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Mid–1900s fashion movement
Argentinian band Los Gatos wearing peacock revolution fashion c. 1968

The peacock revolution was a fashion movement which took place between the late 1950s and mid–1970s, mostly in the United Kingdom. Mostly based around men incorporating feminine fashion elements such as floral prints, bright colours and complex patterns, the movement also saw the embracing of elements of fashions from Africa, Asia, the late 18th century and the queer community. The movement began around the late 1950s when John Stephen began opening boutiques on Carnaby Street, London, which advertised flamboyant and queer fashions to the mod subculture. Entering the mainstream by the mid-1960s through the designs of Michael Fish, it was embraced by popular rock acts including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Small Faces. By the beginning of the 1970s, it had begun to decline due to popular fashion returning to a more conservative style.

Fashion

A wax figure of Jimi Hendrix at Madame Tussauds, London

The fashion of the movement was mostly based around the embrace of feminine fashion elements by men, including tight silhouettes, bright patterns, long hair and makeup. It also embraced a variety of other influences, ranging from the Romantic era to traditional African and Asian elements. Suits were commonly worn, particularly in Edwardian or continental Europe's style of tailoring, and in unconventional textiles including corduroy, paisley and brocade. Suits also often incorporated bright colours, vivid patterns, embroidery, slim fits, large lapels, cravats, Nehru jackets, frilly shirts and kipper ties. Boots, generally winklepickers, were favoured over shoes. A 1973 article by the New York Times divided the period's suits into three different periods: the original style typified by the Nehru jacket and sport coat; the middle period which was influenced by Edwardian dress; and the later period which saw the rise of wide lapels and bell-bottoms.

Terminology

The name "peacock revolution" was coined by consumer psychologist Ernest Dichter in 1965, eventually being popularised by journalist George Frazier during his 1968 columns for Esquire.

Those who took part in the movement were known by various names, notably dandies, as well as variations like urban dandies and dandy mods. In the 1960s, terms such as "soft mod" or "peacock mod" were commonplace, to contrast from the more aggressive and rude boy influenced "hard mods" who would morph into the skinhead subculture.

History

Origins (1950s and early 1960s)

The mod subculture was influential upon the peacock revolution

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the dominant style of menswear was business suits in dark and neutral colours, polo shirts and jumpers, with bright colours only been present occasionally, with patterned shirts like Hawaiian, plaid or striped. The earliest signs of rebellion against this hegemony in England was through the emergence of the Teddy Boy subculture, who wore suits in the style of the Edwardian era, while also embracing elements of fashions in the United States and continental Europe. Under the influence of the Teddy Boys, other subcultures began to emerge in Britain, including the rockers, and most relevantly, the mods.

The peacock revolution began from an intersection of 1950s queer fashion, the sexual revolution and the mod subculture. The popularity of the mod subculture had allowed for straight men to show an interest in fashion, and the sexual revolution allowed for men to present themselves in an overtly sexual manner. As early as Brioni's 1952 fashion show at Pitti Palace, the style of the Peacock Revolution were being anticipated. The first menswear show in modern history, the collection made use of bright colours, ornamentation, piping and elaborate waistcoats. By 1957, Scottish entrepreneur John Stephen began opening shops on Carnaby Street in London and using these developments to advertise gay styles of fashion to straight men. Works published by the BBC, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Week all credit Stephen as the pioneer of the peacock revolution. The designs of Michael Fish were also an important part of the growing movement. Fish began designing for Turnbull & Asser in 1962, where he began to experiment with more androgynous elements, such as floral designs, which he further after founding his own boutique Mr Fish in 1964. One running theme in Fisher's designs was the embrace of aspects of late 17th century fashion such as cravats, bizarre silks, military braids, brocade and high collared shirts. Christopher Gibbs too was an influential designer, introducing double breasted waistcoats, Turkish shirts and cloth covered buttons into the movement. In a 1968 article by Newsweek, the publication credited Oleg Cassini with helping to lead the movement.

Peak popularity (mid–1960s)

Shepard Sherbell, Brian Jones and Michael Cooper (L–R) in 1967, wearing peacock revolution clothing

Mods quickly adopted these styles and soon London's Soho area became renowned for its androgynous fashions. As the style became increasingly popular, many prominent womenswear designers, including Pierre Cardin and Bill Blass began also producing menswear in the style. Cardin in particular would become an influential designer during the era, popularising the Nehru jacket which allowed for wearers to experiment with neck accessories like necklaces and medallions instead of ties.

