Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "1970s in fashion" in English language version.
[I]f [Paris designers] have their way, American women will be wearing big, big, big padded shoulders...
At Andrevie...shoulders were almost three feet wide.
[W]hy are the French making these crazy clothes?
...[In] the late '70s...really big shoulders reappeared, this time...broader than ever. Reactions to the doorway-wide affairs generally ranged from 'not for me' to 'never!'
[J]eans have invaded ballet, theater and gallery openings with such assertion that everyone else feels overdressed.
In the late 1960's, [Saint Laurent] watched the student riots in Paris and came up with the pants suit, which everyone is still wearing.
During the student upheavals in Paris in May [1968], [Saint Laurent] saw the girls and boys behind the barricades dressed...in pants...'They looked beautiful...,' he said...'Fashion is not only couture....Events are more important.'...[In] his last Paris couture collection, shown in July,...[p]ants outfits overshadowed more conventional attire.
[T]hey parade through the halls of Pleasantville (N. Y.) High School in what look more like gloves than socks. Toe Socks, the girls call them. For $3 a pair they get 10 different colored toes. 'Everybody around here loves them,' says Maria, regarding her rainbow of toes through Dr. Scholl's sandals and confiding that toe socks take getting used to...Mostly they're wearing them under their jeans...Nina Borie, a 17‐year‐old senior there, has swapped those cable knits that mother bought for socks striped in orange, yellow and green.
A good portion of the styles are knitted. There are plenty of versions of the standard international daytime uniform: the sweater‐jacket over a flared skirt.
...[Knee-high] Frye boots are the 'hot boots' this season...They were wide and loose around the ankles...
You'll find Mademoiselle and Glamour readers wearing jeans tucked into their Frye boots and Vogue and Harper's Bazaar readers wearing their pants with the more expensive Charles Jourdan boots.
Classic Spanish espadrille is two-toned brown and orange canvas....A covered wedge makes an embroidered denim espadrille into a shoe....Sling‐back espadrille in navy canvas has open toe, platform sole....An acid green espadrille is set on a high, high sole, has leather ties.
Famolare, Inc., is manufacturing 150,000 pairs a month of its Get There shoes. The shoe has a sole trademarked Wave,...a positive shock‐absorbing heel that propels the walker and creates a fluidity of rolling motion. The wavy bottoms have attracted considerable attention in the shoe trade....The sole...has four waves, one under the heel, another under the toe, and two in between.
[In 1973], the big look was unleashed by Kenzo Takada,...and it soon took the French capital by storm. Within months the avant-garde was turning up in loose dresses and big coats. A year later, Karl Lagerfeld refined it and gave it stature in his collection for Chloe. By last fall [1974], the streets of Paris and other cities in Europe with pretensions to fashion were dominated by loose dresses, big capes and flowing skirts. The voluminous look had arrived.
[S]tanding in the wings for fall is one of those momentous changes. It involves swashbuckling capes, blouses that blouse instead of cling, swirling skirts, voluminous coats, all wrapped up in acres of scarves.
Paris started the 'big look'—voluminous coats, tent dresses, smock tops. Longer skirts went along with it....By the fall of 1974, long skirts, boots and capes were established as the uniform of the chic...
...the already popular gypsy‐ethnic look.
The gypsy look...means a full, colorful skirt or a flounced one....[T]he gypsy idea is under way everywhere...
...[H]ippie girls have taken to long printed peasant skirts.
[T]he dresses are so voluminous. The yardage is immense. They're also quite long, baring not much more than the ankles. That's the length most of the clothes are around here....[A]ll inner construction, and practically all seams, have been eliminated. That means no linings, no interfacing, not even any turned‐under hems—the fabric has simply been cut off at the bottom. As a result, the clothes can be piled on top of each other, layer upon layer, without making the wearer look like a moving mountain. A cape, two coats and a dress worn ensemble is not unusual. Instead of cutting up fabrics into little pieces and sewing them torturously together, designers seem to be throwing them against the body and letting them flow.
'Young people don't care about seams,' [Calvin] Klein said. 'I stopped caring myself. I keep paring things down more and more. Clothes are less constructed today. That's what makes them more natural'.
...[T]he new clothes seem natural, as if they weren't designed at all, but just happened. The best of them just flow, moving effortlessly over the body, anchored gently by drawstrings or elasticized smocking.
The models wore big, bulky sweaters over full dirndl skirts in gray flannel, tent dresses and tent coats and pleated dresses with embroidered white petticoats worn under them....[H]emlines ranged from below the knee to above the ankle...These long skirts have a certain kick to them. They're very full, even the flannel ones.
...[T]he Big Look...was pioneered in Paris a year ago [1973] by Kenzo Takada...with absurdly large skirts and coats....[T]he look features long skirts, dropped shoulders, dolman sleeves and large armholes, blouson jackets, blowing capes, and loose dresses–all laid on with layers of fabric.
The difference with Lagerfeld's things is that all inner construction, and practically all seams, have been eliminated. That means no linings, no interfacing, not even any turned‐under hems—the fabric has simply been cut off at the bottom.
The winds of change are rustling through the workrooms of Seventh Avenue, blowing away the skinny, skimpy, body‐clinging clothes of the past ten years. In their place are voluminous tops, widely flaring skirts, longer hemlines.
None of [Beene's coats] are lined and all inner construction has been removed....'[I]n spite of their new bulk, they actually weigh less....It's the first direction of the seventies, I believe,' he said.
The noise about Saint Laurent's big silhouette and folkloric look served to enhance his reputation...
An enormous change is taking place in the clothes now being introduced...Not nearly so visible as shifting, by a yard or so, the length of a dress or switching a good proportion of the female population from skirts into pants, the new trend nevertheless has a tremendous influence on the shape of clothes....The significant element is softness, expressed in the character of the fabrics employed and the lack of stiffness in the construction....[I]t is permeating the majority of the collections.
A year ago [1976], Klein, who has the ability to sense what women want before they know it, designed a fall collection that...had...a lot of longer, fuller skirts and looser tops. Everything was softer, less tailored.
One of the big changes in [Mary McFadden's] current collection is a loosening of the rather strict, austere McFadden silhouette. That means there are more bloused bodices, somewhat fuller skirts and even various layering effects.
Hubert de Givenchy loosened up a bit, turning out a peasant style or two.
Last year [1977]..., Ellis was one of the major interpreters of the 'Slouch Look,' his own name for such designs as loose‐fitting, voluminous tops with raglan sleeves draped offhandedly over tapered pants cut too long so that they bunched at the ankles. He followed this with gutsy, oversized, bulky knit sweaters that hung down to mid‐thigh.
Perry Ellis...turned out some of the most extreme of the layered, piled-on 'big' looks...
Voluminous. Massive. Wide. Flowing. These are the words to describe the new clothes that are emerging...Voluminous capes. Wide coats and jackets. Big, flowing skirts.
Forget about clothes that fit snugly. They simply aren't a part of today's scene.
...[Perry Ellis] uses linen, hopsacking and even hemp for his loose jackets, full skirts and big shirts...
Handkerchief linen is...a favored fabric...[D]esigners are using muslin, ramie, cotton, burlap, eyelet and silk, both raw and refined—all in natural colors or the whitest of whites.
In addition to solid color cottons, tiny flower prints are popular...
Over [a] T‐shirt, [Perry Ellis] will place a cotton shirt, a hooded khaki sweater, and a quilted cotton coat...He likes sleeves rolled up and feels that two pairs of socks, one baggy, give the proper contrast to the flouncy [underskirts].
Voluminous is the word for the prevailing shapes, applying to coats, capes and the dominant smock dress. The fullness is gathered in by drawstrings and if you don't happen to have one handy, you can tie a belt or a piece of string around your waist and pull up your dress a bit so it blouses.
All you need to keep in step with fashion these days is a bit of string. A pair of shoelaces will do. Or a length of wool yarn, the kind used to tie packages or ponytails....You twist your string around the pants just above the anklebone, pull the fabric out a bit so it blouses, and you have it—the new puffy look.
Missoni...uses a series of drawstrings to change the shape of her clothes, sometimes dramatically. Necklines open or close, sleeves are drawn up or left to flutter, halters turn into one‐shoulder designs.
There's also a lot of wrapping and tying. Some clothes look like nothing more than a scarf that's been wrapped around the body...Sundresses often have matching scarves as big as shawls.
...[T]he new shirt...fits loosely and looks freshest when worn over, rather than tucked into, a full skirt and belted with rope.
...[F]ashion's most important accessory this fall—the shawl....In addition to shawls, there's a resurgence of scarves and ponchos ...Whether it be shawl, scarf or poncho..., the news is in the size. It must be big; the closer it gets to a blanket, the more effective it becomes in the fashion picture....[T]he shawls...will add a...layer to the ubiquitous layered look.
Coats are not the kind of fashion one hears much about these days...A poncho or a blanket is usually considered sufficient coverage for those who shiver in the show.
Dirndl skirts in corduroy or herringbone tweed, velour sweatshirts, cowlneck sweaters and culottes are among [designer Liz Claiborne's] list of clothes...
...[Yves Saint Laurent] showed billowing peasant blouses...
The flouncy off‐the‐shoulder top and the strapless tube are running strong...[T]he off-the‐shoulder peasant blouse tends to...flop around...
...[B]ig, soft shirts and blouses in see‐through textures worn with a falling‐off looseness.
[T]he camisole promises to explode as one of the most ubiquitous fashions when the weather warms.
...[I]t was not unusual to see a woman in a long, loose, smock‐like dress maneuvering on a bicycle or a motor bike...
Everybody is talking about the 'new' fall dress....It's as big, as blousy, as shapeless as a gunnysack, and it's worn as loose as a bubble, or caught somewhere with a belt....The big dress bloused up into a blouson bubble top. With a shawl thrown over one shoulder it's an excellent example of the new big look.
[T]he tent dress...surely ranks as the most democratic garment out of Paris in decades.
On a recent sunny day on Fifth Avenue, the droops [tent dresses] were out in droves, completely concealing even the shapeliest woman's protrusions and inversions.
