Trend Fashion 1970s

Micro, Mini or Maxi 1970s Skirt Lengths

By 1970 women chose who they wanted to be and if they felt like wearing as short mini skirt one day and a maxi dress, midi skirt or hbot pand the nex day – that’s what they did.
For eveningwear women often wore full length maxi dresses, evening trousers or glamorous halter neck catsuits. Some of the dresses oozed Motown glamour, others less so.

Left - Two young women in their early twenties on holiday in the Canary Islands c1972. The short check flared skirt was very popular, as was the empire style of the diamond check pattern mini dress. Right - Halter neck catsuit pattern of 1971. Exotic and tropical prints were a reflection of designers gaining inspiration from foreign travel destinations.

For evening in the early seventies, either straight or flared Empire line dresses with a sequined fabric bodice and exotic sleeves were the style for a dressy occasion. One frequently worn style was the Granny dress with a high neck. Sometimes the stand neck was pie-crust frilled, or lace trimmed. Often they were made from a floral print design in a warm brushed fabric or viscose rayon crepe which draped and gathered well into empire line styles. Right - Typical short and mini dresses worn at an office party in 1972/3. At the front a young girl wears a long floral granny dress that covers her knees. Another hugely successful evening style of the 1970s was the halter neck dress, either maxi or above knee. Left - Black halter neck dress pattern of 1971. At a disco, girls might don hot pants. In contrast to the reveal all mini, a woman would suddenly confound men by completely covering her legs and retort that mini dresses were an exploitation, rather than a liberation of women.


Platform Soled Shoes

In the early 1970s platform shoes started with a quite slim sole which moved from ¼ inch up to about 4 inches at the peak of popularity. When they were that high, individuals frequently got friendly cobblers, or handy men to hollow out cheese holes from the sole base. A platform shoe with a 1 inch sole was quite comfortable to wear stopping the development of hard skin and feeling small stones through the soles.

By the mid seventies the most ordinary people were wearing two inch deep platforms without a second thought. But accidents did happen and many a woman and man twisted on a pair of platform shoes. At about the same time, clogs became popular as they followed the trend for chunkiness of sole. For those who still liked to show a leg, it became tasteful in the early 70s to wear creamy white tights with black patent shoes.


1970s Tank Tops And Mix And Match Knitwear

Really the tank top of the 70s was a forerunner to the scoop necked camisole top of the 1980s, the shell of the 1990s and the vest of the millennium. It may be laughed at now, but it was a useful garment worn with a blouse, or simply worn blouse free with a matching V neck long style cardigan just like a modern twin set.

At the same time coordinated colour schemed clothes slowly began to enter the stores and boutiques. Suddenly it was possible to buy a skirt or trousers and top and not have to spend hours searching for tops and knits in other shops that just might coordinate with the items. Mix and match collections of separates were soon the norm within good department stores by the 1980s.
Knitwear and knitted Raschel or jersey fabrics were the easy classic dressing of the 70s. Chunky hand knitted cardigans like the ones worn in Starsky and Hutch were soon paraded around town. The most famous designer of knitwear was Bill Gibb. His zig zagged knit patterns and complex intricate designs in bright colours were the inspiration that was much copied by chain stores. In turn these developed into the picture knits of the 1980s and a blossoming of hand and machine knitting nationwide, primarily inspired by Kaffe Fasset an associate of Gibb.

Long knitted Dr. Who wool or acrylic scarves and matching gloves and knitted chenille turban hats were worn for winter warmth and stayed in fashion for about two years at the start of the seventies. Likewise footless leg warmers in every colour including rainbow designs were popular for two winters between 1979 and 1980.