By the mid-1960s, Stephen owned fifteen shops on Carnaby Street and clothes from these stores were being worn publicly by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Cliff Richard, Sean Connery and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. In 1964, Stephen claimed he "dressed about 90 percent of England's popstars". Soon, King's Road too began to develop similar boutiques. By 1966, Carnaby Street King's Road had become two of the most influential locations for fashion of the entire decade, largely popularised by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, as well as the Who and Small Faces. Mary Quant later stated of Stephen, "He made Carnaby Street. He was Carnaby Street. He invented a look for young men which was wildly exuberant, dashing and fun."

Peacock revolution fashion reached the United States around 1964 with the beginning of the British Invasion, entering major fashion publications including GQ by 1966. Clothes were often sold in boutiques marked "John Stephen of Carnaby Street" and in department stores including Abraham & Straus, Dayton's, Carson Pirie Scott and Stern's. Furthermore, Lord John clothing began to be sold at Macy's, as Sears too began producing clothing in the style. By the mid–to late 1960s, the more radical end of the peacock revolution in the United States developed the hippie subculture.

During the Rolling Stones' July 5, 1969 performance in Hyde Park, London, Jagger wore a white dress featuring bishop's sleeves and a bow-laced front which was designed by Fish. In a 2013 article, The Daily Telegraph writer Mick Brown stated that is moment "epitomised the swinging Sixties" and going on to call Jagger "King of the Peacocks".

Later years and decline (late 1960s to mid–1970s)

A decline in popularity of the peacock revolution's more extreme fashion styles was beginning as early as the 1967 release of Bonnie and Clyde. The film's costuming, for which it won an Oscar, began a revived interest the fashions of the 1930s, and a rise in popularity of the designs Ralph Lauren and Bill Blass who began embracing such influence. However, a 1970 article by Life magazine cited a then-recent revived interest in peacock revolution fashion, citing women's greater attraction to the style and the hippie subculture's fashion "proving that a fellow can wear any outlandish costume in public" as the reasoning. Between 1972 and 1974, a second wave of popular musicians, including David Bowie, Elton John and Gary Glitter, portraying the movement emerged as a part of the glam rock genre, which too trickled down to the general public.

Nostalgia for the fashions of the 1920s–1940s was eventually exacerbated by The Godfather (1972), The Sting (1973) and The Great Gatsby (1974) and the 1972 death of Edward VIII. By 1975, the release of John T Molloy's bestselling book Dress for Success, marked a general return to conservative men's fashion by popularising power dressing.

Legacy

In the wake of the peacock revolution, menswear became more diverse in many western countries. The movement was one of the main factors in allowing men to wear clothes other than suits in both business and casual contexts. Furthermore, it allowed for a greater variation of both head and facial hair lengths and style in the workplace and increased the demand for men's grooming and cosmetic products. Many influential fashion designers also began their careers during the period, including Hardy Amies, Geoffrey Beene, Bill Blass, Cerruti 1881, Hubert de Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent.

The movement was one of the main factors in popularising androgyny in fashion, especially in rock music.

In a July 2014 article by the New York Times, fashion photographer Bill Cunningham cited "Signs of a new peacock revolution", including the resurgence of designs by Domenico Spano.