...[T]he women of Paris are swinging along the streets in the most comfortable, cool easy fashion anyone can remember. It's a billowing sunback dress, made out of any kind of cotton fabric ...It requires little or no undergarments, it could double for a maternity dress...The prototype had a taut band at the bustline, thereby eliminating the need for a bra, and was loose everywhere else.
Geoffrey Beene introduced the strapless mode in sundresses a few seasons back and was...pleased with its effortless look...He points out that many women have become accustomed to going without bras, thus obviating the need for torturous undergarments....'What's marvelous about the new strapless dresses is you tie yourself into them the way you tie a scarf—it's the freest way of dressing,' [Grace Mirabella] explained. 'Once you get into them, you never think about them again'...
[The mini']s most dramatic form is the voluminous smock that Kenzo devised, always belted at the hips. But other designers showed shirts as dresses...
Lagerfeld...made the question of skirt length irrelevant. He showed them all, from very short to very long....What is very apparent about the dresses is their fullness....They're smocklike affairs...If they're short, you can see the boot tops. The boots come up over the knee...
...[S]hort skirts...also turned up in the...collections. They usually take the form of bulky sweaters, tunics over tights, ribbed stockings, boots, leggings...
Skirts are big and roomy, but then they are also split so that legs show.
...[T]he world will be swirling in dirndl skirts...
...[T]he skirt of the year is the dirndl. It ranges from moderately full to quite full, it's calf‐length or a bit longer, and it's balanced by fullness at the top.
Chloé...is big on dirndl skirts...
...[M]id‐calf peasant‐style dresses are the choices of college students and working girls...
[Kenzo's] dresses with embroidered white petticoats worn under them.
There's usually an underskirt in a blending natural tone, worn with the full skirt.
Skirts in one or the other pattern are piled on top of each other, as many as three at a time...
[Yves Saint Laurent's] skirts are hiked up to show petticoats.
Geoffrey Beene's distinctive pants with pleats at the waist and full, but not flared, legs, introduced a while back, were so well received they've been developed in everything from flannel to crepe for fall.
[Liz Claiborne] makes her culottes shorter than her dirndl skirts, stopping just below the knee so the hem meets the boot top.
Daytime pants tend to be straighter and trimmer than they have been to balance the bigger tops...
[Perry Ellis's] clothes have a totally relaxed look, exemplified by the tapered pants which he cuts too long so they bunch up over the ankles.
[M]annequins trooped out wearing Valentino's ballooning harem pants in striped silk, Issey Miyake's jumpsuit with wide-as‐a‐tent pants caught in at the ankle,...and Marc Bohan's parachute pants....Oscar de la Renta came up with a much‐admired spring collection of gauzy, striped and Moroccan‐looking harem pants...
...[T]rousers...are...longer, billowing Zouave pants. Then there's another category of pants that wraps and ties like the Indian dhoti or diapers.
...[C]omfort is indeed the keynote to clothes today. It is the reason for the loose fit, the lack of construction, the elimination of hemlines, the concentration on gossamer‐weight fabrics.
With a generation of office workers and executives going to work in T-shirts and blue jeans, formality in fashion was becoming a thing of the past....[I]t is possible for a woman to go anywhere, including black‐tie dinners, in a shirt and pants....Simplicity is the rule, and there's no need for a woman to clutter her closets with a lot of clothes...It is part of the simplification of life that comes under the heading of modernity. So is the fact that most clothes are soft and unstructured as well as interchangeable.
[T]he 1970's will be marked by clothes divided into many easy pieces that can be added to or subtracted from, according to the weather, personal preferences and the feeling of the moment.... Construction will continue to be simplified so that clothes become increasingly less bulky and more flowing. The style of the 1970's is low on artifice, high on a natural look. Casual is the operative word.
...[T]he newest‐looking jackets are nothing more than oversized shirts worn open and with the sleeves rolled up. Those rolled‐up sleeves are important on all kinds of blouses and shirts...
[Perry Ellis] likes sleeves rolled up...
[S]tickpins are big this season...
What was selling well? 'Stickpins with the antique look,' replied C. Hal Silver, chairman of Kaufmann's, one of Pittsburgh's largest stores.
The new spring accessories are as soft...as the clothes they accompany: long leather belts that can be wrapped around and across the body in unconventional ways...
...[L]egs are invariably clad in heavy ribbed tights, leg warmers and boots.
The look of a shorter boot, topped (often) by thick, ribbed stockings—and sometimes even knee socks over those—gives an entirely new proportion...
Fashion's leg warmers come in wonderful patterns, in solid colors for more subdued warmth, and can be worn thigh‐high over tight pants (by the very young) or pushed low over boots or shoes. Some of the best leg warmers are hand‐knit and ethnic‐patterned.
[Perry Ellis]...feels that two pairs of socks, one baggy, give the proper contrast to the flouncy [underskirts].
...bare, tiny‐strapped sandals with delicate ties at the ankles...
...[H]eels are almost inevitably paired with naked strap arrangements...
Diane Von Furstenberg's shoes for Golo are mostly open sandals, high‐heeled or flat...
...[E]very second woman was wearing shoes with...laces around the ankle. Many were a kind of espadrille...
