Swinging London, London in the 1960's

Economic and social mutations

Another factor played a major role; it’s the increase of the wealth, the annual rate of growth between 1960 and 1973 averaged 2.9% in United Kingdom. Moreover the average income of the Londoners was higher than in the rest of the country so they had to find ways to spend it. This combination of affluence and youth drove London to an incredible epoch of mutations.

The Who embodies perfectly the spirit of this subculture, they even chose the cockade as symbol which was the emblem of the mods. Join the movement was like adept a new way of life, hang out in clubs, drive scooter, listen rock music, and even take drugs for some Mods. However, The Who wasn’t the only band of London, we can also retain The Kinks who dedicated the song Dedicated Follower of Fashion to Carnaby street 1966, the Rolling Stones who known an international success and also other bands as the Small faces.

The “swinging London” expression come from Time magazine, it designates a period of changes in the city of London during the sixties. This phenomenon could be summarized by this quote extracted from the same magazine and written by Piri Halasz in 1966 “Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop.” Indeed, the beginning of the sixties has been favorable to a sharp change in the lives of London’s citizens because of social and economic evolutions which let behind the gloomy post-war years to enter in a new epoch.

It appears obvious to ask ourselves to what extent this expression permits to designate various changes which are at the source of a huge cultural revolution.

Firstly we’ll examine the social and economic mutations which took place in the beginning of the sixties then we’ll study how music and pop culture manifested these changes and finally we’ll see how it can be considered as a revolution in many other cultural fields.

Design

Op art

It was around this time that the term ‘Op Art’ entered the public consciousness. “Op” artists (short for Optical) were interested in capturing a sense of movement within a stationary two-dimensional plane, such as the surface of a painting. Op artists created optical illusions, often using only black and white paint to impart the impression of pattern, hidden images, flashing, and movement.

The 1960s saw the beginning of the cult of the consumer and a concentration on youth culture.

The concentration was on cars, electronic goods, new technologies and materials. Science fiction films that had been popular in the 1950s began to influence design in the 1960s in terms of colour, style and materials – the future was going to be full of rockets and space travel with lots of gadgets to make life easier in the house. Advertising was everywhere: on television, shop signs, billboards and packaging and in magazines and newspapers.Designers made airports look like spaceports, full of the promise of adventure with modern, modular, plastic and chrome furniture. A new generation of designers was rejecting the solid values of 1950s organic modernism by experimenting with exciting new materials, particularly plastics, to create new furniture in vivid colours and fluid shapes. Famous designers raced to develop plastic stacking chair like the Danish designer Verner Panton , the Italians Joe Colombo and Anna Castelli-Ferreri.They still have an influence on the design today.

Pop art

The fashion, design and advertising industries fell in love with its graphic, sign-like patterns and decorative value. Op Art was cool, and Bridget Riley became Great Britain’s number one art celebrity. It started studying squares, rectangles, triangles and the sensations they give rise to. The basis of the Op Art movement was a form of geometric abstraction, which was in a way impersonal and not obviously related to the real world.

This international movement in painting, sculpture and printmaking had its origin in Great Britain, under the the influence of Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi. The term originated in the mid-1950s in London, in the discussions held by the Independent group concerning the artefacts of popular culture. Pop art was simultaneously a celebration of postwar consumerism and a reaction against Abstract Expressionism.

Fashion

Fashion can be characterized by some icons, like Jean Rosemary Shrimpton who is widely remarked by the media as one of the world's first supermodels and icon of 1960s Swinging London. Her new look revolutionized the modeling world, in which she began her career at the start of the 1960s.. She was also known for her long hair with a fringe, wide doe-eyes, long wispy eyelashes, arched brows, and pouty lips.

Except the changement due to the music, London had to cope with other mutations, in all spheres of life; first like fashion.

For the first time in history young people had other options than to dress like their parents. Up until then clothes for young women were known as Juniors or Misses – a watered down version of adult clothes.

The sixties changed all that when young people started making the clothes they wanted to wear, clothes that completely excluded their parents’ generation. The mod look was about looking forward to the future: sharp, bold, minimalist – modernist.

The main example of the change in the fashion surely was the mini squirt! It was invented by John Bates and André Courreges .However the mini squirt usually associated with the name of Mary Quant, in deed she considered that the development of the mini squirt was practical and liberating!

All these innovation in the field of fashion generated the creation of a fashion center in London; this center is called Carnaby Street where all people used to wear bold colors and oversized sunglasses.

Conclusion

Like Rosemary Shrimpton, fashion broke the mould of the generation of 1950s models before her, who were aristocratic-looking, by contrasting them with her playfully, coltish gamine looks.

Swinging London can be characterized by a combination of changes revolutioning London's life. This phenomenon followed an economic and demographic growth.

But this period of prosperity ended with the crisis associated to the oil crisis of 1973. Immigration and the growing population for their part led to the construction of many moderate-income housing and caused social problems.

3. Cultural mutations on many fields, in all spheres of London's life

A favorable context

2. A youth who found her freedom in the music.

It appears obvious that the change didn’t only touch Music but changed many areas of the Londoner’s way of life, for instance with the development of the clubs or with the evolutions caused by sexual revolution which is directly linked to this period.

• “swinging London” has been characterized by many changes in the British society. The population has evolved particularly thanks to a better level of education. For instance, the soldiers of the Second World War weren’t as obedient as the First World War soldiers and it was true for the rest of the British youth, the relation to the authority was changing at this time.
• And the sixties were favorable to an evolution because it producted a change with the post-war years which weren’t joyful for the population: the rationing continued some years after the end of WW2 and the country faced debts caused by the war.

• The music and particularly the affirmation of rock music was a source of freedom for a youth passionate by the American rock and roll music. In this context, the first bands were created in London in the beginning of the sixties with a desire to break the traditional rules of the conservative British society.
• Rock music also became the mainstay of pirate radio as Radio Caroline or Radio swinging England which known a large success during this period. This movement grew very quickly and has been accompanied with the apparition of a new style adopted by the mods. They were wearing tight pants, two piece suits, parkas and they had scooters.

Bibliography:

http://www.art.highlandschools.org.uk/links/movements/1960s/1960s.html

http://www.britannia.com

http://www.history.co.uk

http://www.op-art.co.uk/2012/05/new-bridget-riley-exhibition-london/

We can consider that the beginning of “swinging London” happened thanks to the baby boom which increases the part of the youth in London’s population, by the mid-60s 40% of London population was under 25. These young people had fewer responsibilities than their parents and they wanted more freedom. They wanted to shake things up and it was like a rebellion against the post war restrictions.