Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan star as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in Baz Luhrmann’s ultra-flash take on F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Gats-tastic: Mia Farrow and Robert Redford looking as glam as it gets in Jack Clayton’s 1974 film

In our book, 70s Style & Design, we devote a chapter called Belle Epoque to the 1970s obsession with Art Nouveau and, particularly, Art Deco – both of which pervaded fashion, interiors, graphics, films, TV and pop music. It was epitomised by Barbara Hulanicki’s Art Deco emporium Big Biba and embodied by singer Noosha Fox – she of the 1976 hit S-s-s-ingle Bed – who bobbed her hair and donned 20s attire after stumbling across a wardrobe filled with flapper frocks. Even Abba dipped their toes in it: remember Agnetha and Frida in slinky flapper dressers and sequined headbands singing Money, Money, Money, a song that nodded to Money Makes the World go Round from that 70s-meets-30s classic Cabaret?

Barbara Hulanicki’s 1970s living room was an exotic Belle Epoque-meets-Deco den. Photograph: Manfredo Bellati

Malcolm Bird created many an illustration for Big Biba, including this 1974 advertisement for the lifestyle emporium’s home department

Biba founder Barbara Hulanicki in divinely decadent Deco style. Copyright Evening Standard/Getty Images

Twiggy photographed in Big Biba’s Rainbow Room by Justin de Villeneuve in the early 70s. The 60s icon was perfectly suited to the Jazz Age look, with her dainty features and pencil-thin eyebrows. Barbara Hulanicki described her as a ‘mini Garbo’. Photograph: Getty

The flapper fabulous Noosha Fox. Photograph: Redferns

An image from photographer John Bishop’s Big Biba fashion shoot for 19 magazine in 1973. Model Mouche is wearing clothes by Barbara Hulanicki

We mention in our book that The Great Gatsby, whose ragtime gladrags were designed by Ralph Lauren (Barbara Hulanicki was asked first but was too busy) and Theoni Aldredge, had a huge influence on early 70s fashion. Aldredge’s designs were adapted for a clothing line sold by Bloomingdales in Manhattan. And, as part of our research, we interviewed influential 70s designer and Kensington Market stallholder Lloyd Johnson, who told us, ‘We did four-piece suits and caps like the ones Robert Redford wore, which were teamed with two-tone platforms’. We also featured the Penguin paperback cover of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel with its vanilla ice cream-coloured cover, iconic still of Farrow and Redford and a neo-Art Deco typeface. Delish!

The Penguin edition of The Great Gatsby released to tie in with the 1974 film, as owned by the young Dominic Lutyens

Dunhill menswear does Gatsby in the 70s, complete with Redford-alike model

Lloyd Johnson’s 1971 Sea Cruise jacket, featuring a neo-Deco print by Sue Saunders

Now Gatsby-mania is truly upon us. Leaving aside Luhrmann’s movie, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy, there’s been the rip-roaringly successful New York production of Gatz – an eight-hour enactment of the book –which will be staged at London’s Noël Coward Theatre this summer. A dance adaptation by Northern Ballet will open soon at Sadler’s Wells. And writer Sarah Churchwell’s book, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby (Virago), about the novel’s genesis, is about to be published.

The famously Art Deco Claridge’s recently hosted ‘Charleston masterclasses’, while magazines and high street stores have been touting flapper chic since last year. Miuccia Prada designed 40 costumes for Luhrmann’s $100m-plus movie, which even saw vintage 20s cars imported from the US to Sydney, where the movie was shot. Luhrmann and his wife and collaborator Catherine Martin have also co-designed a collection of Jazz Age-inspired jewellery in diamonds and platinum for Tiffany. We don’t have pictures of these, but here’s a shot of their 70s equivalent…

Twinkling 20s-style diamond barrettes by Cartier, photographed by Joe Gaffney for French Vogue in 1978

Our book suggests some theories about why Jazz Age razzmatazz appealed so much in the 70s. A craze for Art Nouveau in the 60s had paved the way for this, with a renewed interest in the risqué work of Aubrey Beardsley in particular chiming with the increasingly permissive climate of the times. For many people, the ensuing Art Deco revival and the 20s represented a sybaritic spirit typified by The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald set his novel in 1922 – just after the ‘general decision to be amused that began with the cocktail parties of 1921,’ he wrote – in order to tell of a ‘whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure’. Viewed in a broader historical context, after the trauma of the World War I, it’s not surprising that people partied as hard as they did in the 20s.

