Revisiting the 1960's and Hairstyles from my Youth

          I recently bought granddaughter Amalia a sticker book from the Usborne Series about 1960's fashion history, and became fascinated reading it.  I realized that I am a living fossil who experienced every fashion fad of that decade--especially in the two years ('68 and '69) when I was living in London and met Mary Quant. And I own a mini-dress that was worn by Twiggy in a fashion shoot--although I gave it to daughter Eleni, since I am no longer the size of Twiggy.

          The sticker book inspired me to re-post this essay from nine years ago about my peculiar hairstyles of the period.  I just wish I had as much hair now as I did then, and I don't go to the hairdresser twice a week any more--just once.  I may even re-post a related photo essay about my memories of real-life sixties fashions.

Horrible Hairdos from my Youth

Last Thursday in The New York Times Style section, a page of photographs showed the six steps to achieving a retro ‘60’s beehive hairdo. According to a hairstylist at Bumble and Bumble “The key to make this look modern and not too retro is haphazardness.” He had prepared the models at Vera Wang’s fall show with “slightly messy” beehives with tousled locks at the nape of the neck. According to The Times, “Amy Winehouse offsets hers with tattooed arms.”

Ever since “Mad Men” ushered in a widespread nostalgia for the naughty 1960’s I have been bemused as young people who were not born then celebrate that era of sin, pointed bras and three-martini business lunches.

One of the few skill sets I have down pat is how to make a beehive hairdo. The sight of the “retro beehive” whisked me down Memory Lane, recalling the sight of myself and half a dozen freshman girls lined up at the mirrored wall in the dorm bathroom, carefully teasing our long hair until it stood straight up. Lots of hair spray was involved. My daughters think that I was solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer due to my lavish use of hair spray.

No tousled retro ironic beehives for us. Ours were as smooth and as stiff as a football helmet—hence all the urban legends about girls who never took down their beehives and ultimately learned that mice or something worse had nested within.

After teasing the hair into a state suggesting the Bride of Frankenstein, I would carefully fold it into a high French twist, securing it with a handful of hairpins and then, after using an afro pick to achieve maximum bouffant-ness, spray some more.

In my youth, a hairdo would come into fashion and we all would immediately have to have it, whether it was flattering or not. The first one I remember was the duck tail (also called D.A. for “Duck’s Ass”), the signature of “greasers” and their leather- jacketed girlfriends in the 1950’s. It took a long time for me to talk my parents into letting me have one—I was about 13 at the time—and even longer to convince them to let me add the peroxide streak that was de rigueur to go with it. I’m just sorry I don’t have a photo to show you how truly awful it looked.

Even more unforgiving was the pixie cut which I am told is now enjoying a renaissance on celebrities like Victoria Beckham. Less glamorous people, like me, ended up looking like someone who was just past chemo, or like those French women who fraternized with the Germans and were punished by having their hair cut off. I vaguely remember Jean Seberg as bringing the pixie cut into fashion. The unfortunate photo of me here in my pixie cut dates from 1958 when I was a junior in high school. 

Then I went to college in Wisconsin and mastered the non-ironic beehive. Two years later, in 1961 I transferred to U Cal Berkeley where I first encountered full-out ethnic Afros and white men with Jesus hair and beards. In graduate school in Manhattan, I remember other girls (not me) ironing their long blonde hair on an ironing board to straighten it and also setting it at night on empty orange-juice-concentrate cans.

After getting a Master’s from Columbia in 1964, I got a job in New York women’s magazines and hung around with editorial assistants who were dating those Mad Men types and drank martinis at lunch. I usually ate lunch at my desk.

Soon the Beatles came to the U.S. and Vidal Sassoon cut Twiggie’s hair into an asymmetrical bob and we all had to have some version of it. You can see my would-be Sassoon cut below. I wish I still had that mini-dress and that brooch. The photo is dated Feb. 1967.

