Space-Age Fashions: Surprises In Store?

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32015, 16 June 1969, Page 2

Space-Age Fashions: Surprises In Store?

LONDON. Now that moon travel is almost a reality, it is hard for the most conservative designer to

keep his eyes firmly on the drawing-board.

We are all looking to the future, and wondering what sort of clothes the space age will demand. Many people I have spoken to think that, in years to come, the design of clothes will be dictated almost entirely by the limits of the machine. Big wholesale firms are already turning to the use of moulding and welding techniques, to replace expensive labour in their factories. I do not mean that women will all look like Frankenstein’s monster. Clothes may well be very feminine, but their line will have to be geared to new engineering techniques and, as machines are constantly improved, new fashion lines will appear. I would not be surprised if we are in for a lively new machine age. Of course, one can never do more than guess intelligently when it comes to fashion predicitions, but climate, politics and social life govern dress, and -1 would guess the world’s population will increase so fantastically that our differences in taste

and environment will become less marked. The international fashion scene will probably even out, and English styles will not be too different from American; or European from Australian.

And as nations become less different, so clothes will probably become more uniform. Workaday clothes will also be more functional and practical, allowing for free movement.

This is one of a series of articles by the British fashion designer, Norman Hartnell.

On an international scale, I see them in synthetic disposable fabrics, with an over-all silhouette of tunic and pants, or all-in-one like a boiler suit. Men and women may wear the same sort of clothes—we have seen the start of this trend already. Jewellery will lose favour, and clothes may have surface decorations instead. I have heard it said that computers will provide more leisure time, and men and women will want fantasyorientated off-duty clothes. I agree entirely. The kind of clothes worn in Kings Road, Chelsea, today, will be week-end clothes 30 years hence, for everyone. Revival Likely But nostalgia will probably still be there, and the fashion nostalgia of the 2000 s could well produce a revival of 1960 clothes. Fashion has gone back a generation, and we have 1930 s clothes now: So in 2000 they will have 1960 or 1970 styles. The 1930 s had fashions which were pseudo-Edwardian, and the 1960 s had 1930 crazes. We always look back a generation. The Ungaro, Cardin and Courreges approach of now will probably be universal in the future. White, heavy, disposable gaberdine suits, embroidered in red, to look like ornate jewellery, could well be what the fashionable woman will wear. Fashion could possibly consist of the way a tunic is worn, its belt, its headpiece. Regimentation is bound to happen. A pseudo-Roman, pseudoElizabethan craze will probably appear from time to time, and there could be occasional bursts of enthusiasm for Arabian clothes, or Japanese clothes—or indeed anything fantastic. Men’s Clothes Thirty years ago, any deviation in men’s formal clothing was not tolerated—now it is commonplace. Men’s cosmetics are still treated with hesitation, but in 2000 the male will probably take a pill to keep him young, take pills to arrest baldness, and use scent and make-up as a matter of course. If you think that is impossible, remember that men with long hair and flowered satin shirts were frowned on no so very long ago by us. Certainly, the future of couture will be a weird one. I cannot imagine that there will be much call for well-

cut country suits for weekends amid the lunar landscape, although stranger things have happened. I cannot honestly say that I am looking forward to' the sight of my workroom festooned in extruded plastic and lit by the flickering light of oxy-acetylene welding. Nor :do I relish the day when one employs assistant designers hot because of their skill and imagination but because they have a good degree in light engineering. Frankly, I am rather glad I will not be around when we turn the comer into the twenty-first century.