To an extent, the 70s obsession with the 20s was a revisionist revival that glossed over such realities as the General Strike of 1926 and the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Like Abba’s rendition of Money, Money, Money – and the focus in Gatsby on the super-rich – the 20s were mainly associated with affluence and opulence.

70s scenesters living it up 20s style at the Deco-fabulous Derry & Toms Rainbow Room in 1972, before the building became Big Biba. Photograph: Joe Gaffney

That said, perhaps some people in the 70s related to the 20s because of its more progressive aspects. In the UK, in 1928 women, who’d become increasingly emancipated since the start of the 20^th century, won the right to vote like men. In fact, arguably rebellious, independent-minded women in the 20s prefigured the women’s liberationists of the 60s in their determination to reinvent the way they lived. It’s a subject explored in a new book, Flappers: Women of a Dangerous Generation by dance critic Judith Mackrell, published this month, which focuses on six pioneering women: Zelda Fitzgerald (who was married to F Scott Fitzgerald), Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Tallulah Bankhead, Josephine Baker and Tamara de Lempicka.

Manolo Blahnik as Nancy Cunard for a drag ball at London’s Porchester Hall in 1972. By Peter Schlesinger, from his book Checkered Past

The 1920s silent movie star Theda Bara was used for the logo of subversive 1960s/70s underground newspaper the International Times. Apparently the original intention was to use a picture of Clara Bow, the original ‘it’ girl, who personified the Roaring Twenties

Vampish Theda Bara-esque make-up created by Serge Lutens in 1973 for Christian Dior

And, according to Churchwell, the 20s saw greater social mobility: ‘Speakeasies were breaking down social barriers by creating spaces where the upper crust rubbed shoulders with the lower orders’. And, of course, Gatsby was nouveau riche with aristocratic pretensions. For our book, we interviewed East End-born photographer Justin de Villeneuve who told us that, in the 70s, affecting an aristocratic-sounding pseudonym and wearing suits by Savile Row tailor Tommy Nutter allowed him to hobnob seamlessly with the upper-middle classes.

For an older generation, all this divinely decadent Deco-mania offered escapism from the privations of rationing in the early 50s. Recalling his 50s childhood, Bevis Hillier, author of several books on Art Deco which did much to fuel the revival, told us, ‘The chocolate-vending machines in the Underground stations didn’t have chocolate bars. For me, the Deco revival represented bubbles, fizz and frivolity.’

Sanderson’s bubblicious Deco-inspired 70s wallpaper evokes the effervescence of the Jazz Age

And for a younger generation, the 20s offered pure escapism from the recession-hit 70s. Others, like French illustrator Philippe Morillon, feel that the Deco revival was spurred on by apolitical escapism: ‘In France, many of us were tired of the political activism of the 60s and of May 1968.’ He and his friends found parallels between the decadent vibe of the 20s and a growing gay liberation movement and an increasingly relaxed attitude to drugs: ‘We were smoking joints and some of us were openly gay’.

Peter Hujar’s portrait of Cockette John Rothermel, 1973. © The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC; courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

In the early 70s, the same went for the mainly gay, LSD-taking, San Francisco-based hippie drag troupe the Cockettes. They interpreted the 20s in terms of an old Hollywood, Busby Berkeley-esque full-blown glamour and fuelled the new, early 70s craze for vintage clothing, swishing about in drop-waisted dresses and 20s showgirl-style, ostrich-feather headdresses. Incidentally, Ken Russell in the UK paid homage to Berkeley in his 1971 campfest of a movie, The Boy Friend. This starred Twiggy who, in real life, adored Greta Garbo and sported Biba and vintage 20s togs.

Twiggy’s flapper-friendly looks were put to good use in Ken Russell’s 1971 homage to the 1930s musicals of Busby Berkeley, The Boy Friend. Photograph: BFI

Today, the reasons for Gatsby-mania are different, more positive if journalist Heather Long, writing recently in the Guardian, is to be believed: ‘After a horrendous few years for people’s wallets, luxury is unabashedly back, and this latest film adaptation is like an invitation to celebrate it.’ The feature’s intro even reads: ‘Luhrmann’s over-the-top take on Gatsby suggests we’ve recovered from the recession and are ready to worship wealth again’. The wealth-worshipping idea is surely an exaggeration but it does seem the worst of the recession is over, and, if so, perhaps the extravagant aesthetic of Luhrmann’s film reflects a desire to speed along the economic recovery.

We know we’re biased, but we can’t help but wonder which will be the greater Gatsby – Luhrmann’s or Clayton’s? In terms of style, it’s interesting that Mulligan’s look – she sports a very stiff, apparently lacquered geometric bob, sometimes with a headscarf forming a thick band – is really a 60s take on the 20s, as were Julie Andrews’s get-ups in the 60s movie Thoroughly Modern Millie. Farrow’s gently curling shingle hairdo and plucked, pencilled eyebrows looked more authentically 20s. But perhaps this was easier to achieve since 20s-inspired hair and make-up were in fashion then anyway.

If promotional stills are anything to go by, Mulligan also looks very baby-faced, a vacant-looking ingénue. And the caption that accompanies the poster of her uses a quote from the book (from Daisy about her young daughter): ‘That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’. Fitzgerald’s Daisy was being sarcastic, but how Mulligan plays her remains to be seen. Whatever, Mulligan as Daisy lacks the fascinatingly sophisticated air that Farrow exuded.

There again, Luhrmann’s aim, it seems, is to put his own stamp on Fitzgerald’s fated fable. It’s clear he wants to reach out to a younger generation with a soundtrack featuring Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Will.i.am, and perhaps he reasons they will immediately associate 20s high life with blingy R&B.

We can only hope he hasn’t airbrushed out the all-important sound of the Charleston!

Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997; Whaam! 1963; Tate
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012

The prolific American Pop artist will be showcased at Tate Modern until 27 May, which is a particular treat for Flashin’ on the 70s, as our book, 70s Style & Design, celebrated the huge influence that artists such as Lichtenstein had on the Pop movement of the 1970s. Here are a few of our favourite Pop-art-inspired 70s things, some of which appear in 70s Style & Design…

Nova magazine showcases the Mr Freedom look in 1970

Jean Shrimpton models Mr Freedom’s Minnie Mouse T-shirt in Nova magazine in 1970. Photograph: Hans Feurer

As early as 1970, Mr Freedom was influencing the US fashion scene, as reported by San Francisco’s street style magazine Rags. The illustration is by Albert Elia

After leaving Mr Freedom in 1972, designers Jim O’Connor and Pamla Motown set up on their own, working for more mainstream labels such as Scott Lester, for whom they designed these ultra-pop jumpers. Photograph: Steve Hiett

Pam and Jim’s friend Stan reads Shazam! while sporting one of the couple’s early 70s designs. Photograph courtesy of Pamla Motown

A waitress at Mr Freedom’s Mr Feed’em restaurant. This was the vision of the shop’s interior designer Jon Wealleans, who was fascinated by Pop Americana, Disneyland and Ettore Sottsass. Photograph: Elizabeth Whiting Associates

George Hardie’s comic-book-inspired poster design for Mr Freedom’s Mr Feed’em restaurant

