that's the way they liked it:
disco fashion
diana mankowski
Styles that Captured Different Impulses
1970's Women's Fashion, Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
This style also allowed for a greater emphasis on individuality by promoting looks that captured different impulses. For example, the guidebook, Disco Chic: All the Styles, Steps, and Places to Go, featured looks for women that ran the gamut from long dresses to short ones, hot pants to trousers, from modest cuts to low V-necks and super-high slits, and aggressive leather punk looks to an androgynous futuristic outfit. One page shows the same model in two outfits—one with leopard print hot pants and a long-sleeve red top, the other with a long-sleeve, flowered satin blouse over loose-fitting, straight-legged, satin pants. The outfits suggest two very different tones, especially in terms of sexuality, both appropriate for the disco.
Disco Chic also included images of men in everything from suits, casual pants, sweaters and other sportswear separates, to an all-in-one disco jumpsuit fashioned to look like a tuxedo and a “two-piece tunic and pants leather outfit” with trapunto and cowboy boots.
The most common disco fashions for men were casual sport separates or a variation on the three-piece suit, perhaps with some army surplus or leather thrown in for good measure. But popular disco styles for men also included previously shunned embellishments such as extra-wide lapels; snugly fit, yet widely flared trousers; shiny, shimmery fabrics; bright colors; loud, bold patterns; and boots with platform heels.
Disco Chic also included images of men in everything from suits, casual pants, sweaters and other sportswear separates, to an all-in-one disco jumpsuit fashioned to look like a tuxedo and a “two-piece tunic and pants leather outfit” with trapunto and cowboy boots.
The most common disco fashions for men were casual sport separates or a variation on the three-piece suit, perhaps with some army surplus or leather thrown in for good measure. But popular disco styles for men also included previously shunned embellishments such as extra-wide lapels; snugly fit, yet widely flared trousers; shiny, shimmery fabrics; bright colors; loud, bold patterns; and boots with platform heels.
The Glamour and Drama of Disco Dancing
1970s Disco Dancers, Courtesy of Vanessa Waterhouse
Disco’s emphasis on freedom and fantasy gave men license to engage in the traditionally “feminine” activities of primping, preening, and obsessing about fashion.
In Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero saved up his hard-earned cash for a flamboyantly colorful shirt or glamorous suit and then preened in front of the mirror. In doing so, he embraced the greater freedoms allowed men in the 1970s due to a previous generation of radical movements. As designer Yves St. Laurent explained to Women’s Wear Daily, “The spirit of the new generation of men is more liberated. They don’t have the fear of not being virile. Before this, there were always taboos.”
Although definitions of masculinity were changing and male disco looks ranged from aggressively macho to sophisticated to outrageously androgynous, all these looks remained acceptably masculine because they were used to compete for attention and attract women.
Disco dancers broke the mold when it came to fashion, allowing freedom, creativity, and individuality to reign supreme. Their outfits reflected the varied responses and lingering tensions of radical movements such as feminism, gay liberation, and sexual revolution, all of which had emerged a decade earlier.
But above all, disco fashion was about wearing clothes that complemented the glamour and drama of disco dancing. These memorable (and perhaps regrettable) looks of the recent past came to mark the decade of the 1970s.
For further reading:
Brian Sherratt and Nalani M. Leong, Disco Chic: All the Styles, Steps, and Places to Go
Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism
Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits
Tim Edwards, Men in the Mirror: Men’s Fashion, Masculinity, and Consumer Society
In Saturday Night Fever, Tony Manero saved up his hard-earned cash for a flamboyantly colorful shirt or glamorous suit and then preened in front of the mirror. In doing so, he embraced the greater freedoms allowed men in the 1970s due to a previous generation of radical movements. As designer Yves St. Laurent explained to Women’s Wear Daily, “The spirit of the new generation of men is more liberated. They don’t have the fear of not being virile. Before this, there were always taboos.”
Although definitions of masculinity were changing and male disco looks ranged from aggressively macho to sophisticated to outrageously androgynous, all these looks remained acceptably masculine because they were used to compete for attention and attract women.
Disco dancers broke the mold when it came to fashion, allowing freedom, creativity, and individuality to reign supreme. Their outfits reflected the varied responses and lingering tensions of radical movements such as feminism, gay liberation, and sexual revolution, all of which had emerged a decade earlier.
But above all, disco fashion was about wearing clothes that complemented the glamour and drama of disco dancing. These memorable (and perhaps regrettable) looks of the recent past came to mark the decade of the 1970s.
For further reading:
Brian Sherratt and Nalani M. Leong, Disco Chic: All the Styles, Steps, and Places to Go
Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism
Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits
Tim Edwards, Men in the Mirror: Men’s Fashion, Masculinity, and Consumer Society
Diana Mankowski received her PhD in history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her dissertation was titled “Gendering the Disco Inferno: Sexual Revolution, Liberation and Popular Culture in 1970s America.” She works as a free-lance historian in Michigan.
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