, wealthy and discerning clientele for exquisitely made, beautiful clothing. Christian Lacroix, who opened his Paris house in 1986, recognized this market sector and catered to it. From the outset he championed the revival of the traditional crafts so central to the art of haute couture. His sumptuous clothes for day and evening often reflected his passion for historical dress translated into a modern idiom. The beading and embroidery workshops, the makers of buttons, passementerie and craft textiles enjoyed a significant rise in business through his much publicized shows.
Sales for international couture and ready-to-wear gradually started to pick up in the early 1990s. At the same time came the rise of a new generation of young, avant-garde designers, including the Belgians Martin Margiela and Ann Demeulemeester, the Austrian Helmut Lang, the Swedish designer Marcel Marongiu, the African XULY-Bët and the French designer Martine Sitbon. Drawing on 1970s styling and early 1980s Japanese designer collections, they spearheaded a new movement, popularly known as deconstructivism. Deconstructivist garments were generally black and were designed either oversize or shrunken, or so as to appear to be inside-out, with uneven hemlines and (beautifully finished) exposed seams and slashes. Since the overall look was distressed, parallels with the economic recession were inevitable, as were suggestions that new designers were paving the way for the new century.
In the course of the 1990s, dramatic changes took place. A greater range of styles than ever before came on offer. Magazines no longer presented the forthcoming season’s trend: instead, they revealed the variety of themes, shapes and textiles that had emerged. The first half of the decade saw the reintroduction of 1960s and 1970s revival styles (from miniskirts and flares to Hippy styles, platforms and Punk), futuristic cyberpunk looks, eco fashions, ethnic styles, grunge, school uniforms and sportswear and an array of upgraded subcultural styles, such as catwalk Teddy Boys, Surfers, Ragga and B-Boys. The preponderance of retro encouraged the spread of second-hand clothing shops, selling American workwear and period styles for the fashion-conscious, and cheap, durable clothing for the less well-off.
As the decade progressed, an increasingly confused fashion industry became ever more reliant on pastiche and literal updates of significant looks from earlier decades. Designers were now often perceived as stylists, able to reinterpret classic ideas for a more and more diverse market, one controlled as much by marketing and advertising budgets as by creativity.
314 Christian Lacroix‘s fascination with historical dress is revealed in this puff skirt – a reimagined crinoline – shown in his first independent collection in the Summer of 1987.
315 ‘Tribal-style’ clothes at Jean-Paul Gaultier’s Paris catwalk show, Autumn/Winter 1994.
316 Anna Sui exploits ethnicity, futuristic cyber looks and 1970s styling for her Spring/Summer 1994 collection.
The most successful and influential fashion development of the period was the rise of Gucci, established in Milan in 1906 as a saddlery house. This brand showed how a traditional luxury goods house could reinvent itself through the introduction of a new designer and a high-octane publicity campaign. The company’s fortunes began their upward turn in 1988, when the founder’s grandchildren sold their interest to an investment company, which in turn began a succession of new appointments, culminating in 1994 in that of US designer Tom Ford, under whose direction Gucci became by the mid-nineties the world’s most desirable luxury label. Ford recognized that high-profile advertising combined with dynamic show presentations could boost the sales of the company’s more lucrative goods such as the famous snaffle loafers and logo belts and bags. But it was Gucci’s clothing range which – though an adjunct to the accessories – had the broadest influence on international fashion: the iconic pieces from this period, such as the collarless biker jacket of Spring/Summer 1998, and the feather-embroidered jeans and oversized floral print dresses of Spring/Summer 1999, inspired an avalanche of copies by the mass market. The rebirth of Gucci is emblematic of the growing number of luxury conglomerates investing in the fashion business.
The late 1990s also witnessed other important new design appointments. The British designer Alexander McQueen, best known for popularizing a look known as ‘Agro Chic’, which entailed low-slung ‘bumster’ trousers and aggressively linear tailoring that exaggerated both waist and shoulder, was appointed at Givenchy, where he remained until 2001. His compatriot John Galliano, whose designs are based on pastiches of historic dress or, more specifically, historic figures who act as both muse and inspiration for intensely complex, decorative and showy creations, went to Dior. The Americans Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors joined leather houses Louis Vuitton and Celine, while the Belgian designer Martin Margiela moved to Hermès.
