Fashion takes a nostalgic stride back to the ‘70s

WE have just sent Vogue’s March issue to print, which is one of our biggest issues of the year. In it we introduce the new season, and the most significant trend to emerge is a rebirth of the 1970s.

Edwina Mccann 19051

WE have just sent Vogue’s March issue to print, which is one of our biggest issues of the year. In it we introduce the new season, and the most significant trend to emerge is a rebirth of the 1970s.

Fashion is always referencing bygone eras; the 1970s referenced the early 1940s.

As fashion journalist Lynn Yaeger points out in Vogue: In 1971 Yves Saint Laurent created a homage to the war years, showing short cropped “chubbys”, tailored pant suits and head wraps. Forty-odd years later Saint Laurent’s present designer Hedi Slimane is at it again, but this time through the prism of the 1970s. His collections are made for a generation whose great-grandparents lived through the war.

Slimane and Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquiere were children during the ‘70s so maybe we can credit the retro feel of their collections to a nostalgia for their childhoods.

Louis Vuitton designer Nicolas Ghesquiere. Picture: Karim Sadli

These designers are among the most influential of their generation and so it stands to reason that the rest of the fashion world will follow.

And follow they do. The ‘70s was also a strong theme at Valentino, Dries van Noten, Erdem, Chanel, Tom Ford and many more.

And it’s not just an expensive designer story.

You’ll find fantastic affordable clothes referencing the ‘70s in stores next month at H&M, Cue and Country Road. But why the ‘70s now?

In a scary and uncertain world, nostalgia times promise comfort and reassurance. The decade was also an era of fierce individualism during which commune living suggested an alternative to the commercial, modern world.

This idea appeals to a new generation which knows nothing other than individualism and whose hipster tag represents the modern incarnation of the ‘70s hippie movement, albeit today with an iPhone in hand.

The recently departed designer from Gucci, Frida Giannini’s aesthetic always had firm foundations in the ‘70s. Her signature for Gucci oozed a cool glamour from a girl born in 1972.

Gucci designer Frida Giannini. Picture: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott

“You know, my earliest memory of my mum or the women of my family are their clothes; they’re still very strong in my mind,” she told Vogue in what would turn out to be her final interview while still head designer of the house.

The 1970s were not the first time women wore pants (that happened during the ‘40s due to necessity and the war) but it was the first time women wore them purely for fashionable reasons, and not everyone was happy about that. But they really should have seen it coming.

In the late 1960s New York socialite Nan Kempner was denied entry to La Cote Basque because of her Yves Saint Laurent pant suit, so she simply took off the pants and went right in. You could just picture Lena Dunham doing the same thing today — before tweeting it.

Originally published as Fashion takes a nostalgic stride back to the ‘70s