Christine Herskowitz, heading toward Central Park with a group of friends, simply tied the laces of her espadrilles around the legs of her pants [to achieve]...the puffed pants look.
...[T]he cotton sundress prevails on the Left and Right Banks in Paris this summer....[S]houlder bags and espadrilles are the usual accompaniment.
...[L]egs are invariably clad in heavy ribbed tights, leg warmers and boots. Over‐the‐knee and calf‐high are the newest heights for boots, but they do not exclude anything in between.
The legs are clad in ribbed tights and over‐the‐knee boots...
Every French woman has apparently spent $100 for her high‐heeled, modishly crushed boots, the knee‐high tops of which are concealed by her flaring calf‐length skirt. All this is sheltered, as often as not, by a voluminous coat, cape or coat with a capelet top.
...[T]he heels aren't the spindly, needle‐like variety that caught in subway grates. They're thick enough to look sturdy.
David Evins, the doyen of shoe designers, is proud of his newest heel, which he terms 'perfectly balanced.' It looks more stiletto‐like than it actually is, due to its shape, which is almost straight at the back.
The current fashion is to let nature take its course and to let the hair hang, or kink, the way it wants.
The shop's favorite rouge for everyone is a tawny brown one...
...[C]lothes call for shining, natural‐looking hair. adorned, if at all, with fragile flowers or...combs.
...a couple of wooden combs in loosely tied hair....
Berets won almost unanimous approval with fashion designers for fall...
The most popular...is the beret....Hair fluffs out around the edges or is completely concealed within, as in the second most popular hat: the knitted cap.
...[T]he straws in the spring breeze indicate that this summer's hot hat is the old favorite that goes by the name of skimmer, boater or sailor.
Because the fabrics are thin and supple, the clothes are indeed sexy, though it's not the blatant sort of sexiness that comes from tight skirts...
Skin is revealed by rolled-up sleeves, shirts left unbuttoned, blouses that slide off the shoulder, see‐through fish nets and sundresses.
On the other hand, there are complaints from women, especially those on the dumpy side, who find big clothes too hard to handle or too overwhelming and worry that they make them look pregnant or at any rate conceal their figure. Men are inclined to agree, particularly on the last point.
For many American visitors, the look hardly represented French chic at its highest. The cottons had a tendency to get rumpled. The dresses frequently looked tired. 'I don't care what you call it, it looks like a house dress,' a buyer for a New York store insisted.
...[F]ashion followers...adopted the loose, unconstructed look and their clothes flowed all over their chairs...
...[S]hawls get all tangled up in briefcases...
What women have found appealing is the freedom of the full shapes, which offer no restraint on wide strides and easy movements.
'Utility—that's the best thing about these dresses,' said Charyn Simpson, a 22‐year‐old fashion designer who was wearing a blue denim tent dress,...'You can do gardening in them, or sit on the floor at a concert in them.'
In the 1970's...[s]portswear emerged as the dominant theme, implying a relaxed fit and considerable versatility, since most clothes were made in interchangeable parts....For a number of years, it offered a serviceable way of dressing, geared to active women's lives, adjusting to vagaries of climate, adapting easily to travel requirements. As the sportswear onslaught continued, clothes lost their linings and interfacings, becoming softer, looser, less structured. Almost everything became as comfortable to wear as a sweater.
What the new fashion is saying is Take a whole new look at yourself. Celebrate your body and do away with anything that stiffly confines it.
In the 1970's, great numbers of women said, in effect, 'to hell with fashion,' and hid in flat or baggy, loose clothing.
...[Karl Lagerfeld's] new clothes vaguely recall the way suffragettes dressed in pre-World War I days but that's because the dresses are so voluminous. The yardage is immense.
In just one year, Perry Ellis has won a considerable reputation as a designer of casual clothes for the woman who, 10 years ago, might have lived in a commune. Today, she's grown up, but she prefers natural fibers, natural colors and clothes that look meant to be lived in.
'I used to use a lot of construction, but I can't do that anymore – people want to feel free,' [designer Hiroko] explained...
Today, jeans are going through yet another evolution. Influential designers are putting their stamp on them. Such well‐known names as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan of Anne Klein, Charlotte Ford and Gloria Vanderbilt have turned their respective attentions to these most durable and enduring of garments....This summer, there are...jeans with big designer labels on the waistbands...
[T]he idea was to get jeans as skinny as stove‐pipes or cigarettes.
The new watchword for jeans is 'baggy.'...[B]aggy jeans are fun to wear at the moment.
[Perry Ellis's] dimple-sleeve jackets, baby cable-knit sweaters and cropped pants...have been copied by many of the smart manufacturers...
The biggest change is not in the length of skirts but in the breadth of shoulders. Many jackets and coats, as well as some tunics to be worn under them, are not only widened but padded.
The newest look is that of an isosceles triangle standing on its point, tapering from squared shoulders to narrow skirt or pants.
Koko Hashim, vice president of Neiman‐Marcus [says]...'There has been an enormous change in the silhouette, a broadening of the shoulders and narrowing of the hips—what we call the triangle...—that requires a reeducation of the consumer'.
...[T]he mini emerged naturally from the social conditions of the 1960's...
