The 1960s is remembered as a revolutionary period in fashion, where changes in hairstyles and clothing reflected the music and politics of the time. Much of these changes started in the 1950s, with America regaining its prosperity after the Great Depression and Europe starting to recover after the Second World War.
Styles from these two decades have influenced hair fashions ever since. While the '50s is most remembered for hair styling, the '60s saw a return to women's hair cutting and it ended by sweeping away previous formality in hair.
Styling
The 1950s is famous for highly styled and voluminous hair. This was not just the preserve of women, as men wore famously coiffed looks, such as the pompadour. This cut was left long and thick on the top so that it could be greased upward in a distinctive quiff.
The most fashionable styles for '50s women involved curls, from the short poodle-cut, which had a razor-cut neck with curls heaped on the top of the head, to longer wavy styles. Platinum blonde was a popular color, and hair needed to be set on rollers each day in order to maintain its perfectly curled style.
The Mod movement started in the 1950s and with it came a new style of haircuts for men. Mods cared about their appearance and precision hair-cutting was part of that. Hair was razor cut and although the smooth styles look like a short cut by today's standards, they were still considered subversive by many of the conservative older generations.
Mod styles had a square, smooth shape, often with straight bangs. Famous mod bands include The Who and The Small Faces, but the Beatles made mod cuts really famous during their 1964 tour of the U.S., with their mop-top hair. Mod girls usually wore their hair straight down with heavy bangs.
Hippie culture blossomed at the end of the '60s, and although not everybody became part of this, the styles of this period were extremely influential. By the end of the decade all hair-styling was much more casual, with a natural, informal look becoming the norm.
Hippies wore natural hair, without a particular cut and without styling product. It was shampooed, center parted and left to hang down. Although since then, fashion has experimented with more formality in hair, styles have never really gone back to a time before this. Most people today would never spend the time that was essential in the 1950s, styling their hair on a daily basis.
Beehive
In 1960, hairdresser Margaret Vinci Held invented the beehive, one of the most famous symbols of '60s hair. To do a beehive, the crown section of the hair is set to curl forward on a large roller. When set, this is teased for maximum volume, then the top is smoothed down around it. The new aerosol hairsprays made maintaining this style much easier. With much of '60s style British-led, the beehive was an all-American symbol, often called a B-52 because its shape resembled the nose cone of the Stratofortress bomber.
Afro
Another voluminous style, the afro is one of the most important styles of the 1960s because it represents a relationship between between fashion and culture. Like the beehive, this style originated in America, where the Black is Beautiful movement encouraged a sense of pride in natural African features. The afro is simply long, natural hair that can be styled by combing with a traditional pick.
Women's Hair-Cutting
The high-fashion looks in '60s hair came from cutting. Vidal Sassoon was the most influential hairdresser of the decade, unveiling his new five-point cut on model Grace Coddington in 1963. He also cropped Twiggy's hair, cut Mary Quant's famous bob and snipped the locks of Mia Farrow for “Rosemary's Baby”. These cuts were very modern and did not require excessive styling.
References
- The Times. Vidal Sassoon: The Man Who Made English Hairstyling Great, Lisa Armstrong, October 21st 2009.
- The Mod Generation
Shefali Choudhury - Writer and visual artist, Suite Beauty topic editor, Shefali spent 10 years in professional makeup artistry from beauty to blood ...
