7 1960s Trends: The Mods

and the Psychedelic Era

The 1960s were a decade of change and experimentation and color trends
closely mirrored this phenomenon where the early 1960s started with dark
and muted tones but increased in clarity and hue that continued well into the
1970s. Part of the reason colors became brighter in fashion and design
related to the light fastness and stability of these highly chromatized shades.
This enhanced feasibility inspired designers to become more imaginative
and creative with their designs. The 1960s were a prosperous decade of
many new fashion trends. Some of these were influenced by social move-
ments and others were influenced by celebrities such as Jackie Kennedy
with her pillbox hats, and boxy, Chanel style jackets with large buttons and
pencil skirts. In the early 1960s, the London Modernists, or Mods, were
overriding fashion designers and dictating the current styles and fashion
trends. Mary Quant was a pivotal designer for this movement and in 1963
she received the Dress of the Year award by the Bath Fashion Museum for
her mini dress that was fashioned in a cream wool jersey with blue trim.
She saw fashion as more of a whimsical game than an industry and created
fashions that encouraged young people to dress to please themselves.
Young men were following the hair fashion styles worn by rock bands
such as the Who and the Beatles that favored close-fitting jackets and
pants as well as Edwardian collarless silver-gray suits with moptop-style
haircuts. These styles were, in part, an evolution of the Teddy Boy style
that was popular in the 1950s. Women wore very short skirts, the minis
and the micros as well as brightly colored go-go boots and sleeveless
dresses and blouses. These fashions emulated styles more associated
with children than adults.
In 1966, Andy Warhol created his paper “Souper Dress” that was
marketed and sold by the Campbell Soup Company for two soup can
labels and 1 USD. The idea of paper dresses and disposable clothing
was a fad that developed in the 1960s and was short-lived due to their
ill-fitting, uncomfortable and flammable characteristics. Most of these
were constructed in bright colors or in black and white for further
embellishment by the consumer.

Color Trends and Selection for Product Design.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-39395-9.00007-4
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 29
30 COLOR TRENDS AND SELECTION FOR PRODUCT DESIGN

In the art world, the artist, Yves Klein deposited a Soleau Envelope
in 1962 for his bright lapis lazuli blue color, aptly named IKB,
commonly known as Yves Klein Blue or International Klein Blue. The
purpose for this registration was to protect the purity of his color that
was created from ultramarine pigment suspended in Rhodopas, a poly-
vinyl acetate, which give the color its unique hue. Although Klein
introduced this and other bright colors in monochromatic canvases
(including orange, pink, yellow and red) in the late 1950s the work was
poorly perceived and largely misunderstood that were probably ahead
of their time. However, this IKB color became an important color for
the 1960s and early 1970s eras. Two important Art Movements in the
1960s were Op Art and Artre Povera. Op Art or Optical Art was
officially born in 1964 when Time Magazine described this new Art
Movement as art that appears to be moving or breathing due its precise
placement of lines and curves. Op Art became wildly popular and was
soon in evidence in fashion, advertising and interior designs. This
movement started as an achromatic style in black and white and a few
years later evolved into a polychromatic style. Two artists that were key
to this movement were Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley. Victor
Vasarely is a Hungarian-born artist who is a pioneer in this 3D,
geometric style of art. His early work was a series of pulsating black
and white pieces and emerged into colored pieces starting with his
Plastic Alphabet that was painted in shades of red, blue, purple and
orange. Bridget Riley was a British painter and designer whose Op Art
pieces were considered to surpass those of Victor Vasarely. As with
Vasarely, her work started in black and white but evolved into color. In
1967, she created work in the ancient Egyptian Color Pallet and later
did a study on the psychological effects of monochromatic pieces, one
of her major projects was at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in 1983
where she painted the walls with a series of pinks, blues and yellows
that was reported to reduce the application of unwanted graffiti.
The other pivotal Art Movement of the 1960s was Arte Povera or
“Poor Art.” This movement originated in Italy, evolving from the
decline of Abstract Art and is characterized by its use of everyday
materials such as burlap bags, newspapers and bricks. Italian natives
Mario Merz and Luciano Fabro were two of the key artists. One of
Mario Merz most famous pieces was his Igloo series that were created
from found objects and consisted of materials such as metal, glass,
stone, mesh fabric, etc. that were electrified and illuminated with neon
and incandescent lights that were positioned to shine through the
dirtiness or to send a message using neon signs. In 1996, Merz
7: 1960S TRENDS: THE MODS AND THE PSYCHEDELIC ERA 31