Steven Thomas’s design for Biba’s food hall brings Pop art to the supermarket, the original inspiration for artists such as Andy Warhol, who is namechecked in this fun reference to his Campbell’s Soup series. Photograph courtesy of Steven Thomas

Archizoom Associati’s Rosa d’Arabia dream bed, 1967

Pop colours and patterns inform this bold and brilliant interior by David Hicks, a standout designer of the 70s, whose clients could afford real Lichtensteins. Photograph: the estate of David Hicks

A selection of Thea Cadabra’s pop-inspired fantasy footwear from the late 70s. Photograph courtesy of Thea Cadabra

Some of ultra-pop 70s label Fiorucci’s Lichtenstein-inspired stickers, issued with Panini bubblegum in 1984

And fast-forwarding back to 2013, the Lichtenstein show couldn’t be more timely, as Pop art is proving a major inspiration in fashion land. It started with Phillip Lim and Markus Lupfer’s cartoon capers in their pre-fall 2013 shows; next, Tom Ford was in on the act with his a/w 2013 collection, featuring Lichtenstein-like explosions on luxe gowns, and Topshop‘s current Comic Girl collection is the ultimate in superheroine chic.

Roy Lichtenstein 1923-1997; Wall Explosion II 1965; Tate
© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2012

Tom Ford’s ‘hip explosion’, autumn/winter 2013, as seen at style.com

Tom Ford’s a/w frocks are a flash of pop genius. As seen at style.com

Pop art-inspired sweaters from Phillip Lim and Markus Lupfer’s pre-fall 2013 collections

Topshop’s Kaboom tube skirt

Topshop’s whaam, blam, whoosh! jumper

Joan, Peter Robinson (Marilyn) and Kate,1978. Photograph Nicola Tyson, copyright the artist. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London

Punk might continue to fascinate people today, but its immediate successor – the New Romantic movement, which sprang up in 1978 and flourished until the early 80s – is equally intriguing it seems. Fittingly, given this year’s return of Bowiemania, London gallery Sadie Coles HQ is currently showing artist Nicola Tyson’s photographs of New Romantics at the ‘Bowie nights’ held at gay club Billy’s in Soho in 1978. In our book, 70s Style & Design, we mention how the super-stylised Bowie, along with Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry, were key influences on the sartorially flamboyant New Romantics – hence the name of this ultra-trendy, seminal Tuesday-nighter, co-hosted by DJ Rusty Egan and Steve Strange.

Unknown and Steve Strange, 1978. Photograph Nicola Tyson, copyright the artist. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London

Then came other nocturnal hotspots Club for Heroes (a nod to Bowie’s 1977 album) and Blitz – which still has a following today (check out the fabulous website The Blitz Kids).

Spot the Bowie clone at the Blitz club. Photograph Sheila Rock

New Romantics at Billy’s. Photograph Sheila Rock

Yet more evidence of the New Romos’ enduring appeal comes with new book Punk+, which showcases the work of photographer Sheila Rock, who documented many avant-garde subcultures, shops and clubs in the late 70s/early 80s – including the aforementioned Billy’s and Blitz, and influential King’s Road boutique Acme Attractions. As fans ourselves of her work, we included several images of hers in 70s Style & Design. Punk+, published by First Third Books, will launch at London boutique Browns on 25 April, as well as at Rough Trade East on 29 May. For a preview, visit First Third Books.

Jordan inside SEX, 1976. Photograph Sheila Rock

Jeanette Lee in Acme Attractions, 1976

The Photons (wearing Seditionaries bondage trousers and parachute tops), 1977. Photograph Sheila Rock

