The 70s – Fashion’s monumental era

The 1970s was without a doubt a decade of fashion extremes and I believe it to be the most stylish era. It had a sort of anti conformist approach towards fashion which was daringly fabulous. The fashion trends of the seventies evolved from the late 1960s hippie style.

During the early 1970s, there was a focus on handmade materials and embellishments, originally embraced by the hippies in the sixties as a form of counterculture. However, designers in the early seventies started integrating these elements into their high fashion collections. Details like patchwork, crochet, knitting, and embroidery became prominent features.

Bright, funky and colourful are the words I would use to describe the 1970’s women’s fashion, deriving from a sense of liberation and sexual freedom that was felt amongst each other at that time. Less boundaries and rules. The structure of womenswear in general was loosened due to the women’s liberation movement and we definitely saw that come through in fashion where there was a freedom of movement and feeling expressed through clothing.

Women back then were now able to express in a more free and limitless way. Androgynous styles emerged, plenty of gender-bending aspects in fashion were established in the seventies, again going back to what I was saying about how there was increased freedom of movement in that era which ultimately lead to the pursuit of difference and versatility in style amongst many.

We see the continuation of that period of fashion in our streets today. Flared pants/ jeans, wide leg pants which I ADORE, go-go boots and boho blouses are just a few of my most loved blasts from the past that I always tend to stray towards when spending the day endlessly strolling in and out of shops in Oxford street. I could really go on about the seventies and how influential they are in todays world of fashion…

Here are a few examples I’ve chosen of some great everyday pieces (click on image for link to item) to showcase the heavy impact of the seventies on todays world of fashion: