From the Archives: Spring fashion, 60s and 70s style

UM Archives and Special Collections has over 250,000 newsclippings originally taken from the Winnipeg Tribune and this is a small sample from the fashion file.

The 1960s was a transformative decade for fashion, generating ideas that still influence style today. Prior to the 60s, fashion designers focused on the wealthy and mature. In the 60s, the tastes of youth began to influence fashion.  Parisian designers of expensive haute couture garments dominated the early 60s. But formal suits for women underwent a structural change resulting in looser lines and shorter skirts. Fashion became even more body conscious: A woman wanted to look lean, linear and long.

“Yet the shape of clothes was soon transformed by new ideas emerging from the London pop scene,” the Victoria and Albert Museum notes. “In Britain, musical taste and styles of dress were closely linked and it was the mod look which first popularised the simple geometric shapes typical of the 1960s. By the mid-sixties, the flared A-line was in style for dresses, skirts and coats. Slim fitting, brightly coloured garments were sold cheaply in boutiques all over ‘Swinging London’ and had tremendous influence throughout  Europe and the US.”

In the 70s, polyester was the fabric of choice and things were form fitting in the early part of the decade. In 1977, as some pictures here will show, fashion took on a looser attitude: designers let clothes fall and sit how gravity and body curves dictated. This was short-lived, though, and things got tight again.

But enough history. Here’s some great photos from our archives.