Sixties Fashion: From Less is More to Youthquake Hardcover – Illustrated, October 29, 2013

I own a lot of fashion books, especially of the 60's Fashions. Being a teenager in the 60's, I owned most of these clothes and accessories that are beautifully featured in this book. Jonathan Walford has put together one of the most complete fashion coverage books of sixties fashions and he has used many gorgeous large full color photos to give the reader a true feeling of the gorgeous clothes from that decade.The book begins coverage of the early 60's Jackie Kennedy simple, yet sophisticated dresses and Chanel type suits and ends with the more suede, peasant, comfy clothing from 1969 which turned into a more Hippie look. What I love about this book is the designers of the decade are covered as well as catalog pages and magazine ads, so you get a true feel of the clothing worn by the rich and famous as well as the regular school girl. There are also some actual clothes on mannequins, so you can actually see the details of the outfits.Looking at some of the clothing from famous 60's designers Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, Pucci, Cardin, Cassini, Saint Laurent, Mary Quant, Vera, Courreges', Heim, Rabanne, Valentino, Laroche, Lanvin and many more, you get the feel of their distinct styles. Also included in this book are some famous fashion faces of the sixties- Jackie Kennedy, Twiggy, Cher, Jean Shrimpton, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Racquel Welch, Susan George and more. But, the real stars of this book are the fashions that everyone wore through the 60's decade.You'll see Chanel suits, Cocktail dresses and coats, Culottes, Coat dresses, Evening dresses, the London Look dresses, Shirtwaist dresses with men's ties, Poor Boy tops, Mondrian squares, Minis, Midis, Floral trouser suits, Shifts, Tops with matching tights under mini skirts, Granny gowns, Monokinis, Scandal suits, Midriff dresses, Slingback kitten heels, Go-Go Boots, Discotheque dresses, Geometric prints, Op art prints, Sequins and Chain link dresses, Fringe, A-line dresses, Paper dresses, Space age styles, Velvet romance dresses, even hats, wigs, shoes and boots and so much more are pictured in this highly informative book. This Sixties Fashion From 'Less Is More' to Youthquake, is without a doubt one of the best 60's Fashion books you can find and from it's great informative reading to it's gorgeous mainly color photos that take you into the 60's, earns 5 BIG STARS.

As someone who lived through the 1960s as a adolescent, I found this book to be a wonderful document with lots of photos of our misspent youth. From Twiggy and the British Mods to Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, the impact of rock and roll, couture, and youthquake -- the society we lived in could be compared to rising and falling hemlines, the use of stark or extravagant decoration, vintage costumes...It is a great coffee table book.

This book is outstanding. In truth I got it to use for an altered book project and additional collage fodder. But the book itself is so well designed and so in keeping with the times that I'll be keeping it safe and well-loved.

Very interesting..things i have never heard of..fun to look through..nice photos and info in words

My daughter is into 60s fashion and she loved this book. Lots of great content and pictures. Book arrived in beautiful condition, and shipping was very fast.

Great book

This is an excelleny book on the fashion of the 1960s, both editorially and in pictures. Definitely not at all disappointing.

The book was in excellent condition. Great pictures. Some of the material was new--not found in other fashion books about this same period. I have been involved in vintage fashion presentations since l998 and have read extensively on the subject.

What is particularly good about this book is that the clothes themselves are very well reproduced. Alongside archive photographs of the items being worn, the book is filled with photographs of the items themselves, usually on mannequins, reproduced often full-page, so that the reader has the opportunity to examine the fabric, the patterns and the way the clothes hang. The photographs of the garments on the mannequins mostly come from the Fashion History Museum in Ontario and are worth the price of the book alone.As an overview of women's fashion in the 1960s, the book is certainly thorough. The author, Jonathan Walford, certainly knows his stuff. I am an enthusiast for retro clothing and I learned a lot from the book. I am sure that even fashion historians would come away from reading this book having gleaned new insights into the way fashion developed over the 10 years of the 1960s. Men's fashion doesn't get much of a look-in, which is a shame, given how ground-breaking men's fashion was in the 1960s, perhaps a companion volume looking specifically at menswear would be a good idea?A gorgeous book, elegantly designed and written with obvious love for and knowledge of the subject. A great gift for any fashion fan!