Several haircuts have become all the rage since then—think Farrah Faucett’s feather cut and Jennifer Anniston’s whatever it was. And Kate Gosselin revisiting Sassoon. But I got married and had children and never had time any more to become a haircut fashion victim.

Now my hair has become so thin that I couldn’t possibly tease it into a beehive, ironic or not. Twice a week, first thing in the morning, I go to my hairdresser Roy Hurwitz of London Lass, because I am incapable of doing anything with my own hair. He trained under Vidal Sassoon.

Did you know that Joan Collins always wears a wig because her hair is so thin? I’m told she has 200 wigs. So does Lady Gaga, I think. Maybe wigs will become the next Big Thing.

What I Wore to the Mad Men Party

It WASN'T these unique and authentically 1960's palazzo pajamas designed by Anne Fogarty!

If you recall, the challenge I accepted from daughter Eleni was that I would wear  these appallingly ugly pajamas to the Worcester Art Museum's Mad Men Party on Saturday night, instead of the more seventies black suit I picked out, but only if 100 people voted that I should, voting on this blog or Eleni's or my Facebook pages. (Isn't that more fun than Elizabeth Warren vs. Scott Brown?)

While over 300 people read the post, only about 36 actually cast a vote, and the result was two to one -- 24 for the palazzo pants and 12 (mostly my friends) for the black suit.  But I only said I'd go for the pajamas if 100 people wanted me to.

So this is what I wore to the party.  I know, it's more "Dallas" than  "Mad Men", but at least the Beverly Feldman shoes were sort of psychedelic.

The party was a blast.  Six hundred people crowded into the Museum and had a great time--many of us revisiting and remembering our youth in the wild, wacky and tumultuous sixties.

The exhibit was brilliant--all the iconic news photographs of the decade including two Kennedy assassinations, the Beatles, Patty Hearst, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Malcolm X, Marilyn Monroe --my husband Nick remarked that as a reporter, he'd met and interviewed most of them.

The Renaissance Court was packed with people drinking martinis around the mosaic floor excavated from Antioch.  Shrimp cocktail in martini glasses, deviled eggs, smoked salmon, and later Jello with ReddiWip carried through the Sixties theme.

Museum Director Matthias Waschek spoke about the Museum's acquisition of the personal collection of David Davis to create the "Kennedy to Kent State" exhibit.

And everybody listened.

Including a lady in her mother's mink stole.  ( I realized I have my mother's silver mink stole in a closet somewhere--I'd forgotten all about it.)

Upstairs in the cafe, everybody was grooving to Rock'n'Roll, reprising their long-forgotten dance moves.

Barbara revisited the Carnaby Street Mod era.

Young folks were learning to love martinis.   Everyone was having fun.

But because I chickened out of wearing the palazzo pajamas, and so many people felt I should have, including a number of my friends at the party, Eleni insisted that I pose for the first photo above, wearing them in the privacy of my bedroom.  Maybe I'll work up the courage to don them for some future Sixties party, if I imbibe enough margaritas first. (I was going to pose holding a martini glass, but we don't own one.)

Behind me in that first photo you can see my 1960's self (lower left) in a grouping that includes four generations of teenagers--my maternal grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson (upper left), my mother, Martha Dobson Paulson (upper right) and my daughter, Eleni Gage de Baltodano (lower right.)   I can only imagine what my mother and grandmother would have to say about the Anne Fogarty palazzo pajamas.

What to Wear to the Mad Men Party?

(Okay, daughter Eleni has issued a challenge and I have accepted it.  If 100 people vote on my facebook page or on this blog post for me to wear the extremely ugly palazzo pajamas shown below to the party tomorrow, I’ll do it, but my husband is threatening that he won’t been seen with me if I do.)

