Beautiful People: The Boutique in 1960s Counterculture

Visually stunning but dense exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum on the role of the independent boutique in 1960s fashion and culture.

There were some wonderful clothes in this show, reminding me of things I wore in the early 70s, albeit the Ladybird version not the cutting edge one. The downstairs was organised like a shopping street with a display for each boutique and the upstairs looked at some of the themes of the era.

I say dense because there was a lot to read. You know I like a lot of narrative in exhibitions and don’t like dumbing down but each section and item seemed to have a small novel written about them. I’m afraid I glazed over quite quickly and just enjoyed the clothes. When you did read the labels there were some great stories. The shirt pictures here was worn by Peter Daltry on the cover of Tangerine Dream’s album “Kaleidoscope” which was shown with it.

At the end there was a small display of album and magazine covers which gave a good idea of how influential the clothes were and how most of us probably consumed then.

Closes 13 March 2021

 

 

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