Flashback: 1972

Hippie Skirt, photo by SG

This afternoon I went to my beloved, irreplaceable, completely necessary local thrift store to buy a hippie outfit. I'm going to a 1960s-1970s hippie-themed birthday party next week. Luckily for me, a lot of the recent styles of women's clothing have been bohemian and hippie-ish, with flouncy skirts and sheer, ribboned tops. Hippie clothes are quite feminine. I liked them then, and I like them now.

The outfit I wound up getting is very similar to clothes I actually wore in the early 1970s. I came of age somewhere between the singer-songwriter craze of 1971 and the onset of disco in 1975, between Carly Simon's 'That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be" and Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." I wore a demure peasant dress to my first, and thankfully my only, junior high school dance, and I wore a slinky qiana dress to my high school graduation. In between I wore lots of vests and maxi skirts, like the ones I'll be wearing to the party.

Hippie Vest, photo by SG

I am anxious to see if putting on the costume of my young girl self makes me feel anything like that girl. Of course, she and I are always together, but will wearing her clothes make me as full of love as I used to get when I listened to my Melanie albums? Will the flowing fabric make my mind flow the way it used to when I first thought and spoke about the big issues in life? As I flash myself back to 1972, I'm hoping to run into my hippie self. She was more open and accepting than some of her later incarnations. She was pretty cool.

"Old hippies don't die, they just lie low until the laughter stops and their time comes round again." 

--Joseph Gallivan