Why is it that 60s and 70s costumes have become so common again in our society? Over the past few years the Retro look has become huge. It has, once again, become enormously popular to wear clothes that, not so very long ago, would have caused only laughter. If in the 80s or early 90s you had taken to walking around in a flowery shirt, over sized sunglasses and a pair of flared trousers then you would soon have lost any ’street cred’ that had previously been yours.
Maybe it was in the later 90s when groups like ‘Pulp’ helped to introduce ‘Geek Chic’ and began to sport such common 70s costumes such as argyle tank tops and duffel coats, that it all kicked off. At that time music was becoming increasingly stagnant. People were tiring of endless anonymous remixes and dance tracks. British music needed identity and energy putting back into it. This made way for the advent of ‘Brit Pop’ with bands such as ‘Oasis’ and ‘Blur’ at the forefront. To put the ‘Britishness’ back into modern music people began to look back to the 60s and 70s which had typified it so well.
From the 90s the Retro scene has carried on strong. We have seen the return of many things that we thought had been forgotten long ago, even with children’s toys and games such as ‘Twister’, ‘Ker-Plunk!’ and the much loved ‘Space Hopper’. In the music scene, many bands have an image built around 70s costumes and a sound that is reminiscent of classic bands of the era such as ‘The Who’ or ‘The Rolling Stones’. We have even had a strong resurgence of Punk bands which was what finally closed the 1970s.
