Bohemian style

Main article:Bohemianism

TheBohemian style,often termed 'Boho chic', is a fashion and lifestyle choice characterized by its unconventional and free-spirited essence. While its precise origins are debated, Bohemian style is believed to have been influenced by the nomadic lifestyle of theRomani peopleduring the late 19th century to the early 20th century. The term 'Bohemian' itself derives from the French 'Bohémien,' originally associated with the Roma community due to a historical misconception that they originated fromBohemia,a region in theCzech Republic.

Young Bohémienne:Natalie Clifford Barney(1875–1972) at the age of 10 (painting byCarolus-Duran)

Throughout history, Bohemian fashion has undergone significant transformations, reflecting the cultural shifts and influences of each era. Today, contemporary Bohemian fashion embraces flowingfabrics,vibrant colors, and natural,wovenmaterials instead ofknits.This style draws inspiration from various sources, including thecounterculture movementsof the 1960s and 1970s, reminiscent of the attire worn by attendees of the inauguralWoodstock music festival.

The Bohemian style has achieved global popularity, appealing to individuals seeking a unique andindividualisticapproach to fashion and lifestyle. It encourages a sense of freedom and self-expression, often attracting those who prefer to live unconventionally, sometimes in anomadicmanner, and who may reside in colonies or communes, fostering a strong sense of community.

Early 19th century and the role of women

The Bohemian subculture has been closely affiliated with predominantly male artists and intellectuals. The female counterparts have been closely connected with theGrisettes,young women who combined part-time prostitution with various other occupations. In the first quarter of the 19th century, the term "grisette"also referred to independent young women. They often worked as seamstresses or milliner's assistants and frequentedBohemianartistic and cultural venues in Paris. Many grisettes worked as artist models, often providing sexual favors to the artists in addition to posing for them. During the time ofKing Louis-Philippe,they came to dominate the Bohemian modeling scene.

Due to the role and influence they had on 19th century French art, the grisette became a frequent character in French fiction. However, the grisettes have been mentioned as early as in 1730 byJonathan Swift.The term"grisette" in poetrysignified qualities of both flirtatiousness and intellectual aspiration.George du Maurierbased large parts ofTrilbyon his experiences as a student in Parisian Bohemia during the 1850s. Poe's 1842 story was based on the unsolved murder ofMary Cecilia Rogersnear New York City, subtitled "A Sequel to 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'".It was the first fictional detective story to attempt to provide a real solution to a real crime. The most enduring grisette is Mimi inHenri Murger's novel (and subsequent play)Scènes de la vie de Bohème,the source forPuccini's famous operaLa bohème.

Pre-Raphaelites

Jane Morrispainted byDante Gabriel RossettiasProserpine(1874)

In 1848William Makepeace Thackerayused the word Bohemianism in his novelVanity Fair.In 1862, theWestminster Reviewdescribed a Bohemian as "simply an artist orlittérateurwho, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art ". During the 1860s the term was associated in particular with thePre-Raphaelitemovement, the group of artists and aesthetes of whichDante Gabriel Rossettiwas the most prominent:

As the 1860s progressed, Rossetti would become the grand prince of Bohemianism as his deviations from normal standards became more audacious. He then became this epitome of the unconventional, his egocentric demands necessarily required his close friends to remodel their own lives around him. His Bohemianism was like a web in which others became trapped – none more so thanWilliamandJane Morris.

Jane Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Pre-Raphaelite traits

Jane Morris,who was to become Rossetti's muse, epitomized, probably more than any of the women associated with the pre-Raphaelites, an unrestricted, flowing style of dress that, while unconventional at the time, would be highly influential at certain periods during the 20th century. She and others, including the much less outlandishGeorgiana Burne-Jones(wife ofEdward Burne-Jones,one of the later pre-Raphaelites), eschewed thecorsetsandcrinolinesof the mid-to-late Victorian era,a feature that impressed the American writerHenry Jameswhen he wrote to his sister in 1869 of the bohemian atmosphere of the Morrises' house in theBloomsburydistrict of London and, in particular, the "dark silent medieval" presence of itschatelaine:

It's hard to say whether she's a grand synthesis of all the pre-Raphaelite pictures ever made… whether she's an original or a copy. In either case, she's a wonder. Imagine a tall, lean woman in a long dress of some dead purple stuff, guiltless ofhoops(or of anything else I should say) with a mass of crisp black hair heaped into great wavy projections on each of her temples… a long neck, without any collar, andin lieuthereof some dozen strings of outlandish beads.