Starting with the swinging young in London in the early nineteen‐sixties, the miniskirt spread to Paris and then to this country where season after season matrons and manufacturers gleefully subtracted an inch or two from hemlines. By the end of the decade more knees and thighs were visible than at any point in civilized society and everybody felt young.
...[T]he couture tried...to mimic street fashions...during the miniskirt years.
Designers who sought vainly to pry women out of their pants uniforms have given up the fight.
[In the early 1970s,] everyone settled down to wearing pants. Younger women who had never parted from their blue jeans bleached them lovingly, embroidered them with care. Less casual types wore pants suits.
Pants and jeans took over the scene...[T]hey suited the quiet, realistic mood of the time...Pants also carried with them the important impression of ease, of not trying too hard, and of freedom—crucial preoccupations of the early 70's...
Sportswear...is...the next step in the trend to informal dressing that has resulted in pants being worn to business offices and shorts being worn on city streets....The answer to 'What is sportswear?' could almost be 'blazers'...
The first to go were the girdles and panty girdles that always served a dual function: to hold in the figure and hold up the stockings. Spurred by the women's liberation movement and a sense of symmetry, bras also vanished. So did slips, petticoats and, for many women, underpants.
You couldn't wear...shorts...in the streets...20 years ago [1951]...because women all had heavy foundation garments on...
Take the anti‐establishment 60's...: the untamed manes of the flower children, the faded jeans of the affluence‐rejecting hippies, the discarded bras of the women's liberation movement, the knee‐freeing skirts..., and the street‐imitating gear of the radical chic...share...an antifashion attitude that became...powerful and pervasive...
'When we were told to give up our miniskirts for midis,' [Gloria Steinem] says, 'there was a semi‐conscious boycott on the part of American women. We were fed up with being manipulated. We now wanted to make our own decisions on hundreds of things, not have them handed down from on high.'...What women wanted and bought were separate items—sweaters, shirts, jackets—to put together themselves as they saw fit. Those 'separates' went with pants.
...Wall Street women are...wearing...tailored jacket[s]...
Were designers so carried away by one of fashion's golden ages that they simply didn't notice how women had changed? Did they simply run out of ideas?
[W]hen the padding becomes too mammoth, when the proportions are better suited to a quarterback than an office worker,...it becomes absurd. And, of course, if you add a padded coat to a padded jacket over a padded blouse, the effect can be grotesque. A lot of grotesque effects were seen on the runways...
...[F]ashion buyers and the press returned home saying such things as 'Paris isn't real,' 'It's too costumey'...[M]any Paris designers are not in tune with the times, and have therefore abdicated their fashion leadership...
Stiffer clothes to come?...The shoulder treatments were...a symptom of what might become a problem: the interest of designers in stiffer, more constructed clothes.
...[A]s ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, so padded shoulders can introduce a recycling of pointy shoes that kill, skinny skirts that make it necessary to mince, not walk, and a lot of unseen boning and wiring...
Fashion has changed its course, from free‐flowing and easy to structured and contrived....Instead of evolving naturally from the kinds of clothes women have been wearing, the...styles have skipped back over several decades of fashion. They've landed somewhere in the middle of the 1940's, carrying obsolete notions of glamour, sophistication and hard‐edged chic as excess baggage....In many cases, the ease that had made clothes so comfortable was eliminated....[S]houlder pads...added another element of restraint. Linings and stiffer constructions began to reappear....The results have been called sexy by admirers; detractors call the clothes tawdry.... They have succeeded in evoking an epoch in which many women, perhaps the majority, were delighted to dress as sex objects.
You wouldn't believe what Paris has in store for you... Well, some of you might, those who haven't changed their style for 30 years....padded shoulders with such sharp edges that they look as if they could cut your hand.
[A]nything and everything of Perry Ellis's breezy designs with exaggerated almost pillow‐padded shoulders has been a run‐away best seller in stores all over the country, with usually cautious store executives using words like 'fabulous' and 'unbelievable' to describe their success.
Norma Kamali...has become famous for her parachute dresses, sexy, shirred bathing suits, pegged, draped skirts...and...padded shoulders.
This fall, [Calvin Klein] narrowed [his clothes]...and added a bit of shoulder padding.
Armani's...gift for fall is a long-jacket suit with military shoulders...It accompanies pants, skirts or culottes and it sometimes has epaulets....[S]oftening agents take the curse off the military look....It has broad, padded shoulders...
The mammoth shoulder pads shown a year ago [1978] are one of the disasters. Only Claude Montana has repeated them. Still, a bit of padding exists in almost all collections and there is a lot going on at the tops of sleeves to broaden the tops of clothes without distorting the body.
[T]he new look took—mostly in the less extreme versions, but with a few surprises. Broader shoulders have been accepted, up to a point.
Karl Lagerfeld..., Yves Saint Laurent, Emanuel Ungaro and Hubert de Givenchy...continued with their versions of the rather aggressive broad-shouldered silhouette...
The brisk, capable look of the wide-shouldered silhouette suited the mood of women who wanted to convey just that image: in control and 'together'.
...[S]houlders [are] now [1985] proportioned to sports-page, rather than fashion-page, dimensions...Customers...don't seem to be bothered by the exaggerated shoulders. After all, they make the waist and hips look smaller.
