FEAR AND FASHION
A recent trip to NYC yielded some excellent Spy Vibe treasures, the cream of which is the book Fear And Fashion in the Cold War by Jane Pavitt. Pavitt is the Senior Research Fellow in Product Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum
in London. She has acted as lead curator for numerous exhibits and has
published essential studies of post-war design, including Fear And Fashion in the Cold War and Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70.
What our C.O.B.R.A.S. agent Wesley Britton has done for the field of
spy fiction and cultural history, Pavitt has brought to the world of
architecture, fashion, and design of the Cold War era- a style that I
feel is an essential element to 1960s Spy Vibe. Would the James Bond
films have been as successful, for example, if Dr. No had been a
two-bit mobster instead of a radiation suit-clad baddie plotting to
sabotage space tests? It brought the world of spies away from the
mahogany desk world of the private detective and into the futuristic,
larger-than-life world that we now love as 60s spy adventure.
 Fear And Fashion in the Cold War
jumped off the table at me- and anyone who has journeyed to the Art
floor of The Strand in New York knows that there is a lot to see up
there! The cover sports a photograph of a model dressed in what appears
to be a white, PVC trench coat with matching balaclava helmet with
plastic eye holes. Was it a design by Courreges or Cardin? I was hooked
and intrigued! Skimming through the book I could see that it was
academic, yet accessible, and generously illustrated with fantastic
1960s fashion photography and advertisements that could have been
stills from The 10Th Victim and Barbarella.
Perhaps it’s because I am currently lesson planning for a Film and Lit
course I’m teaching this year about archetypes, but I felt that my
Quest to The Strand had been a success. I had found my “Holy Grail”
book of the summer. Pavitt goes into great detail about various
materials that were adopted from new technologies and industries by the
fashion world, and she explores the world of various designers and
companies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. I will explore some of
these topics in greater depth in the future and focus now and sharing a
few highlights and my own impressions and connections that arose while
reading Fear and Fashion in the Cold War. Part One:
I assume Spy Vibers will remember that scene in The Graduate
(1967) when Dustin Hoffman is taken aside by an older man and given
some valuable life-lessons: “I have one word for you Benjamin…
plastics.” The post-war climate of fear of the Bomb, fallout, and the
uncertainty of putting satellites and people (and I’m sad to say some
animals, as well) into space, research and development departments were
hard at work to create new technologies that would bring an edge to
Cold War competition and survival. Pavitt does an excellent job
describing the duality of fear and fascination of this era. I was
reminded of the documentary film The Atomic Cafe.
Anyone who has seen it will certainly understand how Cold War fears
were projected and acculturated as mascots and jingles in the popular
culture. The Atomic Age and the Space Race caused anxiety, but they
also captivated people's imaginations and informed new attitudes and
sensibilities. Where plastics and new alloys had practical applications
in government-level projects for NASA and the military, they were also
translated into consumer goods. Chemical compounds meant new materials
for clothing. Polyurethane could be used to make flexible, lightweight
PVC and Lycra boots, raincoats, accents, and fetish wear; Plastics and
nylons- by essence and design made to reflect the fear of fallout and
space radiation- was now finessed by designers to define Fab,
ultra-modern looks for the youth consumer market.
 Pierre
Cardin, a leading designer in futuristic ready-to-wear fashion, in fact
patented “Cardine,” a synthetic wool substitute manufactured by Union
Carbide. The fabric could be vacuum-formed and bonded, allowing Cardin
to work without sewing, and to apply three-dimensional reliefs,
cutouts, and appliqued motifs (like circles, triangles, and targets).
His 1969 red plastic cape with white circles has endured and looks to
be the poster template for Target Store’s advertising and logo. I
wonder if there is a legal story there?
One element of
modern life in the mid-1960s was newness and the notion of
disposability- indeed a tenet of Pop Art. As car models changed with
the seasons, so did consumer goods. An interesting example is the paper
dress, inspired by medical/military uniform material and created as
fashion as a sales gimmick in 1966. Just as the Archigram group
conceptualized instant cities which could be assembled and restructured
at any time, the idea applied now to fashion and to ready-to-wear
created a boom in paper outfits that were advertised to be worn four or
five times, then burned. A true spirit of 1960s spontaneity (!), but
criticized by Alvin Toffler and in The Waste Makers by Vance Packard.
One of the
inventive culprits chopping paper patterns was Paco Rabanne (Videos Below). Similar in
construction to using plastics and other synthetics, the paper clothes
could be cut in form out of Vilbond and color cellophane tape without
stitching. The dresses really took off in 1967, a year in which Rabanne
also designed a line of Pacojamas (paper PJs) for Hilton hotels. The
advantage of the new materials was that new clothes held their shape
rather than being draped over the body. These were clothes for people
on the go. Synthetics, bright colors, black and white, and silver with
geometric and zipper accents offered an architectural, sculptural
silhouette of angular lines. Paco is remembered among Spy Vibers for
his costume designs for Barbarella.
  
The look was lean,
youthful, and also saw the popularization of catsuits, body suites, and
body stockings inspired by sportswear, especially ski wear and track
wear. It was interesting for me to track down that the first widely
televised Olympics was in 1960, and that the period also saw a great
popularity in auto racing and the styles worn by drivers in the Grand
Prix and Le Mans. We see examples of sports-influence in Emma Peel’s
costumes in The Avengers. And
I would extend that to the general Mod look in Spy Vibe fiction that
made use of elements like racing stripes and tracksuits. For women,
this style communicated the sexual assertiveness and physicality of the
times.
 Pavitt
cites two great examples of futuristic fashion influence on attendant
uniforms. The most well-known of course is the airline hostess costumes
for the space commute scene early in Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Designer Emilio Pucci had in fact created futuristic uniforms for
Braniff Airlines in 1965, which included a plastic space helmet! (that
was quickly deemed inconvenient). An example from the other side of the
Iron Curtain is the attendant uniforms for the East Berlin Teletower.
Guests visiting the revolving restaurant at the top were greeted by
hostesses dressed in silver, imitation-leather, narrow suits, and
silver trench coats with Plexiglas belt buckles.
Pavitt goes on to
discuss the development of space suits for Russian Cosmonauts and NASA
astronauts, a topic we have explored here on Spy Vibe as an inspiration
to Courreges’s silver and white collection of the mid-1960s. A
fantastic new photo retrospective of Space Suits has been published,
and I will review that in more detail later. Recently I came across an
excellent documentary about Andy Warhol- another artist of the period
that found inspiration in silver. When Andy Warhol purchased his loft
on east 47Th street, he quickly established it as a center of his
public and work life- a meeting place where he could entertain, make
images and films, throw parties, and where he could receive a constant
flow of pilgrims. It would become known as The factory, and he found
the idea for its design after visiting room covered in silver by Billy
Name. Images of The Factory were accompanied by a voice-over reading of
a fantastic quote by Warhol that I think captures the time:
 “It
was a perfect time to think silver. Silver was the future. It was
spacey. Astronauts wore silver suits. And their equipment was silver,
too. And silver was also the past. The Silver Screen. Hollywood
actresses photographed in silver sets. And maybe more than anything
else, silver was narcissism. Mirrors were backed with silver.” –Andy
Warhol
More about Fear and Fashion in- THE FUTURE! References: Fear and
Fashion in the Cold War by Jane Pavitt (2008), Andy Warhol: A
Documentary Film (2006). Also, check out the blog Paper Pursuits Fashion and the Spy Vibe article, MODS TO MOONGIRLS.
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