Tomorrow night, Saturday, the Worcester Art Museum is launching an exhibition of photos from the nineteen sixties called “Kennedy to Kent State—Images of a Generation.”  And they’re celebrating the opening with a party.  The invitation says “Go Mad with Motown, martinis and more” and ends with “Mad Men-inspired attire encouraged.”

For a compulsive hoarder like myself, this is a piece of cake. (I guess that would be refrigerator cake if we’re evoking the sixties.)  I went to the back of my “out of season” closet where I keep “souvenir clothes.”  Then I started taking photos and trying on outfits (the ones that I could still zip up)  and quizzing my husband, Nick, on what I should wear.

I was 19 and in college when the sixties began.  By 1963 I was in New York in graduate school and in 1964 started my first job in public relations (next came magazine journalism) in Manhattan.

As I wrote last March in “Remembering Mad Men Days”  there were two dramatically different periods of fashion and lifestyle in the sixties.  Above are photos of me in 1965 (check out the hat and gloves!) and in1968—(what was I thinking?).  Between those two photos came the tsunami that washed away the hats and gloves and washed in mini skirts, Vidal Sassoon bobs, Twiggy, Mary Quant and the Beatles. The TV series Mad Men has been portraying both sides of that watershed as the program moves through the decade, so there’s a lot of leeway in what to wear to tomorrow’s party.

Sadly I no longer have either of those outfits I’m wearing above, but here’s what came out of my closet.

This is the jacket to a matching dress making an outfit that I call my “Bob Hope suit.”  The Ladies Home Journal had sent a woman reporter to Los Angeles to interview Bob Hope for an article and she arrived at his house wearing blue jeans.  The comedian threw her out and informed the magazine that he would not speak to a woman reporter dressed like that.  So the editor told me to go out and buy a “nice Republican suit” and this is what I bought.  Bob Hope seemed to like it, because he gave me a good interview.  But now the dress part of it is in the hands of my daughter Eleni who wore it recently to HER job at a New York magazine.  She also wore an ultra-mini dress of mine that was once worn by Twiggy in a fashion spread.  Neither dress would fit me any more. (Eleni weighs about 100 pounds.)

This sequined jacket and glittery blouse are both more eighties than sixties, as Eleni pointed out.

This orange dress is brand new, but it has the sixties look that’s been brought back by Mad Men fans, including the fabric that turns into paisley at the bottom.

Both this black jacket and dress and the shocking pink one have really big shoulder pads, very short skirts and lots of glitz on the buttons or the gold trim.

This dress has the right sixties look—very small waist and full skirt—but now I can’t begin to close the belt.

This is the dark blue jumpsuit that I wore to the Oscars when Nick was executive producer for Godfather III, which was nominated for best picture.  But that was in 1991 as I wrote in “Famous Oscar Flubs and Moments” and everyone was watching Madonna channeling Marilyn Monroe in all- white and Michael Jackson, sitting next to her, in a drum majorette’s outfit.

Now these incredibly ugly Palazzo Pajamas are perfect for a Sixties party.  And no, I’ve never had the nerve to wear them anywhere.  I bought this outfit at one of the vintage clothing shows that happens in Sturbridge, MA on the Monday before Brimfield opens, three times a year.

The pajamas, coincidently, were designed by Anne Fogarty who happened to be the sister of my first magazine-editor boss, Poppy Cannon, but they’ve both passed on to their rewards long ago.  Daughter Eleni e-mailed me “I really vote hard for the palazzo pants.  You’d be the belle of the ball.”

I know she’s right, but I still can’t muster up the nerve to be seen in public in that monstrosity, authentic as it may be. 

So with the help of my husband, this is the outfit I chose for tomorrow’s party. It may be more “Dallas” than Mary Quant  (I shopped at Biba Boutique the whole two years I lived in London—why didn’t I keep the stuff?) but at least I can still get into it.

And I think I’m going to pair it with these Beverly Feldman shoes.

I suspect there will be a lot of (old) people like myself tomorrow night reliving their salad days. I hear there will be devilled eggs and Jello…how about onion dip and Ritz crackers…and refrigerator cake?

