1970s Fashion

The 1970s fashion vocabulary was unusually fragmented. Four distinct looks coexisted without any one dominating: the Halston-led American minimalism (matte jersey, no closures, pull-over-the-head construction, ballet flats), the British and European bohemian (Laura Ashley's printed cottons, Biba's Art Deco revival, Ossie Clark's bias-cut chiffon), the European glamour (the early Versace and the Saint Laurent peak period, with extreme glamour and overt sexuality), and the American utility (Diane von Furstenberg's wrap dress, introduced 1974, sold five million units by 1976).

Roy Halston Frowick was born 1932 in Des Moines, Iowa. He moved to Chicago in 1953, opened a millinery shop on Michigan Avenue, was hired by Bergdorf Goodman as head milliner in 1958. He made the pillbox Jackie Kennedy wore at JFK's inauguration in January 1961. He launched his own ready-to-wear label in 1968 at 33 East 68th Street in New York. The breakthrough was 1972 — the Ultrasuede shirt dress, a development of an existing Japanese synthetic suede (Toray Industries' Ultrasuede) that Halston was the first major designer to use as a fashion material. The Ultrasuede shirt dress sold by the truckload through 1978. Halston's New York atelier on Olympic Tower (after 1976) became a social hub. Liza Minnelli, Bianca Jagger, Lauren Bacall, Anjelica Huston, Andy Warhol, Halston himself — the entire Studio 54 set passed through. The clothes were deliberately undemanding: no zippers, no buttons, no waist seams, pulled over the head. Two-thirds of his pieces had no fastenings at all. Then the JC Penney deal in 1983. Halston signed an exclusive contract to design Halston III for the mass-market retailer at price points around $25–$60. Bergdorf Goodman dropped his couture line within weeks. The licensing fees were enormous but the prestige collapsed. By 1984 he had been pushed out of his own company; in March 1990 he died of AIDS-related cancer in San Francisco, age 57.

Diane von Furstenberg launched her wrap dress in 1974 from her own New York studio. The dress — printed jersey, wrap closure, knee length — was specifically designed to be easy to put on, easy to wear in a working context, and inexpensive (around $40 in 1974, equivalent to about $250 in 2024). The first manufacturer shipped 25,000 in 1974; by 1976 the wrap dress had become its own category and other manufacturers were producing copies. Genuine DVF wrap dresses from 1974–1978 carry her original Studio Stamp label. Yves Saint Laurent's 1970s were his commercial peak. The Russian Collection of autumn 1976 (cossack-influenced full skirts, embroidered jackets) caused the press queue at the show to be three blocks long. The Le Smoking tuxedo of 1966 finally became socially acceptable in the 1970s, and Saint Laurent shipped versions every season. Saint Laurent Rive Gauche (his ready-to-wear line, launched 1966) became, by the late 1970s, larger in revenue than the haute couture house itself. Laura Ashley opened her first London shop in 1968, expanded internationally through the 1970s, and produced printed cotton dresses that became the bohemian alternative to Halston minimalism. The brand is now mostly remembered for its 1980s and 1990s decline; the 1970s pieces are genuinely well made and have a real collector base.