During the 1960s, rigid following of women's clothing and grooming fashions began to fall away. I find it fairly easy to guess the approximate dates of when photos taken in the years from around 1910 until about 1960, even if there were no cars in the background to refine my analysis. But after 1960, it isn't at all that simple.
Yes, the current scene of casual clothing with plenty of dominant logotypes is different from what one saw 50 years ago, but not by all that much. Today, 50-year-old scenes don't strike me as old-fashioned seeming as 50-year-old scenes did in 1966 -- or 100-year old scenes do today (the same scenes, of course, from 50 years farther out).
Below are photos I took of people in New York City in June of 1965. While the subjects do not appear totally modern, they are close enough that they can be seen as simply people, and not participants in a retro costume party.
Gallery
Tourists on Sixth Avenue.
Women on Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center in background.
Women near Sixth Avenue.
Passing out pamphlets, Fifth Avenue & 49th Street.
Window shopper, East 49th Street.
Vendor, Downtown Manhattan.
Vendor, Sixth Avenue & 51st Street.
Carriages at the Plaza. The building at the left across Fifth Avenue is the Sherry-Netherland, at the right is the Savoy Plaza.
Unloading a Cadillac, Central Park South.
Masked girls crossing Madison Avenue for some unknown purpose.
4 comments:
Cool photos. I enjoyed these.
The hair styles are a pretty good time indicator, especially crew cuts on the boys.
I must have stuffed my first comment... Sorry.
Everyone has _one_ great era in their life, productive, creative and socially successful. My era was 1963-70, especially 1965. The clothes, music and politics have never been as great as back then *sighs happily*.
Mark -- Yes, the hairstyles for younger women have changed from fairly short length to lo-o-o-o-o-ong. I considered mentioning that in the body of the post but didn't, figuring that observant people such as you would notice. For what it's worth, I prefer the shorter, mid-60s styles.
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