Staying Groovy: the influence of 1970s festival fashion - Erin Graham.

When you google ‘70s festival fashion’, the first three rows on Google Images are pictures from the last decade, as in, 2010… This is the personification of the concept that has fascinated me in the years that I have been going to festivals: circular fashion trends. You always hear your mum say ‘MY GOD where did you get that? That’s what they wore back in my day’ when you go out wearing your flared jeans or your floral bandana, or if you’re me…your pink Go-Go boots. Albeit fast fashion brands are releasing ‘new’ clothes by the second, the fashion itself, the style and the fit of the clothing has all been done before. This is not necessarily a bad thing – as my mum always says, imitation is the biggest form of flattery. 1970s fashion and the festivals it flourished in have been some of the most memorable, and influential and defiant styles of the century.

The 1970s saw some of the first anti-capitalist festivals on record, most namely Woodstock. The smell of narcotics, political and racial injustice, and rebellion were in the air. The first ever Woodstock, which took place in 1969, was kind of an epic disaster. The days leading up to the festival were cursed by torrential downpours that contributed to the organisers moving location last minute to a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, resulting in incomplete infrastructure and cows sleeping amongst festival goers. Due to this, the organisers granted free entry to 300,000 out of the 400,000 attendees. Originally titled ‘An Aquarian Experience: 3 Days of Peace and Music’ and known as Woodstock from then on, the festival brought together supporters of the counterculture movement. With America deep in the Vietnam War, and rife with violent racism and racial injustice, Woodstock became a symbol of rebellion and defiance, an idyllic escape from the rather shitty world the attendees were living in outside.

With almost no reports of violence at Woodstock 1969, the anti-war, propeace, general ‘go with the flow’ energy fused itself with the fashion of the generation. With many festival goers barefoot for 3 days straight, their raw-hem, sun-bleached low rise bell bottoms trailed along the daisy fields, which soon became the product of natural flower crowns and necklaces made for friends by lovers and lovers by friends. With burnt neutral tones defining the Woodstock colour pallet, crimson red fringe hung from every single body in Bethen as they danced from dawn to dusk, the vibes were immaculate. Some of the most iconic photographs of festival culture from this century come from Woodstock crowds, known faces but unknown stories. Photographs show friends locked in embrace in crochet ponchos and rose-tinted milk bottle glasses, lovers’ neck and neck, connected by a daisy chain in the unproblematic psychedelic eutopia that was Woodstock.

Albeit appropriated, gentrified and cheapened, the ‘trends’ that came from 1970s music festivals have remained consistently popular styles on fast fashion websites such as Shein and Boohoo since their rebirth in 2018. I myself went to an Abba tribute night a couple of weeks ago and a good 60% of the attendees had the exact same pair of pink/peach lyrca flared trousers, or a halter neck mini dress with frilly sleeves and a plastic flower crown. Although this is a stereotyped version of the 70s culture worn at music festivals today, and not necessarily the most complementary to the original Woodstock goers; it is testament to the sheer cultural impact the generation and its carefree, peace-loving fashion has had on people. Teenagers who were born 30-40 years after the first Woodstock and probably couldn’t even tell you what it was, are googling “70s halloween inspo” as we speak. A mark of success in the fashion industry, as well as the art and cinema sectors, is the recurrence and the transcendence of your work through the decades that follow. The cultural relevance needs to remain. In the case of Woodstock fashion, the feeling has transcended through generations and is evolving and growing with the times, while remaining timeless. That is the epitome of power in the fashion industry, staying groovy 40 years later.

by Erin Graham.