by Kim Logan ’10
Close your eyes, and you’re in 1965…
Young haute designers Ossie Clark and Andre Courrèges are going head to head with heavyweight Yves St. Laurent to debut the collection that will most epitomize the swinging sixties. You’re sitting front-row at all three runway shows, and you see the birth of the mini-skirt. You see Mondrian and triangle-shift dresses, go-go boots and huge earrings. You see sleek black turtlenecks and bottle-blond bangs, silver lamé and flamboyant furs. It’s so thrilling to have time-warped to experience this psychedelic explosion of fashion culture, but perhaps even more exciting is the fact that all three of these designers have drawn their inspiration for their collections from the deep well of 1960’s musicians and artists. Those black turtlenecks came from the slim bodies of Edie Sedgwick and Nico, and those mini-skirts were alive and well on Marianne Faithfull and the French pop darlings of yé-yé music long before they were sold in stores.