Knee‐high boots have...waned, replaced by ankle‐high ones, which can he called high shoes or low boots.
...[Saint Laurent's first model] wore a forward-tilted fez and...black stockings with seams...red gloves with a black...coat or plum gloves with a black suit....Saint Laurent's favorite model...wore...a jeweled pillbox with feathers...[a]nd...diamond bracelets over her black gloves....[T]he miniature forward-tilted disc [hat]...is obligatory this season....
Apparently women are yearning to look glamorous again. This may explain the surprise success of hats, not just the kind to take shelter in, but silly little frou-frou ones to tip over the forehead and wear out in the evening. Young women are wearing them with their jeans and older women are wearing them with their new glamorous evening clothes along with gloves.
Designers...have a predilection for hats...More surprising was the appearance of...rather formal leather gloves...
Qiana, a silk‐like fiber in the nylon family, has come into the wide‐use area of man‐made fibers...More and more, the fiber is going into apparel fabrics...When the fiber was introduced three years ago [1968], it was confined almost entirely to the couture trade...The fiber falls in the category of nylon owing to its molecular structure...Fabrics made of the fiber offer color clarity, luster, dyeability and draping qualities equal to or better than silk fabrics, and in terms of washability, they are said to outperform any other manmade fiber.
A magnified hounds‐tooth check in Fourth‐of‐July colors explodes on Qiana...shirt; Wallpaper print flowers are displayed on Qiana for a shirt...; A stirrup design rides across Qiana...shirt...
[Armani's] career has been punctuated by a series of radical gestures, beginning with the unconstructed blazer of the mid-1970's – his epochal creation....The blazer, a calculatedly rumpled affair, featured sloping shoulders, narrow lapels, baggy pockets and an attenuated line. More importantly, it was endowed with a mobility previously unknown in men's suit jackets, except on Savile Row. It had the kind of comfort found only in sports clothing, which he achieved in part by stripping out much of its cumbersome lining and padding.
The jacket is paired with straight‐legged trousers, either plain fronted or with single or double pleats.
The new men's designs...emphasized casualness, with big jackets or big shirts worn with baggy, slightly pegged pants.
Gilbert Feruch's...men's jackets...taper from broad shoulders and deep armholes to fit snugly at the hips.
Even men who shrug at fashion will probably find themselves in jackets with padded shoulders this fall. Broad shoulders are back...Calvin Klein['s]...shoulders are broad, not extreme, but there is definite padding....Pierre Cardin refers to his new silhouette as 'an upside-down triangle',...designing clothes with broader shoulders...Yves Saint Laurent...is building [shoulders] up again....Bill Kaiserman advocates...'strong but not extreme' shoulders....Lee Wright designs...clothing...inspired by the Italian V-silhouette...
Armani's 1979 jackets are wide at the shoulder with a narrowing at the waist and low button closing.
Calvin Klein's...buttons are fashionably low...
...[J]acket bottoms are close‐fitting.
Bill Kaiserman advocates slightly shorter and always ventless jackets...Hardy Amies...emphasizes double-breasted suits with surprisingly...narrow lapels on unvented, shoulder‐expressed jackets.
Pierre Cardin...is designing clothes with broader shoulders and cutting back lapel widths to make the shoulders more pronounced...
At the end of the 1970's, Armani altered his style dramatically. Taking his design cues from Hollywood costumes of the 1930's and 40's, he widened the lapels of his suits and extended and padded the shoulders.
It was a decade in which the...rich stole their fads from hippies who rejected materialism.
Fashion punch words from 1977 that carry into spring and summer 1978: softness, easy, loose, light....[I]t means loose fitting clothes in lightweight, unlined natural fabrics.
John Anthony insured the light weight of his clothes by developing two machines that eliminate hems, bindings, plackets and even linings.
It was Lagerfeld who first took the shaping and the linings out of clothes...He also removed hemlines entirely to make clothes lighter and more easily layered....'[Y]ou cannot go back to lined clothing, because...clothes today must be light and loose'.
Everything is very big – jackets, dresses, skirts, blousons, vests, sweaters, tunic, coats...Big dresses are selling, so are all the blousons.
One rule for all the very full clothing is that the fabric must be done in the lightest weight possible.
Many of the clothes are cotton, in bantam weights so that they are as un-bulky in all their layers, as cool for hot weather, [and] as see-through and sexy as big and blousy clothes can possibly be.
No one in New York is wasting energy ironing clothes this summer. The look is rumpled, worn fresh from the washer and dryer by both men and women.
The best prints are on the fragile side,...like Calvin Klein's rosebud prints, the tiny stripes at Cathy Hardwick and Geoffrey Beene's geometric pin-dots and plaids.
Everything is lightweight, unconstructed and layered. Starting with the shortest garment, the levels of layering at France Andrevie, for example, build up like this: a vest over a jacket over a tunic over a big skirt over a pair of pants. Wear it all or any combination of parts.
It's a bad year for the button makers and the zippers manufacturers since many things pull over the head or wrap loosely around the body.
...[W]omen are into buying and wearing shawls as fast as they can be found...
