Louis Vuitton's s/s 2011 campaign gets high on YSL's Opium era glamour

We can’t help but notice that the 70s are back big time on planet fashion, with Marc Jacobs, Jacobs for Louis Vuitton and Gucci all paying homage in their spring/summer 2011 collections. The intoxicating, high-octane glamour of Yves Saint Laurent’s opulent Opium collection of 1977 appears to be a key inspiration – luscious mandarin-chic jade green and amethyst satins, cheongsams, gold cummerbunds, all sported by models with Chinese lacquer red lips and nails – not to mention the high-gloss disco era aesthetic of Guy Bourdin.

Yves Saint Laurent's divinely decadent launch party for his Opium fragrance in New York, 1978

But the looks of the decade we love to love – as 70s Style & Design celebrates – were fabulously eclectic. And accordingly this summer’s 70s revival also treats us to folky Kenzo-esque attire (D&G), the pared-down, hard-gloss glamour of Helmut Newton (Lanvin), while last year’s army/utility look is in full force (Jil Sander for Uniqlo). And, we needn’t mention, the high street is utterly in thrall to ankle-skimming skirts, lace-up-the-leg wedge espadrilles, eye-shading wide-brimmed hats…
Here’s our geek peek at the 70s references these collections make…

Sashaying through the 70s at Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacobs – from Yves Saint Laurent to Mr Freedom
Jacobs definitely spearheaded the current wave of 70s nostalgia, with a super- sophisticated synthesis of countless 70s looks: vintage YSL (military/safari jackets in tobacco and terracotta; off-the-shoulder dresses in YSL’s fave gauzy voiles); Mr Freedom (crushed-strawberry satin trouser suits); Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (hotpants, floppy hats, bubble curls); Missoni (ochre/rust/burgundy zigzags on skinny-rib knits); Biba (vampish, sooty eye make-up, plum shades, 20s dropped waists, feather-boa chokers); 70s supermodel Marie Helvin (tropical flowers in hair – reminiscent of David Bailey’s Vogue shoots of her in exotic locations circa 1976). And let’s not forget the crimped hair! The plucked eyebrows! The platform shoes! The shoulder-slung handbags!

Classic YSL from 1972

Satin and flash, Mr Freedom style, from Nova magazine, 1970

19 magazine showcases 71's must-have satin blazers, including this one by Tommy Roberts's Mr Freedom label, which came in jade green

Vamping it up, Biba style

Marie Helvin shot by David Bailey for Vogue, 1974

Lanvin – Helmut Newton hard gloss
Lanvin’s ad campaigns are a dead-ringer for Helmut Newton’s iconic 70s fashion shoots featuring women enacting stylised catfights, one of which appeared in Nova in 1975. And as a design aside, the Deco-tastic apartment they’re shot in evokes the Deco-filled Paris flats of Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld in the 70s.

Lanvin re-enacts Helmut Newton in YSL's apartment. Well, almost...

Chez St Laurent in 1978, with muses Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux

Toughing it out for Herr Newton in Nova magazine, 1975

Attenshuun!
As the above pic shows, utility was huge circa 1975, with designers taking inspiration from the cheap but chic clothing of army and navy surplus stores. And it’s still marching on…

Marie-Claire Italia works the M*A*S*H look

But you saw it here first…

Nova's fashion editor Caroline Baker kick-started the khaki craze in 1971

However it’s not all hard edges and glossy surfaces in this revival: D&G’s women’s collection was softer, more girlish: redolent of Kenzo (the outsized florals), Laura Ashley (the flouncy, ankle-skimming dresses) and even Mr Freedom (denim, checks and big fat flares and platforms). And, in contrast to the fierce expressions of Newton’s pugilistic models, the girls in this D&G ad campaign recall the breezy joie de vivre captured in the fashion pics of a very different 70s snapper – Oliviero Toscani.