Horrible Hairdos from my Youth

Last Thursday in The New York Times Style section a page of photographs showed the six steps to achieving a retro ‘60’s beehive hairdo. According to a hairstylist at Bumble and Bumble “The key to make this look modern and not too retro is haphazardness.” He had prepared the models at Vera Wang’s fall show with “slightly messy” beehives with tousled locks at the nape of the neck. According to The Times, “Amy Winehouse offsets hers with tattooed arms.”

Ever since “Mad Men” ushered in a widespread nostalgia for the naughty 1960’s I have been bemused as young people who were not born then celebrate that era of sin, pointed bras and three-martini business lunches.

One of the few skill sets I have down pat is how to make a beehive hairdo. The sight of the “retro beehive” whisked me down Memory Lane, recalling the sight of myself and half a dozen freshman girls lined up at the mirrored wall in the dorm bathroom, carefully teasing our long hair until it stood straight up. Lots of hair spray was involved. My daughters think that I was solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer due to my lavish use of hair spray.

No tousled retro ironic beehives for us. Ours were as smooth and as stiff as a football helmet—hence all the urban legends about girls who never took down their beehives and ultimately learned that mice or something worse had nested within.

After teasing the hair into a state suggesting the Bride of Frankenstein, I would carefully fold it into a high French twist, securing it with a handful of hairpins and then, after using an afro pick to achieve maximum bouffant-ness, spray some more.

In my youth, a hairdo would come into fashion and we all would immediately have to have it, whether it was flattering or not. The first one I remember was the duck tail (also called D.A. for “Duck’s Ass”), the signature of “greasers” and their leather- jacketed girlfriends in the 1950’s. It took a long time for me to talk my parents into letting me have one—I was about 13 at the time—and even longer to convince them to let me add the peroxide streak that was de rigueur to go with it. I’m just sorry I don’t have a photo to show you how truly awful it looked.

Even more unforgiving was the pixie cut which I am told is now enjoying a renaissance on celebrities like Victoria Beckham. Less glamorous people, like me, ended up looking like someone who was just past chemo, or like those French women who fraternized with the Germans and were punished by having their hair cut off. I vaguely remember Jean Seberg as bringing the pixie cut into fashion. The unfortunate photo of me here in my pixie cut dates from 1958 when I was a junior in high school.


Then I went to college in Wisconsin and mastered the non-ironic beehive. Two years later, in 1961 I transferred to U Cal Berkeley where I first encountered full-out ethnic Afros and white men with Jesus hair and beards. In graduate school in Manhattan, I remember other girls (not me) ironing their long blonde hair on an ironing board to straighten it and also setting it at night on empty orange-juice-concentrate cans.

After getting a Master’s from Columbia in 1964, I got a job in New York women’s magazines and hung around with editorial assistants who were dating those Mad Men types and drank martinis at lunch. I usually ate lunch at my desk.

Soon the Beatles came to the U.S. and Vidal Sassoon cut Twiggie’s hair into an asymmetrical bob and we all had to have some version of it. You can see my would-be Sassoon cut below. I wish I still had that mini-dress and that brooch. The photo is dated Feb. 1967.


Several haircuts have become all the rage since then—think Farrah Faucett’s feather cut and Jennifer Anniston’s whatever it was. And Kate Gosselin revisiting Sassoon. But I got married and had children and never had time any more to become a haircut fashion victim.

Now my hair has become so thin that I couldn’t possibly tease it into a beehive, ironic or not. Twice a week, first thing in the morning, I go to my hairdresser Roy of London Lass, because I am incapable of doing anything with my own hair. He trained under Vidal Sassoon.

Did you know that Joan Collins always wears a wig because her hair is so thin? I’m told she has 200 wigs. So does Lady Gaga, I think. Maybe wigs will become the next Big Thing.