317, 318 The Milanese house Gucci exerted considerable influence on mass market fashion in the late 1990s with designs such as its feather-trim jeans (LEFT) and floral print ruffle dress (RIGHT), both from the Spring/Summer 1999 collection.
319, 320 John Galliano and Alexander McQueen have gained reputations through their innate sense of theatre, both in show presentations and in evening wear. LEFT John Galliano for Dior Couture, Spring/Summer 1997; RIGHT Alexander McQueen, Spring/Summer 2001.
If the reinvention of the classic design house has become a leitmotif of the designer industry at the turn of the millennium, the major creative movements in fashion in the 1990s were inspired as much by the street as the catwalk, as the boundaries between the two fields became increasingly blurred. The mid-nineties saw the impact of designers such as the Austrian Helmut Lang, whose knack of appropriating non-fashion classics such as army surplus for a designer-literate clientele sanitized basic garments such as the parka and multi-pocketed cargo pant by executing them in luxury fabrics.[321]
Lang’s perception that utility clothing could be sold under a banner of luxury gave rise to a whole new industry which derived its profile from a range of garments that traditionally had little, if any, fashion connotations. Known as urban sportswear, this predominantly unisex look took army surplus and workwear ideas and combined them with some of the latest technical innovations in fabrics such as microfibre and Tencel while putting a fashion twist on silhouettes usually found in garments worn for outdoor pursuits such as snowboarding and mountaineering.
Key stylistic elements of this movement included funnel-necked parkas, oversized combat trousers and the one-strap rucksack. American retailer The Gap, founded in San Francisco in 1969, universalized the popularity of garments such as the hooded sweatshirt and cargo pant (the latter contributing to a massive downsizing in the denim market), making once-basic items a wardrobe staple for all generations.
The prevalence of urban sportswear in male dress can also be directly correlated to the increasingly informal approach to workplace clothing. Jeans and sweatshirts became acceptable during the mid-nineties in all but the most formal industries, as ‘Friday wear’ began to extend its influence throughout the week. Conversely, as the call for readymade suits began to dwindle, the market for high calibre made-to-measure suiting grew in response to design innovations from a new generation of bespoke tailors. In Britain Timothy Everest, Richard James and Ozwald Boateng brought a more exuberant approach to tailoring. Their success ran parallel to the continued international strength of the German firm Hugo Boss and the Italian house of Armani.
321 Helmut Lang transforms the traditional parka into a luxurious example of urban sportswear, Autumn/Winter 1998.
322 A boldly coloured linen suit from Ozwald Boateng, Spring/Summer 2001.
The increasing similarities between street and catwalk culture also revealed themselves in the resurgence of proactive sportswear as fashion. American designer Tommy Hilfiger epitomized the heavily logoed casual-wear aesthetic of the mid- to late nineties in easily identifiable collections denoted by heavy branding.
The power of branding has influenced fashion throughout the decades, from the earliest Louis Vuitton monogrammed luggage at the beginning of the century, through the intertwined CC of Chanel and the Mary Quant daisy of the sixties, but no label did more to popularize logos in the mid-nineties than Prada, a Milanese accessory house which, like Gucci, transformed itself from a reputable leather goods manufacturer into a leading global fashion power. Headed by Miuccia Prada, granddaughter of the founder, it adopted an unusually intellectual approach to dress, gaining its initial following early in the decade for its use of nylon for handbags and raincoats at a time when fashion was enjoying a long affair with eco-friendly natural fibres. In addition to fabrication, the company’s triangular metal logo, originally used to monogram luggage, became a staple of the Prada house style and spawned cheap imitations worldwide.
Prada’s espousal of nylon is symptomatic of the new uses designers were finding for increasingly sophisticated synthetic fabrics. The manmade fibre revolution of the sixties laid the groundwork for the complex textiles available at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when, for example, new, non-creasing linens began to replace their crinkled counterparts, increasingly sophisticated fake fur encroached on the market for the real thing and designers worked more with new print technology such as inkjet printing and laser-cutting.
