United States Girls' Clothes: Chronology--The 1970s

American girls pants jeans
Figure 1.--These American children in the 1970s are engaged in an Easter Egg hunt. We do not know where the snapshot was taken, we suspect somewher in the south. Notice the boys and girls are dressed similarly. You woukd not have seen this earlier.

There were major changes in girls clothes durung the 1970s. The changes which began in the laye-1960s became well established during the 1970s. Hippies and feminists had a major impct on the 70s. There were other factors at play. The War in Vietnam, industrial decline, increasing costs for gaslone, as well as seemingly unrelated matters such as central heating and air conditioning all affected clothing and fashion. This was the decde in which the Hippies which appeared in the 1960s had the greatest impact. The Hippies of the 1960s were mostly older teenagers anf college students. Hippy-influenced fashions reached primary-age gorls in the 70s. Perhaps the most notable development for girls was a kind of unprecedented fashion freedom that girls had never enjoyed before. Until the mid-1960s, girls had worn dreses. There were exceptions. During the summer girls might wear short pants or for caual wear they might even wear jeans, but most girls most of the time wore dresses and skirts. We can see that in school portraits. The most notable change for girls was they more and more girls wore boys' styles. Notably this same freedom did not extend to boys, other than long hair. Boys wanted no part of girls' clothes. The most important of those garments were of course pants, usully jeans and not just for plsy. We see girls going to school in all kinds of jeans and other colorful pants. Gurls like to decorate their jeans. Bell-bottoms were popular and ialso jeans thst looked well worn. Girls till wore dresses, but from the 70s it was a matter of choice. We notice many popular trends. One was the bell-shaped flared skirt. A popular fad was the kaftan.







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Created: 2:46 AM 7/4/2012
Last updated: 2:46 AM 7/4/2012