But back to the Tyson show, which gives a unique insight into the early New Romo subculture, thronged by relatively unknown, aspiring singers, fashion designers and DJs. In our book, we described these hipsters as po-faced poseurs. Of course, there’s plenty of truth in that, particularly as the scene became more established. Blitz regulars cultivated an impressively impassive froideur, already in evidence in Tyson’s pic of Steve Strange, pouting in his shades, diamanté jewellery and studiedly stylish forage cap (the latter channelling Kenzo’s Nehru-inspired 1978 collection). Yet this exhibition suggests we might have to eat our (Stephen Jones) hats: the Bowie nights boys and gals – including George O’Dowd (soon better known as Boy George), Peter Robinson (aka singer Marilyn) and Julia Fodor (DJ Princess Julia) – were an effervescent bunch who didn’t take themselves too seriously. After all, there’s something very playful, even (to quote Peter York in his book Modern Times) ‘babytimer’ about those paintbox-bright dungarees, all that Crazy-Coloured hair. This polychrome style also mirrored that of Acme Attractions (see below), which in the mid-70s touted primary-coloured peg-leg trousers, mohair sweaters and jelly sandals. And Sheila Rock’s picture of the Photons above (whose line-up included Steve Strange before he went on to form Visage), wearing bondage attire from Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop Seditionaries, shows that even punk clothing could be exuberantly coloured.

Bowie and proto-punk influences at play at Acme Attractions, circa 1976

George O’Dowd (Boy George), Joan, Paul, Andy, and Jane (in yellow), 1978. Photograph Nicola Tyson, copyright the artist. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London

Julia Fodor (DJ Princess Julia) and George O’Dowd (Boy George),1978. Photograph Nicola Tyson, copyright the artist. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London

Martin Degville (Sigue Sigue Sputnik), 1978. Photograph NIcola Tyson, copyright the artist. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London

Tyson was 18 and a student at Chelsea College of Art when she snapped these New Romo antics. And her vibrant pictures tingle with authenticity. As she recalls, ‘By 1978, a new scene was needed to fill the vacuum left after punk went mainstream – and Bowie Night was a start. Roxy and Bowie had influenced the darkly flamboyant aspects of the London punk scene, and so, in opposition to the dumb monochrome cynicism of mainstream punk, each Tuesday anything went at Billy’s, the more theatrical the better.’

Nicola Tyson – Bowie Nights at Billy’s Club, London, 1978, is at Sadie Coles HQ, 9 Balfour Mews, London W1, www.sadiecoles.com.

Sublimely Glam: Candy Darling on her Deathbed, 1974, by Peter Hujar. © The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC; courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

The early 1970s Glam era is the subject of Glam! The Performance of Style, a far-reaching exhibition at Tate Liverpool (from February 8 to May 12), encompassing art, design and fashion. Mention the word Glam and images of meathead lads stomping about on Top of the Pops in incongruously ill-fitting Bacofoil jumpsuits usually flash into our minds. Yet, as Glam! reveals, the looks of Slade, Sweet et al were the commercial fallout of highly sophisticated ideas cultivated by a minority of avant-garde creatives in the US, UK and Europe. And, as the chapter Avant Garde in 70s Style & Design highlights, too, the Glam sensibility was multilayered and deeply rooted in radical social changes shaking up ideas about taste and lifestyles.

Dave Hill of Slade: 1920s posing meets glam-rock laddishness, showing the commercial fallout of an avant-garde sensibility. Photograph: Jane England

Glam! explores both the roots and multifarious manifestations of the Glam sensibility, from 1971 to 1975. This drew no puritanical distinctions in the arts between fine art and fashion and style. It also celebrated androgyny, a certain camp irony, artifice and – encouraged by the fun-loving, 60s pop movement – flouted conventional, dull ideas about ‘good’ taste, expanding people’s aesthetic horizons by suggesting that kitsch, too, could be stylish.

Typifying this sophisticated sensibility in the mid-70s were the Moodies, a predominantly female group of Reading University art students, whose style is showcased in Glam!, and whose performances blended cabaret, pantomime, Dada and performance art. They also revelled in pastiche and parody, singing cover versions of such pop classics as the Shangri-Las’s Remember (Walking in the Sand).

