Fashion and Popular Culture

The modelling industry exploded during the 1960s. The introduction of new and excitingly different models to the fashion and makeup industry led to a cataclysmic change in the way the 1960swoman presented herself. The early sixties favoured a classic, older woman. One example of this is Jean Shrimpton on the cover of VOGUE. Shown wearing a white Christian Dior hat, Shrimpton has a mature bone structure sporting a shaded pastel blue eye with heavy mascara, large black eyeliner flicks and a red lip.

Lesley Lawson, a young girl from London was to burst into the fashion industry with such force that she would never be forgotten. Twiggy, as she was more popularly known, became the icon of young fashion and the first model to grow into a media personality.The explosion of Twiggy into the British fashion industry was to be the beginning of the young woman as an ideal. With her elfin crop and teenage figure, Twiggy emulated the 1920s garҫonne with her child like and youthful features. Twiggy later became known as the world’s very first international supermodel. 

I felt that Twiggy was so influential to both my project and the fashion of the 1960s that I have embedded a video containing a short piece about the influential model.

music of the 1960s had a large bearing upon fashion and makeup trends. The Beatles, a rock and roll group from Liverpool transformed the look, sound and style for not only their generation, but also of ones that followed. These four men revolutionized the music, fashion and makeup and hair industry of the 1960s in such a dramatic way, it hasn’t been the same since. The Beatles were famous for their matching tailored suits, mop-top haircuts and Cuban heeled boots. The mop-top hairstyle was so popular that the Beatle wig became the hottest novelty since the hula hoop.

Young men and boys all over the world idolised and replicated their fashions. This was an extreme turning point in 1960s fashion as men had never before been seen as fashion icons. The commercialisation of The Beatles’ look became so popular that it changed men’s fashion forever.