See also

References

  1. ^ Komar, Marlen (21 June 2016). "What The Peacock Revolution Did For Gender Norms". Bustle. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  2. ^ Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0253015969. Journalist George Frazier is credited with popularizing the phrase "peacock revolution" to describe the styles coming from London's young Carnaby Street designers, which promised to restore the lost glory of flamboyant menswear. Frazier was describing the explosion of choices that were suddenly available to men, ranging from Romantic revival (velvet jackets and flowing shirts) to a pastiche of styles borrowed from Africa and Asia. Expanded color palettes, softer fabrics, and a profusion of decorative details represented a direct challenge to the conformity and drabness of menswear at mid-century. For critics of the new men's fashions, flowered shirts and velvet capes raised the specter of decadence and homosexuality, a fear that was reinforced by the emergence of the gay liberation movement. Just as women's unisex styles had to balance being sexy and liberated, men's styles tended to navigate the territory between expressiveness and effeminacy.
    Endnote: The term "peacock revolution" appeared in Frazier's Esquire columns in 1968 but was originally coined by consumer psychology icon Ernest Dichter in 1965. Haye et al., Handbook of Fashion Studies, 193.
  3. ^ Mathai, Anjuly. "Gender fluidity in men's fashion: The return of the dandy". The Week. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  4. ^ "Sixties Style Revolution: The Peacock Revolution". Hiras.com. Archived from the original on 2016-04-21. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
  5. Cunningham, Patricia (2005). "10 Dressing for Success: The Re-Suiting of Corporate America in the 1970s". Twentieth-Century American Fashion. Dress, Body, Culture. pp. 191–208. doi:10.2752/9781847882837/tcaf0014. ISBN 978-1-84788-283-7.
  6. Ullmann, Bill (29 April 1973). "THE REVOLUTION THAT FAILED". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2023-12-14. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
  7. ^ "Male Plumage!". Life. 25 Sep 1970. The peacock days are coming back. A man in a bright leather suit or snakeskin coat might still rate a hard stare, or an approving one, but he would no longer cause consternation in the city streets. Paradoxically, most designers credit the distinctly un- dandy hippies with making possible the return to dandyism, simply by proving that a fellow can wear almost any outlandish costume in public-if he has the nerve. Designers in London and Rome, working from the far- out, far-gone glories of Restoration styles, gave their imaginations rein. The old promise that ordinary man is finally to be liberated from dull clothing has flowered brilliantly in outfits of every fabric and color. Men's boutiques now do a brisk trade in necklaces, purses and ear- rings. Health spas find a demand among business and professional men for mud packs, hair tinting and skin creams-all once the exclusive province of women. Most men find the new styles extreme-not to mention expensive but so long as dandies are as attractive to women as they seem to be, the "peacock revolution"-illustrated here by partisans wearing their own versions of the fashion-will continue to spread its feathers.
  8. Hall, Steve; Winlow, Simon; Ancrum, Craig (17 June 2013). Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: Crime, Exclusion and the New Culture of Narcissm. Taylor & Francis. The 'Peacock Revolution' of the 1960s encouraged men who tended to own very few clothes to expand their wardrobes and become dedicated followers of fashion, each change a symbol of their rebellion against mass conformity. Yet, the 'mass conformity' of the traditional male-dominated working class - combined with a hefty dash of politically charged contempt for the fashion-driven culture of the urban dandy - seemed to act as a powerful protective shield against the marketing industry's invasive strategies.
  9. Weight, Richard (2013). Mod! A Very British Style. Bodley Head. p. 157. ISBN 9780224073912. This helps to explain the last phase of Mod culture in the 1960s, the so-called "Peacock Revolution" or Dandy Mod, at its peak between 1966 and 1969.
  10. Lobenthal, J. "Psychedelic Fashion." Love to Know.
  11. Old Skool Jim. Trojan Skinhead Reggae Box Set liner notes. London: Trojan Records. TJETD169.
  12. Edwards, Dave. Trojan Mod Reggae Box Set liner notes. London: Trojan Records. TJETD020.
  13. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0253015969. The dominant style in business wear in the early 1960s was an off-the-rack version of British menswear: white dress shirt, a suit in a dark neutral color (usually black, gray, or navy blue) and a rep tie—ribbed silk, with diagonal stripes. Casual clothing might include sport shirts (plaid, striped, or even Hawaiian), knitted polo shirts, or sweaters, and could be more colorful. The main deviations in color and cut came from society's margins: jazz musicians and beatniks with their turtleneck shirts, generously cut suits, and loud ties, or fashion-forward sophisticates who favored the new "Continental Look"—slim jackets with side vents (or no vents at all) paired with tight trousers with beltless waistbands, like Sansabelts.
    But the first signs of change were already visible in England, where young working-class men were emerging from the wartime rubble looking like Edwardian dandies. These "Teddy Boys" adopted a blend of Continental and American elements—tight Italian-style trousers worn with a flowing zoot-suitish drape jacket and "duck's arse" hairstyles, with echoes of their grandparents' day—the Edwardian era had been just forty years earlier—such as long, double-breasted jackets with velvet collars.
