Welcome back to vintage celebrity fashion icons!
In our previous post on celebrity fashion icons, we focused on four women of the sixties who influenced fashion for years to come. (We also discovered that I think kick-ass women who wear high boots are cool). But those four women were not the only trend setters in 60’s pop culture.
Today: Celebrity Fashion Icons of the Sixties, part two
MARLO THOMAS:
Mod Marlo (from our Retro TV Pinterest board)
Like Nancy Sinatra, Marlo was the daughter of a famous star (comedian Danny Thomas). She guest starred on several early 60’s TV shows, and in 1965 was offered the opportunity to star in her own series. She herself came up with the idea for a show about a young woman who moves to New York to try to get work as an actress. The network balked at first, thinking no one would watch a show about a single woman. The show became “That Girl” and Thomas became the 2nd woman in TV history to produce her own series (after Lucille Ball)
Marlo’s character Ann Marie became an idol to young female TV watchers. Who wouldn’t want her wonderful mod clothes (featured in the opening of each week’s episodes), her bohemian lifestyle, and her loyal boyfriend, Donald? Here’s a slideshow of Marlo’s fashions over the years.
Marlo ended the show by choice after 5 years, and refused to have a wedding as a series finale, because she didn’t want her viewers to think that the only happy ending is a marriage. She continued her forward thinking with the “Free to Be …You and Me” series of books and television specials, which promoted the idea that anyone—whether a boy or a girl—can achieve anything.
Marlo Thomas later joined celebrity fashion icons of the 90s, when she appeared as the mom to Jennifer Aniston’s character on the TV show “Friends”.
In addition to her acting career, Thomas serves as the National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
JACKIE KENNEDY:
White House 1961, photo by Robert Knudsen, public domain
No one had more influence on he fashions of the early 1960’s than the stylish wife our young president, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Jackie was an artsy debutante, who studied french literature in college, and interned at Vogue magazine. Before her marriage to John F. Kennedy, she worked as a photographer/interviewer at the Washington Times-Herald. She became an invaluable asset to JFK’s senate campaigns and counseled him on improving his wardrobe for his presidential campaign.
Jackie’s style was legendary. She was often featured alongside movie stars in magazines, and was named as one of the best dressed women in the world. Initially, she had a preference for French designers, but later hired American Oleg Cassini to do her wardrobe. Who could forget her matching suits, gloves, and hats, particularly the iconic pink Chanel suit with pillbox hat that she wore that day in Dallas? Here’s a collection of Jackie’s outfits from those years.
Jackie had a lower profile immediately after the assassination, but gradually returned to public life, and she still influenced fashion. When she wore a skirt that was several inches above her knee to a lunch in 1966, she ratified the miniskirt for women over 30. The large glasses she wore to avoid the paparazzi after her marriage to Aristotle Onassis became known as “Jackie O glasses”.
JANIS JOPLIN:
Beaded velvet cape worn by Janis Joplin
Who more than Janis influenced the hippie style of the late 60’s?
As a teenager, Janis was a painter and into the blues and folk music. She was an outcast in her home town of Port Arthur, Texas, but fit in perfectly when she moved to San Francisco in 1963. She came home in 1965 and got a beehive hairdo, but the change in fashion and lifestyle didn’t take and she went back to California and joined Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Janis’s style was wild and free. She wore outfits by designer Linda Gravenites, like a tunic and bellbottoms made from a vintage lace tablecloth, or velvet vests over chiffon blouses. She wore tie dyed ensembles, feather boas, beads, and of course, her signature large wire framed colored glasses.
In fashion, she was the opposite of Jackie Kennedy. “Everybody’s so hung up on the matching game–the shoes have to match the bag which matches the coat and dress,” Janis said. “But the big question is, is it matching your soul? So why not wear all things at once, it’s groovy, it’s real.”
BARBIE ROBERTS:
Barbie in 1960, “Solo in the Spotlight”
Barbara Millicent Roberts was born in 1959, but was a huge fashion influence in the 1960’s. Like Madonna or Cher, you know her by only one name: Barbie.
No one had more stylish clothes than Barbie. Her fashions were a mirror of the times. In the early sixties they resembled current designers like Balenciaga and Christian Dior.
In 1966, Barbie began hanging out with her mod cousin Francie and Francie’s English pal Casey, and her fashion style changed. She wore wild-colored fashions influenced by London’s Carnaby Street. She became friends with British model Twiggy (in doll form).
In 1968, Barbie even had an ensemble called “Festival Fashion”, with a pair of flowered pants, fringed belt, pink vest, ruffled blouse, and pink head scarf. Perhaps her “new and groovy” friend P.J. was advising her, but Barbie was never one to be behind the fashion times.
We all wanted to be Barbie. She taught us about style, and taught us we could be whatever we wanted to be. A nurse? A pilot? An astronaut? Anything! Hey, for while she even ran her own fashion shop, just like me.
In the 70’s Barbie went to Malibu, California and got a tan. In the 80’s she got work-out wear and shoulder-pads. But in any year, Barbie was the most fashionable.
Visit our blog weekly; we’ll have more installments of Celebrity Fashion Icons of other decades coming in future weeks!