Performance artists the Moodies ooze art-school, trash-glam sophistication, 1974. Times Newspapers
Ltd, courtesy Chris Bishop

A major inspiration behind the Glam sensibility were the gay rights and feminist movements of the early 70s, which challenged sexual stereotypes and gave greater visibility to the taste and styles of previously marginalized subcultures.

Art schools also played a huge part: between the early 60s and early 70s, the number of students attending them shot up by 70 per cent, and the worlds of fashion and fine art frequently collided. Artist David Hockney and fashion designer Ossie Clark, who both studied at the Royal College of Art, were friends, and Ossie was the subject of Hockney’s iconic double portrait of 1971-72, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (featured in Glam!).

Fashion and art in cahoots: Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, 1970-1, by David Hockney. © David Hockney

Other influences included Susan Sontag’s 60s essay Notes on Camp, which defined camp as ‘a love of artifice’ and as the ultimate ‘metaphor of life as theatre’. Indeed, the Glam spirit rebelled against the 70s’ hippie counterculture, its accompanying back-to-nature movement and earnest quest for authenticity. To the (mainly urban) avant-garde, such authenticity was deluded: what about all those weekend hippies? And where was their sense of humour? Many hippies were also patriarchal in their attitudes – so much for revolutionising society!

One of glam’s chief muses was the deliciously deadpan Andy Warhol, whose entourage included his posse of ‘superstars’, such as transsexual Candy Darling and sassy models Donna Jordan and Pat Cleveland. David Bowie was wowed by Warhol’s early 70s play Pork and its kooky cast of freaks. Another fan was John Waters, whose own actors in his company, Dreamland Films – including drag queen Divine – were oft-compared to Warhol’s coterie.

Elsewhere, the Cockettes, those legendary LSD-taking, cross-dressing, San Francisco-based (and not so po-faced) hippies, also epitomised the Glam sensibility, while in London, the Glam spirit blazed bright at the Alternative Miss World contests organized by artist Andrew Logan. At these camp cavalcades, the eccentric contestants – including film-maker Derek Jarman and fashion designer Rae Spencer Cullen (whose label was called Miss Mouse) – made their surreo-kitsch, often drag-based outfits themselves. In fact, performance and theatre were a key influence on the Glam movement. David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust alter ego was hugely inspired by his teacher, the flamboyant mime guru Lindsay Kemp, after all.

Glamfest: Andrew Logan, founder of the Alternative Miss World Contest (far right), with artists Luciana Martinez and Duggie Fields and fashion designer Zandra Rhodes

Derek Jarman as Miss Crêpe Suzette, winner of the Alternative Miss World Contest, 1975

Peter Hujar portrait of Cockette John Rothermel, 1973. © The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC; courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Peter Hujar portrait of Cockette Fayette, 1973. © The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC; courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Peter Hujar portrait of Cockette Sweet Pam, 1973. © The Peter Hujar Archive, LLC; courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

A relatively more mainstream example of Glam was Biba, which, heavily influenced by Art Deco, dripped with old Hollywood glamour. The ultra-camp, über-tailored, 40s and 50s-inspired clothing of avant-garde fashion designer Antony Price – Roxy Music’s costumier – further fuelled the trend.

Glam gloss: fashion designer Antony Price’s sophisticated 50s look for Roxy Music’s 1973 album, For Your Pleasure

The exhibition Glam! features work by many of the aforementioned, including Hockney, Jarman and Richard Hamilton. But it also showcases pieces by other artists, such as Duggie Fields, Margaret Harrison, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Patrick Procktor, Cindy Sherman, as well as lesser-known names: ASCO, Ulay and photographer Peter Hujar.

Take it from Glam! Style can have substance!

We thought there was something in the air when we blogged back in July about Chloë Sevigny channelling a cocktail of vintage, 1970s David Bowie in Miu Miu’s autumn/winter 2012/13 campaign. Well how prescient of Miuccia Prada, because 2013 is turning out to be the year that Mr Bowie fell back to Earth. First there was the release of his first single in ten years, Where Are We Now?, on his birthday this month, with an album, The Next Day, to follow in March. Then there’s the much-awaited David Bowie Is retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (from 23 March). He’ll also be getting a look-in at Tate Liverpool’s forthcoming Glam! The Performance of Style exhibition (from 8 February), which celebrates the style and sensibility of the early-70s movement and its influence on fine art and pop culture.