"Youthquake" was a term coined by Diana Vreeland, editor-in-chief of US Vogue to describe the seismic shift that was to take place as the youth market became the dominant force in determining the direction of the fashion industry during the sixties.Jonathan Walford's book provides an almost season-by-season narrative of the huge changes that were to come about as the decade unfolded; the move away from couture and the rise of boutique fashion - cheap, affordable style, influenced by ethnic/Pop culture and driven by new production markets, fabrics and an affluent, assertive young consumer-base. Although the development of various styles and trends are the main topic, Walford takes the time to set fashion within the wider cultural context of art, music, film and social change; there is an emphasis on developments in London and the USA, and women's fashion dominates (men's styles get one brief chapter of their own) but that is to be expected given the period.The book contains 306 illustrations with 176 in colour; a nice selection of contemporary fashion photos, design sketches, trade advertising and mannequin displays. I would have liked a little more correlation between text and the examples presented, but on the whole the overview works well.This is a well-presented and fairly inclusive study of the subject; a cut above what could easily be seen as another coffee-table book. A good and informative general historical survey of a watershed decade for fashion.

I have a few books that could be referred to as `Coffee Table Books'. The type of things that is so large that it could be used as a coffee table itself. Most of these books are filled with pretty colour pictures, but don't always have the written content you may expect from such a large tome. Not so `Sixties Fashion: From 'Less is More' to Youthquake' by Jonathan Walford, this is a glossy full colour book about 60s fashion that is as much about the history of the clothing as it is about the imagery.`Sixties Fashion' is the type of artistic, yet informative, book that would suit someone keen to know a little more about the era, or an Undergraduate student. It goes into some detail on various different fashion ideals of the time and tries to explain a little of how they came about and what they represented. Many of these sections are coupled with a few images from that trend. Who can forget the paper dress, nice idea; just don't go out in the rain.The only real issue I have with `Sixties Fashion' is that the demographic who will find it the most useful is very narrow. For the layperson, the book is a little too full of text and although full of imagery, there are better examples out there for just visuals. In turn, a more advanced student will find the text a little too basic. However, if you are amongst that group who wants to delve deeper into understanding fashion history then this is a great starting point; informative and colourful, covering a wide range of fashions from the era.

Album-sized and crammed with images, the majority of which are in colour, this is arguably one of the best books on the Sixties - let alone fashion - I've seen. Comprehensive in both editorial and visual study, I'd recommend this for anyone interested in that most transformative of decades, let alone a fashion or pop culture student.For fashion students however, this is a must. When I was at art college during the late 80s and early 90s, Thames & Hudson were the kings of art books - so it's great to see them taking on fashion in such an immersive way. Occasionally its a bit dry for the curious, but the sheer interconnectedness and wealth of imagery more than makes up for this. And whoever picture researched this book deserves a medal, because it's crammed with new and highly illuminative shots - both of fashion on the streets, as well as a heap of catalogue and advertising material that really prove how much ground was covered in ten short years.Coming in from the late 50s (and therefore showing what the 60s inherited), the book breaks down into seven major chapters, covering the rise and fall of labels and department stores; statistics help put the industry into global context, and it's possible to chart the importance of print media (and pop) on spreading fashion to the masses. There's also some lost treasures in here, such as the brief attempt to launch paper clothing - and while that might sound a bit weird, wait until you see the images included here: they're a pop art lover's dream.A highly, highly recommended book!

This book came as a pleasant surprise: I was expecting the archetypal coffee-table book, all shiny pictures and little substance, but what I got was shiny pictures AND a fascinating documentary upon the fashion scene in the nineteen-sixties. I was particularly pleased that it did not just take a view of fashion from a date towards the end of the sixties and play to our amusement at the wacky styles then prevalent. The book starts at the very beginning of the decade and shows clearly the way that the well known sixties look came into being.I lived through the sixties, and was young enough not to have been offered any of the mind altering 'experiences' which lead to the famous quote, "If you can remember the sixties, you weren't there." This book certainly seems to cover the fashion world through this period pretty faithfully. There were many short lived styles that I had completely forgotten but, which this book puts into context. I have no knowledge of, or real interest in the fashion business; for me, this book is an interesting piece of social history but, I would imagine that it would be invaluable to anyone looking at the history of fashion and, as I said of myself, great for anybody just keen to understand more about a crucial period in our history.