If it's possible to die of embarrassment for an era one doesn't remember, I am six feet under. I've been looking at old Seventeen magazines from 1960-1968. The ads make me cringe, the hairstyles frighten me, and the very poses of the models fill me with uneasiness. I can't stop looking, though. I'm fascinated by how the magazine changed in one decade.
It doesn't start out too badly. The April 1960 issue has a tightly corseted Carol Lynley on it, almost unrecognizable in girlish gingham and dimity. The ads are filled with perky redheads, giggling blondes, and pert brunettes. (The boy models all look impossibly old with their houndstooth jackets and brillantined hair; it's hard to believe these tie-wearing chumps are actually teenagers.) Everyone's cheerful as heck. Shoes are spike heeled, pointy, and low. Everyone stands up straight with toes pointed outwards. The hair is round and teased like a halo around the head. Waists are cinched in tight, tight, tight! Gloves are still part of every polite girl's wardrobe. The operative word is bouffant. It's adorably, weirdly formal.
I can see the mod world on its way in, though. The puffball hairdos occasionally give way to a mop toppish shape. Eye makeup especially is veering away from the pale, neutral eyelids of the 50's (for young ladies, at least) to thick, exaggerated eyeliner and darker shadows in the creases. False eyelashes are clearly just a step away. The focus is moving from eyebrows and lips to the eyes themselves. Some girls still sport orange or red lipstick but the violet-pink palette of the 60's is already making a pretty good showing. Another year or two and the fresh, flirty look of girls who think boys are "dreamy" is going to look terribly passe next to the swinging, super, now fashions of the Youth Generation. I can almost feel sorry for them. The Eisenhower era is over but no one knows it yet.
1968, on the other hand, was a very bizarre year for fashion. The ads make me faintly nostalgic because I remember some of them personally. Thirty years later, the stone-faced models with their fantastically curled hair extensions, awkwardly "kicky" poses, enormous eyes, and patterned tights look like aliens from another planet attempting to blend in with earthlings. My god, everyone looks bored. It's probably from contemplating yet another night on the town amongst the wildly clashing patterns and ugly colors of late 60's mainstream fashion. Everyone looks like an air hostess gone mad. Well, okay, not the men. The men look like they're really enjoying not shaving. But their clothes are ugly, too.
Keep in mind I am talking about fashion, not popular fashion. What I remember people wearing were short, A-line dresses with white lace tights, or else cotton playsuits. I mean, I was only 11 when this issue of Seventeen came out. I had definite ideas about what looked good, though, and I did not like the look of the late 60's one bit. The thing that offended me most when I was a little kid was how unpleasantly overdone the clothing was. It seemed contrived and artificial, and it still seems overly constructed, only now I can see it for a movement, a response to the dressiness of the 50's. Compared to the knee-length bell skirts and demure Peter Pan collars of the previous decade, the slinky fabrics and exotic, exuberant patterns must have seemed a bit of a relief. But I can't quite bring myself to admire the look.
I sit here, flipping through the past, mocking the style hounds of 1968, and I am so glad those years were over quickly for me. By the time I was choosing my own clothing girls wore navy-issue bellbottom jeans and denim shirts instead of dresses. There's a queer trend currently for 70's nostalgia that I can't fathom. I thought it was a pretty damn ugly decade, too, but at least the clothes were a bit less intrusive. My preference is still for earth tones, plain blocks of neutral colors with quiet tailoring, barring the occasional bit of flash. The clothes I really like have never really gone out of fashion: blue jeans, dark turtlenecks, black leather jacket. I like to look at the magazines on the stands and try to identify the styles that will embarrass all my friend's kids when they grow up. Being horrified by what you used to wear is a crucial part of life, I think.
God, I hope no one ever brings back headbands again.