Bowie in a Kansai Yamamoto confection in 1973

Bowie was, of course, Glam’s poster boy, zeroing in on the alternative tastes of what was originally an avant-garde subculture – androgyny, artifice, kitsch (for more, see the Avant Garde chapter of 70s Style & Design) – and delivering them to a mainstream audience in the shape of Ziggy Stardust in 1972. Crucial to the Ziggy persona were the stage costumes created by Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto, who started working with Bowie in 1973, some of which will be appearing in the V&A show.

Bowie in Kansai Yamamoto’s Rites of Spring jumpsuit, 1973

Yamamoto, Kenzo, Sayoko and co 

Yamamoto was one of a new wave of Japanese designers, including Issey Miyake and Kenzo Takada, taking the fashion scene by storm in the 70s, all of whom feature in 70s Style & Design. Yamamoto opened his own house in 1971 and was renowned for fusing traditional Japanese clothing styles with ultra-pop, Western motifs, while, at his dynamic catwalk shows, his dancing models swirled and hurtled down the runway. One year earlier, Kenzo Takada, founded his label, simply known as Kenzo, and soon after opened his cult Paris boutique Jungle Jap, which boasted murals in the style of painter Henri Rousseau. Miyake trained as a graphic designer in Tokyo, subsequently moving to Paris in the early 70s. All these designers shook up the stuffy world of Parisian fashion with their funky, vibrant fashions.

Grace Jones in Issey Miyake, circa late 70s. Photograph: Robyn Beeche

Jerry Hall in Issey Miyake, 1979, as featured in 70s Style & Design. Photograph: Robyn Beeche

Kenzo’s folkloric/ Peruvian look, mid-70s

Kenzo typically cribbed from a variety of cultures, early 70s

Kenzo’s layered look, 1975

Sayoko in Kansai Yamamoto, circa 1979. Photograph: Robyn Beeche

A favourite model of all three designers was the late Sayoko Yamaguchi, who was named by Newsweek as one of the world’s top models in 1977. She was also a catwalk star for many other high-profile designers, including Yves Saint Laurent. Her razor-sharp, jet-black bob, with its low fringe covering her eyebrows, her graphic carmine lips and angular cheekbones were her trademarks. Designers in the 70s increasingly used black and Asian models and Japanese-born Sayoko was at the forefront of this trend.

Artist Duggie Fields, one of the major movers and shakers featured in 70s Style & Design, remembers, ‘I met Sayoko in Paris in the early 70s, and I did her portrait after seeing her again in Tokyo in the 80s. She was Japan’s first international supermodel. I’ve never forgotten the show where she came out alone, followed by ten models wearing variations of her outfit. It was impossible to take one’s eyes off her, such was her presence.’

Duggie Fields’s portrait of Sayoko, early 80s

Sayoko immortalised by Antonio Lopez

Sayoko snapped by Guy Bourdin, wearing what looks like Kansai

Sayoko was the face of Shiseido cosmetics in the 70s

Sayoko models Miyake in 1979. Photograph: Robyn Beeche

After modelling, Sayoko became an actress in Japanese films

Chloë Sevigny in Miu Miu’s new, Bowie-esque autumn/winter ad campaign

Could Chloë Sevigny be channelling David Bowie? Naturally, this thought crossed our minds when we spotted the thoroughly soignée Sevigny modelling for Miu Miu’s autumn/ winter ad campaign, hair styled à la David Bowie on his Diamond Dogs tour of 1974. The rest of Chloë’s ensemble – unapologetically chunky platforms, flashy tie and double-breasted jacket – is a cocktail of vintage Bowie, from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke, and her barely there brows and sky blue eyeshadow are straight out of his Life on Mars video, for which he was dolled up by cult visagiste Pierre Laroche.

