The Falling In The Hippie Handcraft Movement

Falling in the hippie style influence, came the hippie handcraft movement. This involved the movement of sewing your own garments, as ways to go against the establishment and create your own new clothes out of second hand items. Ketteler states in his book (2010) that by the 1970s, sewing did become a kind of political statement. The early 1970s saw recessional and inflation; all of the idealism and youthful energy from the sixties turned to alienation. Consumer culture and mass produced cheapness had taken the place of true craftsmanship. Making things with your own hands became a more conscious decision and sewing, needlework, and other crafts had a real "back to basics" vibe about them. Second hand or handmade garments were must haves (p. 103).
The movement was such a hit, that even high end
retail stores started to notice and begin down that road. Bergdorf Goodman installed a handcraft kit department, and also started selling macramé kits via mail order in the New York Times. Crafting was a real movement in the 1970s. The decades that gave us Motown and miniskirts made crafting cool, and this make it yourself culture definitely helped to set stage for today's craftivism- even if it was a bit of a roundabout journey " (Ketteler, 2010, p. 103). When asking my informant about whether or not she ever sewed any of her own items, she went on to state:
"I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that this was in the day of Home Economics in high school.
We learned to sew. We learned to alter patterns and even design and make our own. We learned how to take a baggie pant pattern and turn it into the skin tight look we saw in magazines and on TV. Most of the styles in dresses and tops were extremely easy to whip out with the new ‘Simple’ patterns being produced by the 3 major pattern companies. Learning to sew was one of the life changing events for a girl. Suddenly she was master of her own wardrobe as well as home fashions. If you could understand garment construction and fabric capabilities, you were well on your way to independence from the fashion market availability in shops. We would have girl afternoons and overnights where everyone was sewing. We could whip 2 or 3 outfits each in that time. You could have tied me to a sewing machine then and I would not have complained. My mother even sewed my senior prom dress that I designed. It was lavender with lots of lace trim. She was a genius in her craft. Needless to say, I still have it" V. Templeton (personal communication, October 16, 2016). (See Figure
5).
Author Ketteler (2010), also wrote the hippies generated an ecological consciousness of fashion by recycling of old vintage clothes as well as their cannibalizing of old fabrics and hangings, out of which they cut new garments (p. 110). This trend of creating your own garments was seen as a threat to the fashion industry. Author Charles Reich touches on the concept in his book, The Greening of America, stating, “The hippie’s open minded pluralism threw down the gauntlet to the seasonable revisions proffered to women by the mainstream fashion industry. Savoring vintage garments established a continuum between past and present, a rejoinder to be forced amnesia of customers told that each year marked a tabula rasa of consumption” (Reich, 1970, p. 56). He also went on to talk about how another reason this certain fad from the 70s was subversive to the mainstream industry was based on the fact that it had to do with abolishing fashion designers. “It resonated as well with the burgeoning women’s liberation movement: women would no longer we told what to wear by a designer, who was usually a male” (p. 58).