    Demand for these styles, and modifications of them, influenced staid Saville Row, which responded with their own touches of Edwardian elegance. The Teddy Boys were succeeded by the Mods and Rockers, rival subcultures with their own distinctive uniforms.
  14. ^ Hill, Daniel Delis (5 April 2018). Peacock Revolution American Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 98. ISBN 9781350056459. In 1957, though, John Stephen, a young Scottish entrepreneur took advantage of the low-rent district and opened a menswear shop on Carnaby Street. He had learned the men's apparel business while working for Bill Green, a photographer of muscle boys for physique magazines who also operated Vince Man's Shop-a West End store and mail order retailer specializing in body-conscious clothes favored by gay men. "What Vince offered were new clothes-tighter fitting, brighter and in more exotic fabrics than mainstream menswear had known to that date." But Stephen's aim was broader than the niche gay market. In the transition from the 1950s into the 1960s, the Mods had made it possible for straight men to have an interest in fashion and shopping, and the burgeoning sexual revolution encouraged straight men to wear sexualized clothing that accentuated the male anatomy that appealed to women.
  15. Koski, Lorna (23 September 2015). "Gaetano Savini's Daughter Pens Intro to 'Gaetano Savini, the Man Who Was Brioni'". WWD. Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2021-03-31.
  16. "John Stephen". BBC. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  17. "The peacock revolution: 1960s UK menswear". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  18. Elan, Priya (13 March 2016). "Peacock revolution back with label that dressed Mick Jagger and David Bowie". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  19. Fury, Alexander (29 February 2016). "The Peculiar '60s Designer Who Redefined Men's Fashion". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2017-04-02. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
  20. Moody, Paul (3 August 2018). "How Christopher Gibbs Changed the Face of Swinging London". Another Man. Retrieved 14 December 2023.
  21. "Male Plumage '68". Newsweek. 25 November 1968.
  22. Moore, Christopher; Cinque, Sean Redmond Toija (30 July 2015). Enchanting David Bowie: Space/Time/Body/Memory. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 245. Although mod style was not exclusively, or even predominately, gay, mods began wearing clothing that gay men had been wearing for years.
    The change in men's dress from drab to debonair in London in the 60s during the Peacock Revolution constituted in effect the adoption of gay men's dress style by the non- gay, male population: 'Throughout the 1960s, commentators noted the "hermaphroditic" styles coming out of West Soho, and identified the ambiguous sexuality of the mods who wore Stephen's styles as part of this concern'
  23. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 69. ISBN 978-0253015969. Fashion designers in entering and transforming the menswear industry. Some of the most iconic brands in menswear—including Pierre Cardin and Bill Blass—made their debut during this era and rode to success by tapping men's desire for fresh design. French designer Cardin was the more revolutionary of the two, having already earned a reputation as a bit of a rebel within the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture (the venerable French trade union of high-fashion designers) by showing a ready-to-wear collection in 1959. (For his transgression, he was promptly expelled from the Chambre Syndicale but reinstated soon after.) His women's fashions and entrepreneurial innovations were equally avant-garde, as described in chapter 2, and he had been producing some menswear since 1957. When his styles first became available in the United States in 1966, they had an immediate impact, and many imitators. Introducing his Paris couture collection in July 1966, he announced, "You are going to see some slightly strange boys and girls," accurately predicting how disruptive his designs would be.
  24. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0253015969. The Nehru jacket was just one of a number of tie-free options that Cardin popularized. Worn by celebrities ranging from Lord Snowdon (with a silk turtleneck) to Sammy Davis Jr., the Nehru jacket with its stand-up collar and soft construction did not originate with Cardin. It was based on a style created in the 1940s and associated with Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964); the Beatles wore matching jackets in this style for their 1965 Shea Stadium concert, two years before Cardin's interpretation in gray flannel. But it was Cardin's version that launched the real craze, which peaked in the fall of 1968. Although it was to become a symbol of middle-age wannabe swingers, the Nehru jacket represented a powerful desire at the time to hang on to the idea of a jacket but open it up to the possibility of greater self-expression and comfort. Accessorized with beaded necklaces or medallions dangling on chains or fabricated in traditional suiting materials, the Nehru jacket appealed—just briefly—to a wide swath of American men.