Effie GraybyThomas Richmond

In his playPygmalion(1912)Bernard Shawunmistakably based the part of Mrs. Higgins on the then elderly Jane Morris. He described Mrs. Higgins' drawing room, he referred to a portrait of her "when she defied the fashion of her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes which, when caricatured by people who did not understand, led to the absurdities of popular estheticism[sic]in the eighteen-seventies ".

A biographer ofEdward Burne-Jones,writing a century after Shaw (Fiona MacCarthy,2011), has noted that, in 1964, when the influentialBibastore was opened inLondonbyBarbara Hulanicki,the "long drooping structureless clothes", though sexier than the dresses portrayed in such Burne-Jones paintings asThe Golden StairsorThe Sirens,nevertheless resembled them.The interior of Biba has been described by the biographer of British 20th century designerLaura Ashleyas having an atmosphere that "reeked of sex… [It] was designed to look like abordellowith its scarlet, black and gold plush fitments, but, interestingly, it implied an old-fashioned,Edwardianstyle of forbidden sex withfeathered boas,potted palms,bentwoodcoat racks and dark lighting " MacCarthy observed also that "the androgynous appearance of Burne-Jones's male figures reflected the sexually ambivalent feeling" of the late 1960s.

Early flower power: Effie Millais

Effie Gray,whose marriage toJohn Ruskinwasannulledin 1854 before her marrying the pre-Raphaelite painterJohn Millais,is known to have used flowers as an adornment and probably also as an assertive "statement". While in Scotland with Ruskin (still her husband) and Millais, she gatheredfoxglovesto place in her hair. She wore them at breakfast, despite being asked by her husband not to do so, a gesture of defiance, at a time of growing crisis in their relationship, that came to the critical notice ofFlorence Nightingale(who tended to regard others of her sex with "scarcely concealed scorn" and was generally unsympathetic towards "women's rights"). A few weeks earlier, onMidsummer Day,Effie (possibly inspired byShakespeare'sA Midsummer Night's Dream) was said by her hostess,Pauline Trevelyan,to have "looked lovely" withstephanotisin her hair at an evening party inNorthumberland,while, the previous year, a male friend had brought a vase of flowers for her hair fromVenice. Ruskin's father was evidently shocked to learn that, when Effie herself was in Venice, she had removed her bonnet in public, ostensibly because of the heat.

In 1853 Millais paintedEffie with Foxgloves in her Hairwhich depicts her wearing the flowers while doing needlework. Other paintings of the mid-to-late 19th century, such asFrederick Sandys'Love's Shadow(1867) of a girl with a rose in her hair, sucking a sprig of blossom, which was described in 1970 as "a first ratePRjob for the Flower People ",and Burne-Jones'The Heart of the Rose(1889),have been cited as foreshadowing the "flower power"of the mid-to-late 1960s.

Early 20th century and inter-war years

Rational dress and the women's movement

Franziska Countess zu Reventlow,undated photo, the "Bohemian Countess" ofSchwabing

By the turn of the 20th century, an increasing number of professional women, notably in the United States, were attempting to live outside the traditional parameters of society. Between 1870 and 1910, the marriage rate among educated women in the United States fell to 60% (30% lower than the national average). By 1893, in the state of Massachusetts alone, some 300,000 women were earning their own living in nearly 300 occupations. The invention of the typewriter in 1867 was a particular spur. For example, by the turn of the 20th century, 80% ofstenographerswere women.

By this time, such movements as theRational Dress Society(1881), with which the Morrises and Georgiana Burne-Jones were involved, were beginning to exercise some influence on women's dress, although the pre-Raphaelite look was still considered "advanced" in the late years of the 19th century.Queen Victoria's precocious daughterPrincess Louise,an accomplished painter and artist who mixed in bohemian circles, was sympathetic to rational dress and to the developing women's movement generally (although her rumoured pregnancy at the age of 18 was said to have been disguised by tight corsetry).