The relentless speed at which technology changes the landscape of daily life had inevitable repercussions on fashion. Live web feeds have enabled designers to broadcast their catwalk presentations online as they take place, thus instantly reaching a global market far larger than the traditional fashion show audience. At the same time, the internet has created unprecedented access to fashion information, much of which has made the process of copying designer garments so easy that the more unscrupulous among the chain stores can introduce facsimiles onto the high street before the originals are delivered to more upmarket outlets.
Stylistically, the single most important key look in womenswear to emerge since the mid-1990s was ‘Modern Bohemian’, a style originated by the London retailer Voyage. From 1996 to the end of the decade, the bohemian look became the overriding trend within womenswear at all market levels, incorporating the adapted ethnic embroideries of Belgian designer Dries Van Noten, the bold colour sense of young British designer Matthew Williamson and the irreverent mixtures of fabrics from Milanese design houses such as Marni and Fendi.[325, 326] It was a trend based on mixing and layering: combining garments such as shrunken cardigans and dresses worn over trousers, clashing colours such as cerise and orange and multitudinous forms of decoration, including velvet trims, embroidered motifs, mirror appliqués and minuscule floral or paisley prints.
As fashion dallied with romanticism, a new market began to develop in tandem with Hippy chic: the fashion essential or ‘must-have’ item, promoted heavily through the growing number of fashion publications. Once-obscure pieces such as the pashmina shawl became highly desirable accessories. Imported from Kashmir in Northern India, the pashmina, which initially began life as a security blanket for fashion editors on long-haul flights, soon became a replacement for the scarf, materializing in numerous guises, from the costly original to cheaper blends masquerading as the real thing.
323, 324 Prada’s use of print and motif inspired the mass market to emulate their designs in numerous less expensive renditions. The lime and chocolate colour palette of Spring/Summer 1996 was highly influential (LEFT), and the chinoiserie motif of Spring/Summer 1997 popularized Chinese satin and made versions of the traditional cheongsam stylish (RIGHT).
325 Dries Van Noten, Spring/Summer 1998. Van Noten’s designs exemplified the modified ethnicity popular at the end of the 1990s.
326 Fendi used patchwork fur to create an Op Art coat, as fashion moved towards a bolder colour statement for the new century; Autumn/Winter 2000/2001.
In terms of both influence and sales, the power of the accessory was the most telling indication of the direction fashion was pursuing at the beginning of the new century. Inspired by the successes of Gucci and Prada, every other house of note launched and continues to promote handbag, footwear or sunglasses collections that enable consumers to buy into the designer dream on a limited budget. Cult handbags such as the Fendi ‘baguette’ accumulated a readymade waiting list from eager customers keen to display what had become one of fashion’s most recognized symbols of wealth.
327 Handbags are eminently collectible, few more so than the Fendi baguette, perhaps the 1990s’ most famous ‘must-have’ item. Pieces such as these are often produced on a small scale; their scarcity increases their desirability.
The creative currents circulating during the transitional years that mark the symbolic ending of an era and the birth of a new one are often confused. In fashion, as the millennium approached, this took the form of a backlash against the neo-bohemian trends of the mid-decade and a resurgence of tailoring for women. The balance of influence shifted towards a more severely sexy aesthetic, much of which was inspired by vintage Yves Saint Laurent from the 1970s and 1980s. Exemplified by blouses with pussycat bow collars, ‘frumpy’ skirt lengths and sharply tailored jackets, what had previously been a soft and layered look began to focus on high-maintenance concepts of glamour centring around an extensive use of diamanté, gold, Lurex, satin, patent leather and tweed.
Running concurrently with fashion’s update on bourgeois femininity, a more literal interpretation of eighties style began to appear from younger designers catering to contemporaries who, like them, had been children in the 1980s. Focusing on early eighties ‘New Wave’ imagery, as popularized by singers such as Blondie and Grace Jones, key pieces included skinny masculine jackets, draped jersey dresses and customization in the guise of deliberately distressed denim, graffiti-inspired prints and post-Punk badges.