  25. Hill, Daniel Delis (5 April 2018). Peacock Revolution American Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 99. ISBN 9781350056459. By the mid-1960s, John Stephen was the undisputed "King of Carnaby Street" as the press dubbed him with an estimated worth of $15 million. He owned fifteen shops along Carnaby Street, including His, Mode Male, Domino Male, and Male West One. Part of Stephen's tremendous success was his approach to retailing. For his shops, he adopted the boutique model from women's retailers that had developed in the late 1950s: small floor space (and thus low overhead costs); enticing display front windows; colorful, pop art interior décor; loud, current music; quick turnover of trendy merchandise; and young, hip sales staff. The formula worked so well on Carnaby Street that Stephen soon exported his merchandising ideas and menswear to America as licensed in-store boutiques for more than forty major department stores. As Men's Wear noted in 1971, "Boutiques have become the masters at merchandising the new clothing beat. They see that it's not just a beat that applies to the growing young men's market, but to all who are young in attitude, who have changed their ways of living, their rules and their buying habits."
  26. Hill, Daniel Delis (5 April 2018). Peacock Revolution American Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 99. ISBN 9781350056459. John Stephen was aided in his efforts to mainstream colorful, sexualized fashions for men by the many pop culture icons of masculinity who were photographed or appeared on TV wearing his clothes. In 1962, British heavyweight boxing champion Billy Walker modeled one of the designer's matelot shirts (French sailor's horizontal striped knit top) and skintight jeans for window posters. When singer Cliff Richard wore a John Stephen's shaggy, deep pile sweater on TV, the designer sold out of the entire production run (and quickly, competing ready-to-wear makers copied the style). Other famous male shoppers at Stephen's shops included Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, all four of the Beatles, Peter Sellers, Sean Connery, the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Snowdon (husband of Princess Margaret). The mod designer became "adept at associating his products with appealing celebrities and virile examples of heteronormative manhood." And "he understood that celebrity approval was the key to beginning and shaping trends which he could meet." To perpetuate interest in his menswear from celebrities-and the resulting publicity-he created the John Stephen Fashion Award for the best-dressed man in 1964. That year he even claimed to have dressed about 90 percent of England's pop bands.
  27. Musgrave, Eric (5 October 2009). Sharp Suits: A Celebration of Men's Tailoring. Pavilion Books. p. 192. ISBN 9781862058521. Social divisions are eroded as fashion boutiques flourish, from Blades just off Savile Row to Lord John on Carnaby Street. The new style-setters are pop stars such as The Beatles and young movie stars like Michael Caine. The Peacock Revolution, centred on the Kings Road, frees men to be individual in their dress, but Mods continue to favour a clean, crisp look.
  28. Bolton, Gay. "Swinging 60s men's fashion on show at Derbyshire museum". Derbyshire Times. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  29. Sixties Icon: As Carnaby Street celebrates 50 years, the extraordinary story of how a shy, young man from Govan began it all, The Scotsman, 14 September 2010.
  30. Hill, Daniel Delis (5 April 2018). Peacock Revolution American Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 97. ISBN 9781350056459. As noted previously, men's mod fashions came to America with the British Invasion of pop music in 1964. Press reports and teen magazines noted that the mod styles worn by the English bands often were from London's Carnaby Street designers and merchants. As the popularity of the Invasion spread across American pop culture, the term "Mod" and "Carnaby Street" became synonymous to American menswear makers, retailers, and ultimately consumers. In 1966, GQ reported on Carnaby Street with a profile of John Stephen, his boutiques, and the Mods who were "firm followers of... John Stephen's own highly original, constantly innovating designs." John Stephen's licensed in-store boutiques of men's mod fashions were named "John Stephen of Carnaby Street" and promoted in the ads of large US department stores such as Stern's of New York, Abraham & Straus in Brooklyn, Carson Pirie Scott of Chicago, and Dayton's of Minneapolis. Other apparel invaders from Carnaby Street included Lord John, whose men's fashions were advertised with slangy copy by Macy's as a "kinky collection of imports, supah starring mighty mod florals, psyched-up stripes and free-wheeling solids." Even Sears opened men's mod shops in selected stores.
  31. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0253015969. At the extreme fringes of male style of the late 1960s lay the hippies, who embraced a do-it-yourself, anything-goes aesthetic that mixed thrift-store finds, military styles, and exotic cultural appropriation. As the inheritors of the freedom injected into menswear by the British Mods, members of the 1960s counterculture represented an effort to break with mainstream culture altogether—to drop out of the system and forge an entirely new path. Although associated with the United States, there were similar movements in other countries. British peer Mark Palmer, who dropped out of the upper class to travel in a caravan with various pop stars and dress in Druid robes, offers a succinct explanation of the appeal of the hippie culture: "It is not escapism leaving a bad scene to start a new one."
  32. "Mick Jagger's white dress cast him as a romantic hero". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 8 May 2018. Retrieved 2016-05-22.