[Deeda Blair's winter 1977] 'uniform' was an Yves Saint Laurent costume of a cashmere skirt, wool blouse, cape and shawl,...which she always wore with dark red boots.
The new [vests] are huge and man-sized, unlined and totally shapeless....Like the vest, the big jacket is shapeless, and often unlined so it hangs very loose. The big vest is often worn under these jackets with an oversized shirt.
Jackets are never neat and trim, but oversized to give softness and a relaxed look with sleeves pushed up, the collar turned up, and a muffler often tied around the neck.
The new [cape] is a steal from the Tunisian shepherds with a tasseled hood.
...textured knit sweaters always very loose with sleeves pushed up or rolled up and very casual.
Big blousons show up in leather as well as knits and wool...
...[T]he warm-weather uniform was a big tent dress with minimum underpinnings...
Pants are around in every possible length as long as they are not man-tailored but rather soft. They are always baggy at the top, tapered to the ankle.
Among the assortment in pants styles are the dhotis and sarouls (Moroccan draped pants), both of which look a bit like droopy diapers as they wrap between the legs, harem pants, and bloomers of all sorts.
...[I]f sleeves are too long, you push them up on jackets, blouses, shirts, dresses – whatever. (Even if they fit perfectly, you push them up.)
There was remarkably little jewelry shown, except...the bangle bracelets at several designers and the ethnic necklaces at Yves Saint Laurent. At Geoffrey Beene and elsewhere, jewelry was replaced by silk flowers strung on a long silk cord.
Suddenly it seems right to leave your jewelry in the drawer and start wearing flowers. Flowers on the lapel update last year's blazer. Flowers in the hair, around the neck, at the wrist or the ankle are appropriate with the new softer clothes...
Everything else is layered for warmth this fall: Why not legs?...Legs get a foothold against the cold with layers that start with pantyhose, add legwarmers...and finish with knee socks or anklets.
One signature of the Paris fashion trendies that has started to show up in New York is wearing socks with sandals and espadrilles.
...sandals, both flat and high heels worn with anklets...
...[T]he warm-weather uniform was a big tent dress with...flat or high-heeled scandals.
Makeup on the runway...remains very natural looking.
[During the looseness of the Big Look, Saint Laurent] says,...'[W]omen...didn't bother with cosmetics'.
Hats, pulled down to the eyebrows..., are...knit caps with tiny rolled edges.
What is on view here is an assortment of loose, uncomplicated, sexy clothes in the lightest-weight cottons, silks and wools, all very see-throughable and clearly meant to be seen-through to the little or no underwear underneath.
It is a good year for the fat and the pregnant, since no clothes are ever too full, yet a better year for the skinny, since everything, unless well cut in light fabrics – tends to make you look as huge as Versailles even when you are not.
'For a long time,...,' [Saint Laurent] says, 'There was an exaggerated looseness to clothes, and women looked like "parachutes." They lost control of their movements. They began to be too easy and relaxed'.
...[C]apes...pose...problems....Carrying a purse when wearing a cape isn't an easy maneuver, and heaven forbid you should have to carry a bundle home from the Safeway.
'It's a far cry from the tailored, stiff clothes that used to push the body. Now we need some room to move around in life, room to think. These clothes give you room to think,' [Perry Ellis] says.
[S]tatus jeans, with a designer label prominent on the rear pocket, are strictly an invention of 1978. And a hot sales ticket as well.
'It's the label cachet and the chance for customers to get a designer label at a fairly reasonable price,' says Kal Ruttenstein, fashion director of Bloomingdale's. Ruttenstein isn't sure precisely when the jeans 'took off,' but he figures it was right after he returned from seeing the new collections in Paris in November. 'And it all happened so fast we didn't know what hit us,' he says. He's convinced that status jeans will be around for a while, but wouldn't hazard a guess as to how long.
[Calvin Klein's jeans] started selling fast the minute they hit the stores, and are now being turned out at the rate of 50,000 pairs per week....The company expects to push out 100,000 per week....[D]esigner jeans are such big business that Bloomingdale's has created a department called "Pure Jeanius," and similar departments have opened in stores across the country.
Calvin Klein...is...selling jeans at the rate of $100 million (wholesale) a year, producing 100,000 pairs a week.
They boast labels including Calvin Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, Geoffrey Beene, Ralph Lauren, Cacharel, Maurice Sasson, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin, with Scott Barrie, Thierry Mugler, Stephen Burrows, Bill Blass and many more still to come.
...good fit, narrow leg...[Designer] Maurice Sasson...has taken his jeans to the very narrow 12-inch width, 'just wide enough to fit over the boot,' he says.
[T]he hottest single seller to step out in a long time is the Candie, a cha-cha heel on a plastic sole held in place only by a wide leather vamp. Shoe Scene has sold 3,200 pairs in two stores; the maker, El Greco, has sold 2 million pairs in three months....[Girls] wear them with their jeans...They are sexy and...they are comfortable. Because of the molded sole the heel isn't as high as it looks.
[L]ower cone heels [are]...happening now because of the inventive shoe shapes of Maud Frizon.,
...[J]eans universalized the pants look for women.
