Designer Hippies

Or ‘When my niece was a hippie for Halloween.’

My 15-year-old niece asked me what the Hippies were like. Frankly, they were a little before my time, but never really went away. I was a ‘punk.’

However, that didn’t stop my historical treatise. I began slowly, recalling how the Hopi Indians predicted a non Indian tribe that would follow Indian ways and begin a ‘movement’ to reclaim the Earth and its ecology. “Civilizations come and go said one Native American, but we will still be here.”

The message of living in harmony with Planet Earth was a powerful message after two world wars, conflicts in Korea and Viet Nam which left 55,000 Americans dead, and a ‘bomb them back to the Stone Age’ military mentality.

Hippies were only trying to ‘get back to the Garden’ and promoted peace, brotherhood and enlightenment, and were lead by many revolutionaries such as Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, Owsley Stanley, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, the Woodstock Nation, who professed their tune in, turn on, drop out meditation with an assist from lysergic acid, cannabis sativa, and lots of sex.

No, said my teenage queen, “What did they wear? I just like their clothes.”

Oh.

Well, mostly they wore rags, bandannas, buffalo sandals, long hair, and tie-dyed tee shirts, but I also remember combat fatigues, and military jackets, Nehru jackets, love beads, and lots of leather. Fringe jackets were big, Indian and cowboy garb factored into it, and of course many women went braless.

"No," she said, “before that, what did they wear?”

She meant the mid 60s when the London and Carnaby Street Beatle mania fads hit.

They were “MOD.’

That’s it! She said, “Mod! Thanks!”

Long after she was gone, I was still flashing back on Go Go boots, desert boots, and granny glasses, and afros, and 'Ungawa, Black Power,' and women’s lib, and...
Oh well, she didn’t care.

So, is that it? After all that cultural revolt, all that survives is designer hippies?

Well, I was a beatnik for Halloween when I was 15, so who am I to criticize? I wore ballet slippers, black stockings, white shirts, white lipstick, teased hair, black eyeliner. I was way cool. I kinda looked like Amy Winehouse does now.

Peace Out!