Sixties Fashion: From Less is More to Youthquake

I own a lot of fashion books, especially of the 60's Fashions. Being a teenager in the 60's, I owned most of these clothes and accessories that are beautifully featured in this book. Jonathan Walford has put together one of the most complete fashion coverage books of sixties fashions and he has used many gorgeous large full color photos to give the reader a true feeling of the gorgeous clothes from that decade. The book begins coverage of the early 60's Jackie Kennedy simple, yet sophisticated dresses and Chanel type suits and ends with the more suede, peasant, comfy clothing from 1969 which turned into a more Hippie look. What I love about this book is the designers of the decade are covered as well as catalog pages and magazine ads, so you get a true feel of the clothing worn by the rich and famous as well as the regular school girl. There are also some actual clothes on mannequins, so you can actually see the details of the outfits. Looking at some of the clothing from famous 60's designers Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, Pucci, Cardin, Cassini, Saint Laurent, Mary Quant, Vera, Courreges', Heim, Rabanne, Valentino, Laroche, Lanvin and many more, you get the feel of their distinct styles. Also included in this book are some famous fashion faces of the sixties- Jackie Kennedy, Twiggy, Cher, Jean Shrimpton, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Racquel Welch, Susan George and more. But, the real stars of this book are the fashions that everyone wore through the 60's decade. You'll see Chanel suits, Cocktail dresses and coats, Culottes, Coat dresses, Evening dresses, the London Look dresses, Shirtwaist dresses with men's ties, Poor Boy tops, Mondrian squares, Minis, Midis, Floral trouser suits, Shifts, Tops with matching tights under mini skirts, Granny gowns, Monokinis, Scandal suits, Midriff dresses, Slingback kitten heels, Go-Go Boots, Discotheque dresses, Geometric prints, Op art prints, Sequins and Chain link dresses, Fringe, A-line dresses, Paper dresses, Space age styles, Velvet romance dresses, even hats, wigs, shoes and boots and so much more are pictured in this highly informative book. This Sixties Fashion From 'Less Is More' to Youthquake, is without a doubt one of the best 60's Fashion books you can find and from it's great informative reading to it's gorgeous mainly color photos that take you into the 60's, earns 5 BIG STARS.

As someone who lived through the 1960s as a adolescent, I found this book to be a wonderful document with lots of photos of our misspent youth. From Twiggy and the British Mods to Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, the impact of rock and roll, couture, and youthquake -- the society we lived in could be compared to rising and falling hemlines, the use of stark or extravagant decoration, vintage costumes... It is a great coffee table book.

My daughter is into 60s fashion and she loved this book. Lots of great content and pictures. Book arrived in beautiful condition, and shipping was very fast.

Social changes in the '60s spilled over onto clothes. Walford connects the dots between young Mods, Hippies, Panthers, rockers, anti-war protestors etc. & the fashion they inspired. Great vintage images. A journalist review here : [...]

This book is outstanding. In truth I got it to use for an altered book project and additional collage fodder. But the book itself is so well designed and so in keeping with the times that I'll be keeping it safe and well-loved.

Very interesting..things i have never heard of..fun to look through..nice photos and info in words

Great book

The book was in excellent condition. Great pictures. Some of the material was new--not found in other fashion books about this same period. I have been involved in vintage fashion presentations since l998 and have read extensively on the subject.

Album-sized and crammed with images, the majority of which are in colour, this is arguably one of the best books on the Sixties - let alone fashion - I've seen. Comprehensive in both editorial and visual study, I'd recommend this for anyone interested in that most transformative of decades, let alone a fashion or pop culture student. For fashion students however, this is a must. When I was at art college during the late 80s and early 90s, Thames & Hudson were the kings of art books - so it's great to see them taking on fashion in such an immersive way. Occasionally its a bit dry for the curious, but the sheer interconnectedness and wealth of imagery more than makes up for this. And whoever picture researched this book deserves a medal, because it's crammed with new and highly illuminative shots - both of fashion on the streets, as well as a heap of catalogue and advertising material that really prove how much ground was covered in ten short years. Coming in from the late 50s (and therefore showing what the 60s inherited), the book breaks down into seven major chapters, covering the rise and fall of labels and department stores; statistics help put the industry into global context, and it's possible to chart the importance of print media (and pop) on spreading fashion to the masses. There's also some lost treasures in here, such as the brief attempt to launch paper clothing - and while that might sound a bit weird, wait until you see the images included here: they're a pop art lover's dream. A highly, highly recommended book!