'What has been appearing on stage has nothing to do with women today,' said a very distressed Koko Hashim of John Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, before the YSL show. 'Customers will be so turned off by the pictures they see they will retreat happily back to their blazers. And that is not good for business.'
...[T]he looks all seem like you've been there before – in the 1950s....'If my mother saw these clothes, she would consider them quite matronly and dated,' says [Bernie] Ozer [of Associated Merchandising Corp]...Stockings with seams are modern? 'I guess if you have never gone through the business of trying to keep them straight, it seems like an amusing idea,' says Gerry Stutz [of Henry Bendel]. 'I really hate to start that again'...
...[M]any [buyers] had trouble selling exaggerated shoulders...'I can't see women getting into cars with shoulders so broad,' said Wendall Ward, vice president of Garfinckel's...At one point during the five-day marathon of fall ready-to-wear shows, Robert Sakowitz, president of Sakowitz (Houston), asked Val Cook of Saks-Jandel, 'Do you know a good book store in Paris?...I want to buy a stack of Bibles,' he explained. 'I think we will all need to do a lot of praying to sell these clothes'.
'If you had tried to sell big shoulders in a store this winter, you wouldn't touch them for spring,' insists Val Cook, of Saks-Jandel, about the padded-shoulder styles, some of which looked like the model had forgotten to remove the hanger before putting on the dress.
What much of the fashion industry has done is try to make something old work in today's lifestyle. And it just won't do.
...[A]s the exaggerated showpieces were translated into saleable styles – with the broadened shoulder tapering to the waist and hemline – women responded positively.
...[I]f you thought padded shoulders would pass with the football season, you are wrong. There are various degrees of padding, but clearly the broad-shouldered look has a wide following.
There was a slide show from Paris ready-to-wear collections,...But most of the guests were simply not ready for such high-fashion profundities as palace-guard or storm-trooper outfits. There were guffaws...Opera Guild chairman Mrs. Edward Bruce...did bring home one padded-shoulder jacket this season, she said, which her husband made her take back.
The new broad-shouldered, retro-glamor clothes, military looks and black leather that most customers are seeing for the first time are considered quite shocking....Dorothy Vineburgh, an active volunteer in town, [says], 'No way will I wear those shoulder pads....I want to find something elegant and comfortable.' Richard Krolick, staff director of a congressional committee, wasn't quite so kind. 'It's like World War II,' he said after one benefit this week. 'They have got to be kidding.'...[C]ustomers aren't loving all the clothes and the shows aren't generating large sales...
From the runway, the push is on for big shoulders and suits, but...what was being worn by the audience at the Paris shows? Lots of Calvin Klein-looking clothes, easy sportswear separates, and a lot of the comfortable clothes the designers seem to be working awfully hard to replace.
...[T]here are virtually no boots being shown...
...[M]any of the clothes this season...came complete with hat and gloves...
Following the direction women's clothes have taken for the last two or three years, designers expect men to adopt a looser, freer, softer look...Changes include: Jackets with less inner construction,..Softer, more loosely woven natural fabrics that allow jacket sleeves to be pushed up and collars turned up to underscore a more casual, even rumpled look[;] Clothes cut more loosely...[;] Pants, often shaped with pleats and slightly tapered to the hem, meant to be cuffed for business and dress, uncuffed for casual wear....Stefano Ottina, an Italian who designs for Punch and has a shop at the Watergate, says,...'You feel liberated in these suits because they have no stiff construction.'...American designers touting the look, including superstar Calvin Klein, refer to it as 'unconstructed'...
Geoffrey Beene showed his menswear last week, mostly unconstructed cotton suits or big tops, much like he shows for women...
Men, too, take fashion in a far more relaxed way...Vests have given way to sweaters and stiff jackets to unlined blouson shapes or vests...Except for the strict business suit, ties have been abandoned and if anything takes its place, it is the muffler.
The suit is now at ease, the fit looser, the shoulders softer, the lapels narrower, the shirt collar trimmed and the necktie slimmed down.
Men, too, take fashion in a far more relaxed way....Vests have given way to sweaters and stiff jackets to unlined blouson shapes or vests, particularly on weekends. Except for the strict business suit, ties have been abandoned and if anything takes its place, it is the muffler.
Fashion punch words from 1977 that carry into spring and summer 1978: softness, easy, loose, light....For men, it is a break from stiff seams and sturdy linings...(I)t means loose fitting clothes in lightweight, unlined natural fabrics.
Claude Montana, who was the first with the biggest shoulders in Paris,...padded the shoulders and sleeves of his...windbreaker...
...[J]ust as the eye is getting attuned to the smaller proportions in menswear -- narrower lapels, skinnier ties, shorter collars, slender-er belts and skimpier cuffs -- Italian designer Giorgio Armani, the father of this look, has swung to wider lapels, long pointy shirt collars and bottle shaped ties.
Knee‐high boots have...waned, replaced by ankle‐high ones, which can he called high shoes or low boots.
Beene used an actual laundry bag as the prototype for his 1976 collections, tying it at the waist or above the breast as a loose strapless dress.
...[T]he test tube fiber revolution that exploded after World War II...was largely abandoned during the revival of natural fiber in the Seventies.