  33. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0253015969. The seeds for the end of the peacock revolution were sown in 1967 with the release of Bonnie and Clyde, director Arthur Penn's groundbreaking film about the Depression-era outlaws, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. The movie not only ushered in a new era of on-screen sex and violence but also struck a chord with fashion designers looking for fresh inspiration. Theodora Van Runkle won an Oscar for the costumes—
    Dunaway in slender, mid-calf skirts and Beatty in chalk-stripe, double-breasted suits—and some menswear designers took note of the film's romantic aesthetic. Baby boomers had heard plenty about the Great Depression from their parents, and it seemed an unlikely source of nostalgia, but emerging American designers Ralph Lauren and Bill Blass both rode to their early successes on '30s-inspired clothing.
  34. Hill, Daniel Delis (5 April 2018). Peacock Revolution American Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 98. ISBN 9781350056459. Between about 1972 and 1974, a glitz and glitter trend in peacock fashion was inspired by a second British Invasion: glam rock. Musicians such as David Bowie, Elton John, and Gary Glitter became famous for their dazzling theatrical stage performances, for which they dressed in costumes lavishly adorned with sequins, rhinestones, faceted studs, feathers, and shiny metallic materials.
  35. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0253015969. Amid the visual cacophony of the late 1960s and early 1970s, trends were sometimes difficult to detect, but a return to quieter elegance was certainly in the air, and it hit full swing with the release of The Godfather (1972) and The Sting (1973). That same year saw a flurry of publicity around the filming of The Great Gatsby (1974) in Newport, Rhode Island, over the summer; Esquire waxed eloquent about the "Newport Look," a sort of hybridized version of the Gatsby style that mashed up the 1920s and '30s and incorporated linen suits, country tweeds, and vintage-y sweaters. The death of onetime king the Duke of Windsor, who was also a well-known fashion icon, in 1972 also generated quite a bit of nostalgia in the fashion press for the elegance of bygone days. The eccentricity of the mod and hippie era was gradually replaced with trends that often broke as many rules, just not all in a single outfit. The leisure suit offered an alternative to jacket and tie for the new, more casual lifestyles of the 1970s
  36. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. pp. 60–61. ISBN 978-0253015969. But like many revolutions, the peacock revolution ended in repudiation and regression. Although fashion prognosticators in 1970 were predicting the demise of neckties and gray flannel suits, within ten years the pendulum had swung back with a vengeance.
    John T. Molloy's Dress for Success, in 1975, had codified a return to conservative dressing for business. Within a few years the more flamboyant styles of the late 1960s and 70s had been relegated to the back of the closet, if not the thrift shop.
    Part of the reason for this stylistic whiplash is that the impact of the peacock revolution was exaggerated at the time and seems only to have grown in the popular imagination.
    The reality is that many men, even young men, did not succumb to the trend, and few of those who did adopt the new styles continued to experiment with new expressions of masculinity for long. linity for long. To understand what was going on beneath the surface of men's fashions, we need to enter relatively unexplored territory: the masculine mystique.
  37. Paoletti, Jo B. (27 February 2015). Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Indiana University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0253015969. So what did change in men's clothing? The late 1970s return to safer, classic styles did not mean a complete rollback of every innovation. Just as women's hemlines became a matter of taste, with lengths varying based on the occasion and the wearer's own preference, men's clothing had permanently negotiated some flexibility. The suit was less important, replaced in many workplaces and previously formal situations by separate trousers and sport jackets. Beards, mustaches, and long hair (or shaved heads, for that matter) are unremarkable variations. Men's casual and active sportswear may lack the blinding colors and patterns of the 1970s but still offer many options, sometimes more color options than in women's clothing. A recent Lands' End catalog lists men's pima cotton polo shirts in twenty-five colors (including pink) and women's in only fourteen. The demand for men's cosmetics, grooming products, and even cosmetic surgery has been well documented for decades.
  38. Hill, Daniel Delis (5 April 2018). Peacock Revolution American Masculine Identity and Dress in the Sixties and Seventies. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 98. ISBN 9781350056459. From the mid-1960s into the 1970s, numerous other famous women's designers joined Cardin in the menswear arena: Hubert de Givenchy, Yves St. Laurent, Hardy Amies, Antonio Cerruti, Oleg Cassini, Bill Blass, and Geoffrey Beene, among others. The cachet of the designer name became a focus of ready-to-wear and retailers' advertising.
  39. Cunningham, Bill (13 June 2014). "Bill Cunningham Men's Wear Revolution". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2023-11-11. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
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