Disco Fashion
Platforms
Platforms were in discos, at work, in supermarkets, just everywhere. Originality was sought in decorating feet: suede; fruits; flowers; silver; rainbows; bright colors; clashing colors; stars; glitter; hand painted stars and moons on wooden shoes; shoes large enough goldfish could be kept in a detachable, clear sole; thigh high, lace up boots; KISS's monstrous performance shoes; and on and on.
Hip Huggers
Hip huggers not only hugged the hips, but highlighted the belly button in a bold fashion move. First worn by the daring mods, hip-huggers found their niche in the swinging 60’s, when revealing the body was de rigueur.
Pants cut low on the hips, instead of the waist, revealed the sensuous curve of girls’ (and some boys’) bodies. While hip huggers are usually thought of as tight-fitting flares, the only true requirement is that they be slung low on the hips, instead of fitting at the waist. Hip huggers returned in the 90’s when couture designer Alexander McQueen became famous for his ‘bum pants,’ extreme versions of hip huggers that cut so low in back they exposed the top of the buttocks. How cheeky!
Feather Boa
Who could deny the blonde-bombshell Mae West, wrapped up in a flirty feather boa, when she made a request like that? Girls had known for ages the power of the soft and fluffy feathers, and boys soon discovered the wonderful wrap when glam hit the scene in the late 60’s.
Glam rockers like David Bowie and Marc Bolan of T-Rex wrapped themselves in feminine frills and pranced around with the flirty feather boa. Baby soft marabou, super sexy ostrich, and over-the-top turkey…the birds sacrificed their feathers for fashion, and so the boa was not to be used lightly. Whether boy or girl, a floating feather wrap was an emblem of the sexual revolution…never before had something so good seemed so bad.
Flares
A favorite style in jeans and the ever-popular polyester plaid print, flares were so named because the leg ‘flared’ out from the knee in a mild slope. The circumference at the hem was much smaller than at the bell, closer to what we now call the ‘boot cut’ (just wide enough to slip over your boot so that you don’t have to take them off when undressing. Why you want to keep them on once your pants are off, we just don’t know, but that’s what they’re built for). So the flare was the happy medium between the outrageous bellbottoms of the 60's and the slim-fit boot cut of the turn of the millennium.
Flares were the only pants to wear during the groovy 70's, when cords and polyester beat out denim two to one. The flared-legged pant grooved on until the end of the decade, when disco’s skintight fit made its debut, but thanks to Old Navy and others, the flare returned to spread a little relief to your constricted ankles in the late 90’s.
Cutoffs
Cutoffs were a last-ditch effort to preserve your best friend. When the knees had given out and were patched a dozen times over, and Mom threatened to burn them if you tried to sneak out of the house with them on one more time, you could take the scissors to your jeans and revive them for a summer or two. Well, that is, if the seat (butt) was lucky enough to have made it through the trauma of hand-me-down days, or could be salvaged with a well-placed patch.
Cutoff jeans, made into shorts of various lengths, were a summertime tradition, ready to be worn with triple-striped, knee high tube socks, a pair of colored Nikes and an iron-on decal tank top. Just don’t bring them to a public pool—“The Man” still fears the shredded unkemptness of the cutoff jean.
Glam Rock
Glam rock had hit London in the late 60's and soon, like so many other fabulous trends, made its way across the shores to America. The sequins sparkled, the glitter gleamed, and the stardust transformed lanky boys into fashion creatures of the night. Twisting the gender-bending notion, boys looked to female fashions and fantasy costumes to transform them from the ordinary to the astro. More than boys in girl’s gowns, glam became the ultimate freedom of expression for a sexually explosive decade.
American bands like the New York Dolls were performing in their own costume circus, and bands like KISS combined the heavy metal leather scene with glam. KISS's face paint paired with Ziggy-style jumpsuits and platform boots to create a bizarre performance band that remains one of the most memorable in rock's history. And the kids just couldn't get enough.
After transmogrifying into the flashy New Romantics of the early 80’s, glam returned to the scene in the form of 80’s hair metal, as groups like Poison wrapped themselves in fluffy feather boas, smeared their faces with colorful makeup and teased their long locks to look like their girlfriends’ big hair. By the 90’s, glam lived on primarily in the shape of androgynous shock god Marilyn Manson, but by this time, fewer eyebrows were raised. In a culture of body piercings and such, it took a lot more than makeup on men to shock the masses.
Disco Fever
Fashions ran the gamut from elegant to outrageous, with ladies and gents alike competing for the spotlight. Men preferred to let their slick polyester shirts expose their chests and highlight the ever-present gold medallions around their necks. Pants were high-waisted with the patented Ban-Roll waistband, which allowed countless hip bumps without fear of drooping. John Travolta’s red-hot moves in Saturday Night Fever heated up the dying disco market, and created a fashion inferno.
Elegant ladies wore flowing quiana dresses that draped daringly off of one shoulder, while handkerchief hems and ruffles swirled around their strappy high-heeled sandals Their more outrageous sisters followed the anything-goes mentality and donned leotards, hot pants with slinky belts, and Candies disco slide stiletto sandals.
The daring fashions of disco threw inhibition to the wind, and girls and boys boogied down in the most outrageous creations. The danger wasn’t in the drugs, sex, or disco beat: the true peril was dancing nonstop in stilt-like platforms. A spin under the disco ball just wouldn’t be the same without platform heels on which to hustle, bump or busstop. Unless, of course, you wore roller skates.