D&G's smiley happy hippie chicks

Kenzo's take on the prairie look, snapped by Peter Knapp in 1973

Crystal Tipps and Alistair ride again in Umpen Editions's new spring range

Marc Bolan’s ‘My people were fair and had sky in their hair’ could have been penned with Crystal Tipps in mind, what with her cloud-like coiffure which – along with her Mary-Jane shoes – echoed that of the bopping imp himself. However the star of the super-popular 70s children’s series Crystal Tipps and Alistair owed more to the trippy, colour-saturated style of Yellow Submarine illustrator Heinz Edelmann, as her creator Hilary Hayton explained when we interviewed her for 70s Style & Design. Those of you who enjoyed the popadelic pair’s kaleidoscope highs back in the day might like to know that Hilary has produced a brilliant range of Crystal Tipps and Alistair greeting cards for Umpen Editions.

And talking of bubblicious barnets, we can’t help but notice that big hair is bouncing back, thanks to the fashion world’s current obsession with the 70s. Check out this curly girlie at Sonia Rykiel’s spring/summer 2011 show…

Punkettes in London shop Boy work the DIY look (© Sheila Rock)

Punk had much in common with Fluxus, a movement founded in New York in 1961 that made art out of discarded, throwaway materials. Its multidisciplinary approach, encompassing art, dance, film and music, helped to foster a cross-disciplinary art movement that thrived in run-down, recession-hit downtown Manhattan in the 70s.
Three of its prime movers – performance artist and composer Laurie Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown and the late artist Gordon Matta-Clark – are the subject of the Barbican’s latest show, Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s. Exploring their milieu in New York at a dismally low point in its history – the city was on the brink of bankruptcy, with high rates of crime and unemployment – it will show about 160 works including sculptures, drawings, films, live performances, posters and ephemera.

Why put on this show now? “With the UK going through the recession, people today are interested in the parallels between then and now,” says curator Lydia Yee. “The art produced in New York provides a welcome alternative to the overblown, glossy production values of the past decade – the art of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami.”

Frequently ephemeral, site-specific and collaboratively created, the downtown artists’ work differed from the recent pop art and minimalist movements, which favoured mechanical processes to make permanent pieces that could be sold in galleries. Broadly speaking, the community valued ideas and the exploration of creative processes over polished objects.

Laurie Anderson, circa 1978 (courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York © Laurie Anderson)

The early 1970s work of Anderson, who moved to New York in 1966, typified this multimedia approach. She moved restlessly between photography, text, sound and street performances engaging with the public. “My art wasn’t about hiding away in a studio,” she remembers. The Barbican will display her photographically recorded project, “Institutional Dream Series” (1972), which saw her sleep in public spaces, then record the location’s effect on her dreams.

Anderson remembers New York then as “dark, dangerous and broke” yet exhilarating: “It was like Paris in the 20s. I was part of a group of artists who worked on each other’s pieces, and boundaries between art forms were loose.”

The district south of Houston Street, soon nicknamed SoHo, had been zoned for manufacturing but factories had been moving out since the 1940s. The artists who colonised it took advantage of working and living in its disused factories for a very low rent, exhibiting work informally in these raw spaces.

Trisha Brown, Roof Piece, 1973 (courtesy Broadway 1602, New York © Babette Mangolte)

By the early 70s, Trisha Brown was a respected performance artist, having studied under the legendary Merce Cunningham. She dispensed with a stage, often performing on rooftops and car parks. She used untrained and trained dancers, invited audiences to participate and encouraged improvisation. In her topsy-turvy world, works appeared to defy gravity: in “Walking on the Wall” (1971), dancers (rigged to a track in the ceiling) pace along a wall as if it were the floor. This will be re-enacted by dancers in the Barbican’s lower-level, double-height gallery, which, says Yee, “echoes the scale of SoHo’s lofts”.“I was inventing choreography outside any existing system or venues for presenting it at that time,” recalls Brown. “SoHo’s urban landscape was ready-made for this.”