Bowie in his Life on Mars video maquillage, courtesy of Pierre Laroche, 1973, from Mick Rock’s Blood and Glitter. Said Laroche (above left) of Bowie, ‘David has a perfect face for make-up: even features, high cheekbones and a very good mouth.’

Ziggy-era David in his off-stage satin and tat, from Mick Rock’s Blood and Glitter. Note the Kansai Yamamoto costume hanging up (for more Kansai, check out 70s Style & Design)

The hair that inspired the Miu Miu do? Bowie on his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour

In a double-breasted City Lights Studio suit for his 1974 US tour

It couldn’t be more opportune that the Miu Miu ads bow to Bowie: his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars turned 40 last June, and EMI marked the occasion with the release of a remastered version by Ray Staff, who engineered the original back in 1972. And maverick Hollywood actress Chloë is the perfect – organic – fit for the Miu Miu campaign, since she adores retro fashion. In a recent Guardian interview, when popped the question ‘What’s your guiltiest pleasure?’, her answer, plain and simple, was ‘Vintage clothing’.

For the uninitiated, Tommy Roberts is a towering figure of British fashion and design – a truly original retailer and entrepreneur. In the 60s, he pioneered the vintage clothing trade, selling antique threads to the likes of Jimi Hendrix and the Who at his Carnaby Street shop Kleptomania. But it was with London fashion label Mr Freedom’s fun, rainbow-hued, pop art-inspired clothes – all cartoon and fruit-machine motifs, all satin and flash – that he made the biggest splash. Also referencing Art Deco and 50s kitsch, Mr Freedom ushered in a new playful eclecticism in fashion which infected design, too, throughout the 70s – especially as, in the wake of the 60s pop movement, creatives of all colours rebelled against modernism throughout the decade.

Flash stance: Nova magazine showcases the Mr Freedom look in 1970

Mr Freedom, incidentally, was named after William Klein’s anti-American movie Mr Freedom of 1969 – though the shops, accoutred with such gleefully gimmicky props as a giant Statue of Liberty sculpture and cakes in the shape of blue jeans in its restaurant – revelled in pop Americana.

French actress Delphine Seyrig stars in William Klein’s satirical movie Mr Freedom

The two Mr Freedom shops in Chelsea and Kensington, open from 1969 to 1972, were the trendiest of their day; celebs such as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Elton John, Mick Jagger, Amanda Lear and Paloma Picasso (who bought a T-shirt for dad Pablo) flocked there too. Over the years, the indefatigable, Falstaffian-looking Tommy experimented constantly with different styles: in the mid-70s, he opened City Lights Studio in Covent Garden, a proto-goth boutique painted moodily dark colours. It was a hit with pop stars like Bryan Ferry and David Bowie, the latter buying the suit he sported on the back cover of his Pin Ups album there.

Bowie snapped by Mick Rock in a City Lights suit for his 1973 album Pin Ups

Of course, super-stylish icons Bowie and Ferry also loom large in 70s Style & Design. Tommy also managed Ian Dury for a while, and hung out with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood (whose early 70s King’s Road shop Let It Rock occupied the same premises as one of the Mr Freedom shops). Later, ever-restless Roberts championed High Tech and Studio Alchymia-inspired furniture and homeware at his 80s emporium Practical Styling.

The interior of Practical Styling circa 1981

He then moved on to sell a mix of 20th-century art and furniture in the 90s and Noughties at London stores TomTom and Two Columbia Road. Today, the latter, run by Tommy’s son Keith, is a mecca for fans of design, in particular mid-century-modern furniture. Appropriately, the launch party for Paul’s (inevitably) lusciously illustrated tome will be held there. Paul is also the author of the book Reasons to be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles, about legendary graphic designer Bubbles, some of whose brilliant record cover artwork also features in 70s Style & Design…

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