The style of the sixties ARTS

MARIO AMAYA

The one constant thing that seems to dominate the young during this decade is a sense of style.

Not for three quarters of a century—perhaps

since the age -of the Aesthetes—has British youth been so obsessed with the outward

appearance of things. And it is not for nothing that the 'pop' phenomenon has taken root in England faster than anywhere else in Europe. Pop singers and groups who rely almost ex- clusively on innovation, presentation and quick change appeal for survival have set the prime examples for the younger generation of stylistic means of coming to terms with themselves and society.

Paul McCartney goes to India for a holiday and, the next we know, 'digs' from Hampstead to Earls Court are littered with batik-patterned fabrics, silver bells, incense burners, brass trays and joss sticks. The New Vaudeville Band pro- duces a couple of hits called 'Winchester Cathe- dral' and 'Finchley Central' in an Al Bowlly, megaphone style and a 'thirties revival is con- firmed. Richard and Jagger are sentenced in connection with drugs and the long-pressing problem of narcotics immediately becomes a cause eelebre in the daily press, with 7'he Times taking a stand for law reforms. But do the pop groups set the styles, or is it actually the other way around?

Chris Farlowe cut a disc not so long ago which indicates the predicament doily-birds and teeny-boppers must find themselves in. On a label appropriately titled 'Immediate Records' he shouts to an accompanying sitar: 'You're out of time, my baby/my poor old-fashioned haby./You're ahsolete, my baby/my poor old- fashioned baby.' The lyrics repeat insistently, against a background of Indian sounds: 'Baby, baby, baby, you're out of time,' adding the admonishment, 'You thought you were a clever girl/giving up the social whirl./You can't come back and be the first in line. . . . You don't know what's going on/you've been away far too long . . .' And here is the style- syndrome of the Swinging generation.

This is most evident in today's living sur- roundings. Permanent homes are no longer necessities, and a bed-sit mentality has taken over. Possessions are of relatively little value, since they. can be replaced cheaply and easily along with the settings; hence the 'Habitat' way of life---cardboard and plastic furniture, eye- appealing household trivia with Union Jacks or whatever, made to last only as long as the interest in the decoration holds out. Under these conditions the bed-sitting, room has be- come an extension of personal taste as it never could have been before. With tins of bright enamel, aluminium foil and PVC at five shillings a yard, you can turn the most dismal one-room flat into a psychedelic haven of jazzy pop, op patterning that illustrates conspicuously to your friends just how tuned in you are.

An era preoccupied with style is an era of mannerisms, and mannerisms depend on the mannered, the change or novelty for its own sake, the quickly digested ready-made appear- ance of something hot off the fashion line. Thus Art Nouveau design can be stencilled on coffee- bar posters, put on pop record sleeves, made into wall patterns, dress fabrics, furnishings,

or even turn up as set designs for television. But since each fad spreads so quickly, the ability to sustain interest or excitement is low and the style mast change—a condition capi- talised by gear shops. 'Granny Takes a Trip' has gone through at least three switches of outdoor decor since it opened: the entire shop- front, including window, door and woodwork. was first covered with splashy Art Nouveau swirls, then a giant face of Jean Harlow, and most recently with an American Indian's head --arch-symbol of the West Coast Hippies.

If Art Nouveau, itself a mannered style. was the first of these easily adaptable fashions to be applied to every form of pop culture in the ',lone:. 'thirties-style now seems to be in. Blue-glass coffee tables, steel tubular furniture, smoky mirrored walls. Almost over- night, Pre-Raphaelite shifts of lace and frills have been exchanged for beaded dresses and transparent chiffons. The movie poster of Garbo or Dietrich has replaced the sinuous Mucha lady. And a sophisticated pop artist like Roy Lichtenstein actually produces a theatre poster which parodies himself parodying 'thirties-style. Lichtenstein's poster sells for £6 at Austin Reed; the movie poster can be bought for as little as thirty bob. At throwaway prices, every- one can afford the latest Camp, and there will be something new coming along next month.

In clothes, men have had a rougher time staying with fast changes, but recently they've been catching up. Regency velvets and ruffled fronts, after all, were expensive items for a short-lived fashion. But a shop in the Chelsea Antique Market has neatly solved the male sar- torial problem at a price level to fit any hipster pocket. Old demob suits were bought up, re- cut and sold for £8; Second World War sailor trousers, dyed at home in bright mauve, orange or purple, sell for £2. They also make an Indian collarless batik shirt that reaches to the knees and costs sixty-five shillings; perfect for an evening with Ravi Shankar.

't Was Lord Kitchener's Valet,' which is just off Carnaby Street and has a branch at the Antique Supermarket, sells its stock of old heretofore UM% anted military uniforms faster than they can be replaced, along with police- men's capes and military hats. A Grenadier Guards coat worn with blue jeans was the rage in June. but already that's been replaced with kitsch-coloured Carnaby Street jackets, printed in huge, gaudy floral patterns.

An older, more conservative generation who bought their suits by post from the Army and Navy Stores year after year, knowing they could be certain of always getting the same style and quality, might look askance at all this quick-change fashion. But examine the economics of the situation: the prices of Savile Row or even Regent Street are well beyond the income of an overtaxed young Englishman and Bond Street has priced itself out of the range of the ordinary secretary-typist. So they have found clothes that are cheap enough, gay enough, wearable enough, just, at a price that allows them not only to discard when the style changes, but also actively to take part in the fashion change itself.

Art forms in an age of stylistic mannerism become a way of life and tend to infiltrate every level of design. The gear shops them- selves have, in their decors, typography and window displays, as well as their merchandise, turned into pace-setters. The polished steel hoardings of 'Bazaar,' the aluminium walls of `Count-Down,' the psychedelic exterior of `Dandle Fashions,' and the dark, deep-blue plasticised atmosphere of Way In' (at Harrods of all places) become extensions not only of the fine art of the time, but the clothes on the racks, as well as the record albums being sold at the next counter. After all, it isn't by acci- dent that the gear shops flip their decor as often as they do the pop tunes blaring out the newest hits as you try on the latest 'drag.' In fact, the entire appearance of Carnaby Street changes fortnightly, its exterior decors attempt- ing to outdo each other with bizarre, out- landish ideas which often make it difficult to find the clothes under all the window-dressing.

This insistent and continuous need for change, what one writer has labelled 'the tradi- tion of the new,' was foreshadowed by the pop artists as long as a decade ago and is reflected in the kind of expendable art products cur- rently being shown in West End galleries. How prophetic Andy Warhol looks now, with his system of a picture factory, where hundreds of copies of the same image are silk-screened to meet demand, and where the image changes to meet the fashion. The graphic designers, television designers, record-sleeve artists, lay- out men on the glossies and ad-men are quick to get the point and have managed effectively and ingeniously to absorb what the fine art boys have done. Any week Tv's Top of the Pops will cue you in as to what is the latest thing in painting and sculpture: last month it was Minimal art, this month Kinetic and Opti- cal dovetailing with the new psychedelic fashion.

This conscious awareness of style in the 'sixties, this preoccupation with the way things look, has come to mean that more people are more aware than ever before of their visual environment. And, before one knocks it, it is as well to remember that it represents an up- grading of taste, a keener awareness of the things around us as they infiltrate our lives and our art. One now has total freedom to make one's own choices; to select, to create, to borrow or reshape exactly what one wishes and without any, predetermined restrictions. Who can censure , a generation so full of energy, enthusiasm, inventiveness and indi- viduality, a generation that has made a style for itself and its own time?