Style

For hippies, clothes reflected their beliefs and aspirations. Hippy style, like so many other renegade styles, was a rejection of establishment values. Their style embodied the belief that the clothes they wore and the lives they lead would change the Western world.

Handmade aesthetic

Hippies placed renewed value on handicrafts and the hand-made. Making one's own clothes, as well as other things, was regarded as a fulfilling creative experience and an alternative to the soulless uniformity of mass-production. Many elements of hippy dress reflect this.

Tie-and-dye and crochet were widely practiced because they could be done easily at home without needing technical skill or equipment. Other techniques practiced included batik printing, embroidery, applique and patchwork. All were used to customise, personalise and enliven hippy dress.

As with other renegade styles, commodification came quickly on the heels of creativity and mass-produced garments replicated the hippy, hand-made aesthetic.

Eclecticism

Clothes were colourful, romantic and playful, often a mixture of secondhand flea-market finds, the hand-made and the ethnic. Vintage clothing was still cheap and easy to find and its velvets and chiffons were particularly suited to the hippy ethic. An Edwardian dress might be happily paired with a crocheted waistcoat and an Afghan coat.

Roy Pennington, who moved to Brighton in 1966, recalls the colourful eclecticism of his own style:

"The blanket jacket ... That was a hobbity thing you know. I had a series of extremely loud trousers, some made out of furniture cloth, which were quite sweet. I once had a pair of ... white cloth sailor trousers ... and we dyed one leg pink and one leg green or red, I can't remember. The top was yellow'.

Ethnic clothing

Ethnic influences could be found in both hippy patterns and the garments themselves. These influences filtered through from the travel experiences on what became known as the "Hippy Trail" and underscored hippy rejection of the sober restraints of Western capitalist dress. Foreign garments that were popularised included ponchos, kaftans, suede fringed waistcoats in a Native-American style and, most famously, Afghan coats.

Accessories

Hair was worn long and natural by both men and women. Worn without hair products, it was kept under control when necessary by a head band or bandanna, and sweetened with the ubiquitous hippy scent patchouli oil.

Outfits were accessorised with strings of beaded necklaces and bracelets, but Roy Pennington recalls a more curious accessory worn by hippies in Brighton in the 1960s:

'For some reason people would wear a bell round their neck and you could tell who was walking up the street as you sat in your garret flat in Montpelier Road or whatever ... 'cos you could hear their bell'.

Similarly, Lisa Newnham, a hippy from the mid 1980s onwards, recalls: 'I had loads and loads of silvery sort of bracelets that I used to wear and bells hanging, anything that you could strap a bell to'.

Beaded Hippy dreadlock

(CT003930).