This book came as a pleasant surprise: I was expecting the archetypal coffee-table book, all shiny pictures and little substance, but what I got was shiny pictures AND a fascinating documentary upon the fashion scene in the nineteen-sixties. I was particularly pleased that it did not just take a view of fashion from a date towards the end of the sixties and play to our amusement at the wacky styles then prevalent. The book starts at the very beginning of the decade and shows clearly the way that the well known sixties look came into being. I lived through the sixties, and was young enough not to have been offered any of the mind altering 'experiences' which lead to the famous quote, "If you can remember the sixties, you weren't there." This book certainly seems to cover the fashion world through this period pretty faithfully. There were many short lived styles that I had completely forgotten but, which this book puts into context. I have no knowledge of, or real interest in the fashion business; for me, this book is an interesting piece of social history but, I would imagine that it would be invaluable to anyone looking at the history of fashion and, as I said of myself, great for anybody just keen to understand more about a crucial period in our history.

Mostly featuring haute couture of the period, and female fashion at that, this is a serious and wide-ranging study of the catwalk styles and fashions of the era. It does branch out on occasion into street fashion and the odd reference to shoes and hats, but it's main focus is on the styles which were likely seldom worn in the street. You're not going to see what Jack and Jill Public were wearing to walk down to the town to do their grocery shopping in. There are plenty of photos, mostly in colour, and the text woven around them leads you through the history of that decade of fashion with an authoritative and convincing air. The author clearly knows his sixties fashion very well, or has done his research in a great deal of detail. A weighty and very good quality hard-backed volume, it certainly represents good value for money at its current advertised price, but its target market is likely to be reasonably limited to film wardrobe designers, fashion historians and design students with an interest in sixties fashion. If it sounds like it's for you, then it probably is.

My wife responded with a cry of joy when I gave here this book to look at and comment on, and I watched her as she opened and thumbed through it with a developing smile on her face. She loved it! She has now had a more in depth study and is still as delighted as she was on that initial view. Yes we are survivors of the swinging sixties and she kept saying, "Ooh I had one like that" as she read through the book. The volume is richly illustrated with wonderful colour pictures, and the entire production is a credit to Thames & Hudson, the publishers, and Jonathan Walford the author. The text is authoritative, although on occasions, and with my 'noughties' head and not my sixties one I realise that at times it verges on hyperbole. The image of Shrimpton on page 159 is the one I remember (or very like it) and is as iconic as they get, but one could say that about many of these pictures. A great reference book and a fun coffee table tome, and a real bargain at £20 or thereabouts.

What is particularly good about this book is that the clothes themselves are very well reproduced. Alongside archive photographs of the items being worn, the book is filled with photographs of the items themselves, usually on mannequins, reproduced often full-page, so that the reader has the opportunity to examine the fabric, the patterns and the way the clothes hang. The photographs of the garments on the mannequins mostly come from the Fashion History Museum in Ontario and are worth the price of the book alone. As an overview of women's fashion in the 1960s, the book is certainly thorough. The author, Jonathan Walford, certainly knows his stuff. I am an enthusiast for retro clothing and I learned a lot from the book. I am sure that even fashion historians would come away from reading this book having gleaned new insights into the way fashion developed over the 10 years of the 1960s. Men's fashion doesn't get much of a look-in, which is a shame, given how ground-breaking men's fashion was in the 1960s, perhaps a companion volume looking specifically at menswear would be a good idea? A gorgeous book, elegantly designed and written with obvious love for and knowledge of the subject. A great gift for any fashion fan!