From July 16 until November 11, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts will play host to Hippie Chic - an eclectic exhibition focussing on hippie fashion.
 The Woodstock generation challenged the status quo, bringing about enormous cultural change |
Attendees ought to expect riotous colour, boundless beading and a plethora of paisley, the MFA's Malcom Rodgers warns. "Hippie Chic revisits a particular moment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, in America and Europe, to trace hippies' revolutionary influence on fashion.
"Clothing became a canvas for personal expression. As a student at Oxford, I vividly recall being surrounded and inspired by the energy and cultural creativity of the hippie movement.
"The installation - with its rotating platforms, shag rugs, and jukebox - transports our visitors back to this nostalgic era, so they can relive this unique period or experience it for the first time."
Beginning in 1967, the exhibition promises to take visitors on a journey through an age defined by an excess of ideas as well as patterns.
Psychedelic drugs, sub-continental travel, burgeoning consumerism (and anti-consumerist movements), as well as the politics of race, age, gender and sexuality all impacted on the hippie movement, and are in evidence throughout the gallery.
Curator Lauren Whitley insists: "Innovative young designers and boutique owners, themselves part of the counterculture, translated anti-establishment individualism into artful garments. Their unique fantasy-driven styles in turn trickled up to influence designers of traditional ready-to-wear clothing and even Paris haute couture, resulting in the exuberant 'hippie chic' fashions."
If you happen to be a fan of the era's super-abundant aesthetic, take a look at this remarkable California League of Sexual Freedom poster we currently have in stock.
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