developed a fashion show with Jill Sander where he created a wind

tunnel containing white cloth that was twisted with leaves and sticks.
Luciano Fabro was the unofficial father of the Arte Povera movement
and was influenced by artists such as Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana.
One of Fabro’s most famous sculptures was composed of a mirror with
part of the coating scraped off. This piece was entitled “Il Buco” or “The
Hole” and is intended to represent the dichotomy of ones identity with
the emptiness of society. Fabro frequently worked with such raw
materials as rolls of tightly wound copper wire, strips or curls of paper,
tubular metal and molten glass.
In 1963, Josef Albers published his ground-breaking book, Interaction
of Color. This work was a fresh look at the basics of color optics and
explored color in context where colors, when layered or appear next to
each other influence their hue. As designers and color chemists work
with developing new colors or pallets for products, this is an important
area of research in order to see how one color component may impact
the space that surrounds them rather than looking at distilled hues that are
separate from their immediate surroundings.
In the mid-1960s, the Beatles also influenced fashion trends with
their psychedelic floral shirts, leather sandals and paisley suits in pastel
colors of yellows, blues and greens. In 1968, The Beatles released
their “Beatles” album that was commonly referred to as the White
Album and John Lennon celebrated the minimalist fashion with his
signature white suit.
The 1960s nail and lip colors were slightly pink, and sometimes
completely white. There was a sense that vitality was being erased or
obliterated and could be linked to the wide-spread use of illicit drugs
that dominated the 1960s. The popularity of white lipstick was
associated with girl rock bands such as the Shirelles. The fashion
designer, Emilio Pucci, was also a prominent influence in the 1950s and
the 1960s. His signature prints were psychedelic in pattern and ranged
in colors from acid pinks and greens to lavender and magenta and were
influenced by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.
The appliance colors that dominated the 1960s were primarily earth
tones. Colors such as Avocado Green and Harvest Gold were key
to this time period and Cinnamon Red was somewhat less popular.
Again, these were colors that became popular in the automotive sector
in the 1970s. In 1963, Kenner/Hasbro introduced their first “Easy
Bake” toy oven, in colors of turquoise, yellow and orange. The history
of the Easy Bake Oven is quite interesting and mirrors the color and
social trends reflected in the larger society. In 1969, the first Avocado
32 COLOR TRENDS AND SELECTION FOR PRODUCT DESIGN

Green version of the Easy Bake Oven was produced. It also was
designed with a hood and a nonworking clock.
In 1962, Crayola changed the name of their neutral color crayon
named, “flesh” to “peach” to combat racial insensitivities.
1962 was also marked the birth of the New York Mets Baseball team.
The iconic blue and orange colors were chosen to indicate the genesis of
the team from the blue Brooklyn Dodgers and the Orange New York
Giants that had left the New York area. This color scheme was also used
in the 1964 65 NYC World’s Fair to gird its exterior panels a short
distance from the Mets Stadium in Queens, NY. The US Space Park at
the World’s Fair featured dancers in neon jumpsuits and atomic hats that
attempted to explain space-age science to the casual observer and ignite
the world’s passion about the emerging space exploration program.
Googie architecture emerged in the late 1950s and peaked in 1964 at
the World’s Fair. This space-age architecture was an exaggerated modern
style that was heavily influenced by the post-World War II automotive
culture from the 1950s with sweeping facades and bold colors. This
architectural style was heavily criticized as a fad but it now currently
recognized a true architectural movement. Few examples of this style still
exist today in the United States, most are in Southwest and many of these
still function as diners or bowling alleys and are reminiscent of the
Jetson cartoon that was popular with children in the early 1960s. One of
the Jetson’s family pets was Orbitty who expressed his emotions by
changing colors. Judy Jetson, the teenage character of the cartoon,
embodies the fashion of the 1960s with her platinum-white hair and
fuchsia space-age clothing that has a Googie feel of geometric shapes
and tidy, ultra-tight lines. Googie color schemes were dominated by
turquoise, corals, pinks, light yellows and light blues.
In the 1960s, the American automotive manufacturers were losing
market share to international imports. The Big Three (General Motors,
Ford and Chrysler) had over 90% of the American market and about
50% of the global market. However, to combat the global threat, the
Big Three decided to segment their nonluxury vehicles into three broad
classes; economy cars, muscle cars and pony cars. The 1960s vehicles
focused on performance and each of the Big Three manufacturers tried
to produce the car with the largest engines possible to out-do their
competitors. The muscle and pony cars were painted with less
traditional, higher visibility colors like yellow, orange and violet while
the more traditional sedans and family cars remained firmly entrenched
with the 1950s colors. As fins and fenders became dimished, so did the
two-toned and three-toned paints also decreased in the 1960s for
7: 1960S TRENDS: THE MODS AND THE PSYCHEDELIC ERA 33

the same reasons. The exuberant colors were in part due to the use of
heavy metal-based pigments such as molybdate orange and cadmium
yellow, lead carbonates and lead chromates. These pigments were later
banned for use in automotive paints due to their toxicity and these
vibrant shades have never been replicated. In 1966, the Bertone-styled
Lamborghini in stunning shades of Lime, Electric Blue and a Raspberry
Red. The 1960s were also known as the decade when the unfortunate
trend of vinyl or laundau tops appeared as faux convertible tops on the
roof of vehicles; mostly in black but also seen in various shades of tan,
white and green. This trend started in the United States and then spread to
Britain. Eventually, Citroen, Audi, Porsche and Opel also picked up this
trend a few years later. Another trend that became firmly entrenched in the
1960s was the use of metallescent and pearlescent paints. These metallic
and metallescent trends continued to be popular for the next 30 years.

Further Reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_in_fashion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_New_York_World%27s_Fair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googie_architecture
http://www.spaceagecity.com/googie/
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id5GX-uAAAAQBAJ&pg5PA130&hl5
en#v5onepage&q&f5true 1960’s
http://www.hasbro.com/en-us/brands/easybake
http://www.pigments.com/Products/Inorganic-Pigments/Chrome-Yellow-and-
Moly-Orange/NM-33-FM-Molybdate-Orange-Y-S.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jetsons_characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Quant
http://www.thestyleking.com/compass/the-beatles-mens-fashio/
http://laughingsquid.com/the-souper-dress-a-warhol-inspired-pop-art-paper-dress-
by-campbells/
http://www.enjoy-your-style.com/white-lipstick.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein
http://www.wikiart.org/en/eva-hesse/expanded-expansion-1969#supersized-
artistPaintings-302502
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-bourgeois-louise.htm
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Luciano-Fabro
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/03/arts/03fabro.html?_r 5 0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Merz#Work
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/merz-igloo-do-we-go-around-houses-or-do-
houses-go-around-us-t05755/text-summary