ARTICLES FASHION TRENDS - A RETURN TO THE 60s

Trends 

Michele Gwynn

Senior Editor FashionErotica

I GREW UP in south Texas where fashion was a pair of fitted jeans, screen-print T's and button down shirts paired with either Justin Ropers or funky heels. So when I see what is considered high fashion designs that look like Halloween costumes created by catnip-sniffing monkeys running amok with scissors, I just don't get it. I mean, to me, fashion of any kind should enhance the natural beauty of the wearer. The outfit shouldn't overwhelm the person sporting it, and shouldn't look like it could walk around sans a body. Further, designs shouldn't look like science fiction B-movie alien gear. It's just not reasonable to expect anyone would wear such as part of their every day wardrobe, business or casual. Usually, such far-out fashion finds its way walking some music related red-carpet premier by the most outrageous performers du jour. In those cases, the crazy-couture serves its purpose well in snagging the photo of the evening to be picked apart by fashion critics all over the media.

I do love the creativity shown by over-the-top designers, but I question the point of it when the goal of designing any kind of fashion is to make the person wearing it look fantastic. Much like makeup, one shouldn't notice the makeup, but how beautiful the person wearing it appears. Same goes with good fashion designs. We should notice how amazing the person looks, and not how outrageous is there outfit.

Many of the fashions for 2012 seem to be going retro, speeding backwards in time in a mini-cooper to the psychedelic sixties. Striped crop pants, mod mini dresses, and colorful halter-styled tops are gracing the pages of magazines like NYLON and Harper's Bazaar. Mod meets modern as even the bell-bottomed jumpsuit returns to remind us of Agent 99 defending the world against CHAOS.

Hit shows like Mad Men have designers going Don Draper for male fashions (now this one I love since a well-dressed man is quite sexy). Let's face it, anything is better than "saggy pants" when it comes to men's couture, well, except, perhaps, the speedo! Banana hammocks aside, the groovy threads of the beatnik decade have seeped into the future. Even swimwear has reached back upwards to waist height looking much like grandma's underwear or Annette Funicello's bikinis in Beach Blanket Bingo. Fashion is covering more skin instead of less. I can't help but wonder if this trend happens to be in response to the past two years of the religious right-wing's crusade to impose Christian law over the Constitution. The war on women in red states and in congress has produced legislation stripping women of their hard-earned rights while making it legal for these governing bodies to continue to roll back our rights further. Have loony lawmakers influenced fashion?

The sixties were fraught with civil rights demonstrations and a burgeoning sexual revolution that came to fruition in the seventies. Is this where fashion is leading us? Not that I don't find some of the designs quite attractive, but I sure would love to see them have just enough progressive sexuality to make Rick Santorum and his brotherhood of the breast-hating misogynists turn purple and puke. I'd like to see enough skin to make the Catholic Diocese hold their gnarled fingers up in the sign of the cross to ward off what they fear most and desire least; women! And to top it all off, I'd pay good money to see Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren all show up to work on the same day wearing Ego Assassin, Dawnamatrix, or KVO (Karen von Oppen) while attending a full session of congress. Like Snoop Dogg would say: "That would be the shizzet!" C-SPAN would surely have a surge in ratings if Fashionerotica designers could dress the "Ladies of the Letter of the Law".

Perhaps a retro walk back to the sixties is fitting (pun intended) for the battle women must fight again to put an end, once and for all, to this obvious offensive to drive females back into the kitchen and steal their designer shoes. If we have to do it wearing knee-high boots, leather minis, and hot pants, then so be it. These old dinosaurs who so fear that which they don't understand -- the power of the source of all life known throughout the world as the womb; the vessel, will find themselves destroyed by their own prejudices. Maybe wearing more conservative styles will help keep these fuddy duddies unaware long enough so they don't see the shoes flying at their heads. We ladies are deadly with a stiletto! So, fashions of 2012; a sign of the times or a battle cry for the future of womankind? It just may be that today's designers have created a groovy uniform for an army of angry chicks. And perhaps, just perhaps, they have a wicked sense of humor, too!

  Check out more about the 60s in "mad women"

"Breezy and engaging [though] ...The chief value of Mad Women is the witness it bears for younger women about the snobbery and sexism their mothers and grandmothers endured as the price of entry into mid-century American professional life." –The Boston Globe

Fans of the show are dying to know how accurate it is: was there really that much sex at the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally "yes."...(available in Kindle and Hard Cover Editions).

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This article has been written by San Antonio-based freelance writer and author Michele Gwynn for Fashion Erotica Magazine. Michele pens a Sex and Relationships column as well as a National Animal Rights Column for Examiner.com. She has conducted interviews with Showtime’s Gigolo Nick Hawk, international actor Rudolf Martin, former Dallas Cowboy’s Cheerleader and first female scout for the L.A. Lakers Bonnie-Jill Laflin, former UN Ambassador Sichan Siv, the cast of Broadway’s The Jersey Boys, HGTV’s Kitchen Cousins Anthony Carrino and John Colaneri, to name but a few. In addition, she has authored a science fiction short story, Harvest, and a children’s fiction, The Cat Who Wanted to be a Reindeer available on Amazon.com. Michele is currently working on her first full-length erotic novel which will be out in 2012.

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