The REAL 1970s: The '70s Love Retro!

Thursday, January 31, 2008

The '70s Love Retro!

As if it wasn't enough to be overshadowed by the 1960s, the dear old '70s sought out retro style at every opportunity. Think Laura Ashley. Think smock tops. Think of those revolting, to the floor dresses with puffed sleeves. Think of the '50s look. Think of the '60s look. Think of the '40s look. Think of those 1930s platform shoes.

But it wasn't enough to buy new clothes made in a retro style - the adorable '70s also decided that genuine old clothes were a WOW, as this newspaper article from April 1976 shows.

Not keen on the pearly king, but the Pre-Raphaelite maiden looks like a bit of all right.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: I saw John Lydon being interviewed a year or two back and he said (of Punk): "We put a stop to the 1970s. Somebody had to!"; 1:35 am, February 01, 2008

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INTRODUCTION

This is one of a series of three blogs - the other two cover the 1960s (Spacehopper), and the 1980s ('80s Actual).

After all the '70s hype of the last ten years or so, this is a chance to relive the decade as it really was in England, through newspaper and magazine clippings and memories.

This is the REAL 1970s, not the BBC or Wikipedia's versions, which hype the decade to death and bolster it up with 1960s and 1980s pop culture.

The '70s were often grim, far slower moving than today, and saw the '60s hippie spell rapidly fading to be replaced by economic gloom and a glut of anger - which manifested itself in the Punk era.

It's the decade where we liked the Wombles, chucked frisbees, watched Upstairs, Downstairs and Starsky & Hutch, and witnessed the gloriously tacky but hugely danceable rise of a type of music called "Disco" - a new soundtrack for the discotheques, which had been established before the decade began. With its rich influences, including Soul and Pop, Disco was a wow. Though not with everybody.

Very few people had a video recorder (only 5% of UK households had one by 1980), there were no mobile phones, and although colour TV had been around in this country since 1967, they didn't come cheap and many of us poorer folk stuck to black and white.

Tristram of George & Mildred got "Pong" at Christmas 1979, but nobody I knew had a TV games system, which became available, at a price, late in the decade.

Many of us were dirt poor, inflation rocketed, in 1979 interest rates soared to 17% - the highest since records began in 1694, decimalisation (the coins were designed in the late '60s ready for "D" day in 1971) was controversial - was it bumping up prices? - and the Queen's Silver Jubilee Day saw the Sex Pistols in the pop charts with a song which certainly did not express loyal greetings...

Come back to the REAL 1970s, no rosy coloured specs, no rewriting of the decade to include pop culture belonging to the '60s or '80s, but as clear a view as I can possibly give of the decade!

This blog is largely based on English magazine and newspaper clippings and my memories, but I hope that it will also be useful and enjoyable to those living in the other UK nations - and much further afield.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

The '70s Love Retro!

1 comment:

INTRODUCTION

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The Real 1970s...