However, it was not really until theFirst World Warthat "many working women" embarked on a revolution in a fashion that greatly reduced the weight and restrictions imposed on them by their clothing ".Some women working in factories wore trousers. Thebrassiere(invented in 1889 by thefeministHerminie Cadolleand patented in America byMary Phelps Jacobin 1914) began gradually to supersede the corset. In shipyards "trouser suits"(the term," pantsuit "was adopted in America in the 1920s) were virtually essential to enable women to shin up and down ladders.Music hallartists also helped to push the boundaries of fashion; these includedVesta Tilley,whose daring adoption on the stage of a well-tailored male dress not only had an influence on men's attire but also foreshadowed to extent styles adopted by some women in the inter-war period. It was widely understood that Tilley sought additional authenticity by wearing male underclothing, although off stage, she was much more conventional in both her dress and general outlook.

By the early 1920s, what had been a wartime expedient, the need to economise on material, had become a statement of freedom by young women. This was manifested by shorter hemlines (just above the knee by 1925–1926)and boyish hairstyles, accompanied by whatRobert GravesandAlan Hodgedescribed as "the new fantastic development ofJazzmusic ". At theAntwerp Olympic Gamesin 1920, the FrenchtennisplayerSuzanne Lenglenattracted attention with a knee-length skirt that revealed hersuspender beltwhenever she leaped to smash a ball. From then on, sportswear for women, as with day-to-day clothes, became more free,although, after theSecond World War,when the American playerGussie Moranappeared at theWimbledon championshipsof 1949 in a short skirt that revealed lace-trimmedpanties,theAll England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Clubaccused her of bringing "vulgarity and sin into tennis" and shunned the outfit's designerTeddy Tinlingfor many years.

The impact of lingerie in the 1920s and 30s

ThePenguin Social History of Britainnoted that "by the 1920s newspapers were filled with advertisements for 'lingerie' and 'undies' which would have been classed as indecent a generation earlier". Thus, inBen Travers' comic novelRookery Nook(1923), a young woman evicted from home in her nightwear and requiring day clothes remarked, "Combies.That's all right. But in the summer you know, we don't ",while inAgatha Christie's thriller,The Seven Dials Mystery(1929), the aristocratic heroine,Lady "Bundle" Brent,wore only "a negligible trifle" under her dress; like much real life "it girls"of her class, she had been freed from the" genteel expectations "of earlier generations.

InHollywoodthe actressCarole Lombard,who, in the 1930s, combined feistiness with sexual allure, never wore a brassière and "avoided panties".However, she famously declared that though "I live by a man's code designed to fit a man's world, at the same time I never forget that a woman's first job is to choose the right shade of lipstick" Coincidentally, sales of men'sundershirtsfell dramatically in the United States when Lombard's future husband,Clark Gable,was revealed not to be wearing one in a famous motel bedroom scene withClaudette Colbertin the filmIt Happened One Night(1934). According to Gable, "the idea was looking half-naked and scaring the brat into her own bed on the other side of the blanket [hanging from a clothesline to separate twin beds]". However, he "gave the impression that going without was a vital sign of a man's virility"

More generally, the adoption by the American movie industry of theHays Production Codein the early 1930s had a significant effect on how moral, and especially sexual, issues were depicted on film. This included a more conservative approach to matters of dress. Whereas the sort of scanty lingerie on show in some earlier productions (for example,Joan BlondellandBarbara StanwyckinNight Nurse,1931)had tended to reflect trends that, in the 1920s, defied convention and were regarded by many young women as liberating, by the early years of theDepressionsuch displays came to be regarded quite widely as undesirable. Developments in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the strictures of the code were abandoned, followed a similar pattern, although, by then, it was often women themselves who were in the vanguard of resistance to sexualized imagery.

Looking back at this period, Graves and Hodge noted the protracted course that "daring female fashions had always taken from brothel to stage, then on to Bohemia, to Society, to Society's maids, to the mill-girl and lastly to the suburban woman".

