Swinging Sixties

Today


"Flower Power" was the theme of the dance we went to in Puriton last Saturday. Another of those funny little wine circle dances, but an opportunity to try out our ballroom dancing and meet old friends.


Now, the theme. Readers of my blog will know that the Barretts love to dress up. So Paul donned an Afro wig, Punjabi shirt, waistcoat, beads, sunglasses and jeans into which I'd sewn enormous floral flares. I wore a long straight blond wig, caftan top, wide-legged trousers and more beads. I did my eyes '60's style with lots of black and eyelashes painted onto my cheeks. We both wore bandannas in our hair and I stuck little instant floral "tattoos" on my cheek and breast. We both carried "Make love not war" slogans on our backs.


We arrived a little after the party had started and made an entrance with our "peace, man" signs, to much applause. And we won the prize- a decent bottle of Claret



In My Day


Did we really dress like that, back in the '60's? The answer seems to be that some of us did and some of us didn't. Paul, after a dalliance with Cuban Heel boots, reverted to tweed jackets and ties. After he met me, he did attempt a kipper tie, but it didn't go with his shirt or ubiquitous cord jacket. And, anyway, that was 1971.


Some of my art college male friends actually took bits of curtain remnants and, using their Mum's ancient Singer machines, stitched flares into all their jeans. The techniques (matched by me on Saturday) was very rough indeed - it was all for show.


In the earlier part of the '60's I was most definitely into mini dresses. Using a sewing technique only slightly more refined than my colleagues', I ran up many a shift dress, usually with billowing or flared sleeves. My brother ran quite a little business making kipper ties out of velvet which he sold to Carnaby St boutiques. We were all making things up as we went along and I know that he didn't cut them on the bias and the velvet was very thick, so they must have been impossible to wear. His concession to '60's fashion was to have a huge bush of curly hair (this came quite naturally to him by virtue of just never getting it cut) and to wear caftans from time to time.


My sister was married by 1967, and somehow never got into that vein, and a friend once said to my other brother "where were you in the '60's?" Wearing a shirt and tie, that much is clear.

Once at theatre design college, I began to make long dresses out of floral cotton, which I wore every day. They were more Thomas Hardy chic than hippie. My hair was always very long and straight, but I can't remember ever wearing a bandanna in it. My friend Sue actually applied painted eyelashes to her cheeks every day, using liquid eyeliner.


We were none of us really hippies, being all too middle class, and to tell the truth, rather looked down on people who didn't appear to wash.


Looking at that picture has convinced me never to dye my hair blond