The Rise of the Youth Market

THE RISE OF THE YOUTH MARKET

Adult-Targeted Market

For the first half of the twentieth century the big designers targeted adult women since they or their husbands had the money to spend. Girls dressed in basic school clothes: plain dresses or cotton blouses, cardigan sweaters, and wool skirts in conformity with school dress codes. School fashions were created by anonymous designers at clothing manufacturers. While hemline height, colors, and so forth were influenced by Paris, the fashion capital's designers seldom made direct contributions to the wardrobe of girls. For dress-up occasions, girls wore versions of their mothers' clothing.

More Money

But in the late 1950s and early 1960s teenagers had more money than previous generations. The postwar years had been prosperous, and girls often had incomes from part-time jobs or sizable allowances from their parents.

More Girls

Also, there were more girls in that generation as the early baby boomers became teenagers. Not only did this growing portion of the population have money to spend, but their generation was the first in a long time that had not grown up in an era programmed with the need to be frugal. They wanted to buy, and they especially wanted to buy clothes. However, shopping in the large department stores could be discouraging for young people. Saleswomen often were supercilious to girls who came into their sections just to browse around. Besides, the clothes sold in department stories were not all that "fun."

Mary Quant

In the late 1950s Mary Quant, a young British woman who worked in a milliner's shop, set out to do something about the lack of youth-oriented fashions. She opened a clothing shop—the first boutique—on King's Road in the Chelsea district of London. Called Bazaar, the boutique was filled with clothes designed by Quant that had a markedly new feel. Simple, figure-skimming short dresses in black or with wild geometric patterns, knee-length jumpers, balloon-style dresses, and other novel items lined the racks, and the young, trendy Chelsea crowd came en masse to browse through Quant's designs of the day. After those designs sold—usually in only a day or two—she would go home to create some new types of dresses for the next day's business.

Fun Clothes

Quant's philosophy was to make clothes fun and accessible. After opening a second Bazaar at Knightsbridge, other young London designers began to follow suit—most successfully, Barbara Hulanicki and her shop, Biba—and the youth-centered boutique era was born. The boutique shopping experience was one of relaxed browsing, often with popular music playing in the background and maybe a coffee bar on the side. The idea was to have inexpensive clothing that could be worn and then disposed of when quickly changing trends turned—a new concept in the made-to-last fashion industry.

The Mod Look

Quant and her young London com-patriots dressed the trendy Chelsea set and created the mod look. The other major center for trendy mod fashions was London's Carnaby Street. Short, straight-cut dresses patterned with a combination of dots and stripes, often with wide, wildly colored ties, were a Carnaby Street-look trademark. Sally Tuffin and Marian Foale were a major fashion force for the Carnaby Street crowd, and they were demonstrative about their disenchantment with the control of high fashion by Paris. They claimed that rather than concerning themselves with being fashionably correct, they just "wanted to be ridiculous."

Coming to America

The Beatles were an important part of this new mod generation, and as they took the United States by storm in 1964 they solidified the success of the mod look, which had arrived the year before. American manufacturers, realizing the revolution in fashion that was in the making, brought Quant and her fellow young designers to America to give the country a taste of their work. Instead of the elegant collection showings of haute-couture fame, the London designers put on fashion spectaculars, impressing audiences in New York, Los Angeles, and other major U.S. cities with extravaganzas choreographed to upbeat popular music.

The Mini

One of the most influential aspects of the new mod look came from its introduction of the mini. To attain mini status, the skirt or dress had to fall somewhere above the knee. But that definition left a lot of room for interpretation. From about 1963 on, hemlines crept higher and higher up the thigh, culminating in the micromini, which just barely (but not always) hid under-garments.

The Art of the Miniskirt

Walking down almost any street in America during the mid 1960s, one would be sure to catch a glimpse of an above-the-knee hemline. Some high-school and college dress codes held out briefly, but minis were worn to class, to fine restaurants, to the office, and everywhere else. And not just by girls—many women were not immune to the advertised promises that they would look as young as they dressed. Fe-males of all ages and sizes diligently learned the art of walking, sitting, picking up dropped pencils, and avoiding stairwells; which, if inevitable, were best negotiated as quickly as possible, while still maintaining an acceptable level of decency.

Preferred Stockings

Their efforts were helped by newly important stockings and tights. With more of the leg exposed, hosiery became fancier and had interesting patterns. Fishnet stockings and heavily textured tights spanned by strong geometric patterns became the fashion, often coordinated with an equally striking pattern in the miniskirt itself. Undulating lines and patterns borrowed from the then-fashionable op art were popular, as were Warholian pop art designs. In short, anything modern, trendy, and fun was acceptable.

Panty Hose

The introduction of panty hose was revolutionary for the way women dressed. Freeing women from the complexities (not to mention the aesthetic bur-dens) of the girdle, garter belt, "garter gap," and other aspects of traditional female-undergarments, panty hose allowed a more natural line.

Completing the Look

The mod look à la Mary Quant was not finished when a short checkerboard shift or a brightly colored midthigh mini and brocade-textured stockings were put on. To complete the look, hair was cut short in a geometric, often asymmetric style inspired by Vidal Sassoon. Many young American women kept their bouffants or their long straight hair for a long time, but for the real "total" look, hair was cut in this boyish crop. In order not to appear too boyish, women made up their eyes heavily. Heavy black eyeliner, with dark eye shadow filling in the space up to the eyebrows, contrasted with lips that were made as pale as possible. Twiggy, the famous model from Britain, was the quintessential embodiment of this look. Finally, on the feet was usually either a pair of Mary Janes or short boots. With mod-look enthusiasts pointed toes and thin, high heels, which had remained popular well into the 1960s, were gradually replaced by chunkier, more-squared-off footwear.

Paris Couture

Meanwhile, Paris couturiers continued to create elegant fashions for the more conservative, usually older, sector of the public. Couture fashions were not free from the influence of the new mod look's high hem-lines and youthful designs, but in general the major Paris designers maintained a conservative output.

Not Everyone

A few exceptions opted to go the way of the new modern look—not necessarily mod, but with some similarities. One of the most notable of those designers was André Courrèges. From 1964 his collections featured futuristic outfits rendered in sculptured, heavy fabrics that tended to ignore the natural lines of the figure. Space-age influences were characteristic of his designs, including the stark use of white from head to toe, from a tall white helmet to white squared-off boots. The helmet was too much for most women, but the Courrèges trademark white boots fared much better. His skirts, which were usually several inches above the knee, were designed to be worn with these boots, and gradually he introduced calf-high and finally over-the-knee versions.

Sources:

Barbara Bernard, Fashion in the '60s (New York: St. Martins Press, 1978);

Maggie Pexton Murray, Changing Styles in Fashions: Who, What, Why (New York: Fairchild, 1989);

J. Anderson Black and Madge Garland, A History of Fashion (London: Black Cat, 1990).