Gordon Matta-Clark, Open House, 1972 (courtesy Jane Crawford © Estate of Cosmos Andrew Sarchiapone)

Matta-Clark, who studied architecture, is regarded as the ringleader of this scene and many believe it died when he did, in 1978. In 1969, he had designed and built one of the area’s first alternative arts spaces, 98 Greene Street, for art collectors Holly and Horace Solomon. His own dramatic architectural interventions, which entailed cutting parts out of buildings, were political. They highlighted the “imprisonment” of the poor inside New York’s soulless “urban and suburban boxes” and reflected his desire to break down social and economic barriers. The most ambitious, entitled “Splitting” (1974), saw him bisect an entire building. A film of this will be screened at the Barbican.

The early 70s in the US were a time of highly organised political activism. Even so, according to Anderson, most downtown artists weren’t especially political. “We’d protested in the 60s. By the 70s the political beliefs of the counterculture were a given, we’d internalised them.”

But 1960s activism had bred certain attitudes: generosity, anti-materialism and a strong sense of communality. “There was huge camaraderie,” explains Anderson. “We helped each other with plumbing, hanging our shows or lending stuff like videotapes. We had no interest in money and thought those who did were idiots. It was a completely different world.”

Artist Derek Jarman was a pioneer of loft-living in London (estate of Derek Jarman, courtesy K Collins)

However, some believe the downtown scene is similar to today’s art communities in Brooklyn except that, as art historian RoseLee Goldberg, an original member of the downtown scene, says: “They’re paying $3,000 a month, we were paying $200.”

Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s runs from March 3 to May 22 at the Barbican Centre, London

www.barbican.org.uk

Frances's chronicle of the 70s with cover designed by Celia Birtwell

When we were researching our book 70s Style & Design we often wished we could have sampled the early ’70s scene at first hand. Oh to have hung out with hippie acid-freak drag queens the Cockettes in San Francisco, and Celia Birtwell and Ossie Clark in David Hockney’s London basement, like our good friend Frances Lynn.

Frances had the pleasure of both (as chronicled in her recent novel, Frantic) before ending up as gossip columinist for hipster mag Ritz (London’s answer to Interview) in the late 70s. Apparently her bitchiness was legendary, causing shudders as she walked into rooms. Is this true, we asked her. ’When gossiping for Ritz I was completely uninhibited and used to bang out my column as if it were my diary,’ she says. ‘I could never understand why my victims used to scream at me, or even threaten to hire hit men.’

Amanda vamps it up for scenester snapper Johnny Dewe Mathews circa 72

Frances reveals that reading Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies inspired her to write a gossip column and to invent her character Jet Spray Cooler. ‘Each month in Ritz I used to write that he was a big admirer of Amanda Lear and wanted to meet her,’ says Frances, ‘and she kept calling me, demanding to know who he was. She wouldn’t let up, so in the end I had to admit that he was fictitious.

‘In retrospect,’ she concludes, ‘it was exhausting going out 24 hours a day but I got a lot of perks!’ Indeed – like hanging out with Jack Nicolson and Bette Midler at one of Bette’s after-parties at the Waldorf hotel in the late 70s. Here Frances is sporting a particularly lovely blouse by Celia, who also designed the cover of Frantic, and possibly the print on the dress that Amanda is wearing, a little Ossie Clark number.

Talking of Celia, here’s one of her gorgeous early 70s illustrations of her prints – the one on the right is the iconic Tulips design, used for an Ossie Clark dress as sported by socialite Nicky Samuel among others. Celia is currently selling some vintage Celia/Ossie frocks in her shop on Westbourne Park Road, London – check out Celia Birtwell’s website. Incidentally, Dominic is writing a book about Celia to be published in autumn 2011 by Quadrille – keep an eye on the Amazon listing

Celia prints, circa 1972 (not 1968, Celia now remembers)

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/fashion/fashion_motion/index.html

Oh, and they both appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1979, as back-up singers for David Bowie. They all wore dresses and apparently Joey’s mum liked his so much she asked him to send it to her.

Find out more about Debbie, Joey and Klaus in 70s Style & Design, and what Joey’s up to these days at joeyarias.com

And keeping with the Italian theme, we’d like to announce that the Italian edition of 70s Style & Design will be making its debut later this year. Watch this space…