The "Dorelia" look

Among female Bohemians in the early 20th century, the "gypsy look" was a recurring theme, popularized by, among others,Dorothy "Dorelia" McNeill(1881–1969),muse,lover, and second wife of the painterAugustus John(1878–1961), whose full skirts and bright colors gave rise to the so-called "Dorelia look". Katherine Everett,néeOlive, a former student of theSlade School of Artin London, has described McNeil's "tight fitting, hand-sewn, canary colored bodice above a dark gathered flowing skirt, and her hair very black and gleaming, emphasizing the long silver earrings which were her only adornment".

Everett recalled also the Johns' woods "with wild cherry trees in blossom, and a model with flying red hair, clad in white, being chased in and out of the trees by nude children".With similar lack of inhibition, as early as 1907 the American heiressNatalie Barney(1875–1972) was leading like-minded women insapphicdances in her Parisian garden,photographs of which look little different from scenes atWoodstockin 1969 and other "pop" festivals of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Bobbed hair and cross-gender styles

By contrast, shortbobbed hairwas often a Bohemian trait,having originated in Parisc.1909 and been adopted by students at the Sladeseveral years before American film actresses such asColleen MooreandLouise Brooks( "the girl in the black helmet" ) became associated with it in the mid-1920s. This style was plainly discernible on a woodblock self-portrait of 1916 byDora Carrington,who had entered the Slade in 1910,and, indeed, the journalist and historian SirMax Hastingshas referred to "polingpuntsoccupied by reclining girls with bobbed hair "as an enduring, if misleading, the popular image of the" idyll before the storm "of the First World War.

InF. Scott Fitzgerald's short story,Bernice Bobs Her Hair(1920), a young woman who wishes to become a 'societyvamp' regards the adoption of a bob as a necessary prelude,while Louise Brooks' sexually charged performance asLuluinG. W. Pabst's film,Pandora's Box(1929), left an enduring image of the style, which has been replicated on screen over the years, most vividly byCyd CharisseinSingin' in the Rain(1952), Isabelle de Funès asValentinainBaba Yaga(1973)andMelanie GriffithinSomething Wild(1986).

Bobbed hair was associated also with many popular singers and actresses in the 1960s and has frequently been evoked by writers and directors, as well as fashion designers, seeking to recapture thehedonisticor free spirit of the 1920s. For example,Kerry Greenwood'sCocaine Blues(1989) and succeeding novels aboutPhryne Fisher,a glamorous, but unconventional aristocratic investigator in late twentiesMelbourne,Australia, conveyed an image – "five feet two [157.5 centimeters] with eyes of green and black hair cut into a cap"– that was later cultivated stylishly on television byEssie DavisinABC'sMiss Fisher's Murder Mysteries(2012).

Around 1926 an even shorter style, known as the 'Eton crop', became popular:on her arrival inTilling(Rye) inE. F. Benson's comic novelMapp and Lucia(1931), Lucia described "Quaint" Irene as "a girl with no hat and an Eton crop. She was dressed in a fisherman'sjerseyand knickerbockers ". For many years trite assumptions were often made about the sexuality of women with cropped hairstyles; a historian of the 1980s wrote of theGreenham Common"peace camp" in England that it "brought public awareness tofeministseparation and even to lesbianism, hitherto seen in the mass media – when acknowledged at all – either in terms of Eton-croppedandrogynyor of pornographic fantasy ". Even so, others have drawn a stark contrast between the bohemian demeanor of the Greenham women and the "bold make-up andpower-dressing"that tended to define women's fashion more generally in the 1980s(the so-called 'designer decade').

One social historian has observed that "the innocuous woolen jersey, now known [in Britain] as thejumperor the pullover, was the first item of clothing to become interchangeable between men and women and, as such, was seen as a dangerous symptom of gender confusion ".Trousers for women, sometimes worn mannishly as an expression of sexuality (as byMarlene Dietrichas a cabaret singer in the 1930 film,Morocco,in which she dressed in a white tie suit and kissed a girl in the audience)also became popular in the 1920s and 1930s, as did aspects of what many years later would sometimes be referred to as "shabby chic".Winston Churchill's nieceClarissawas among those who wore a tailored suit in the late 1930s.

Post-Liberation Paris

Café de Flore, Saint-Germain-des-Près, Paris: the haunt of post-war bohemians

The 'New Look'

After theSecond World WarChristian Dior's 'New Look', launched in Paris in 1947, though drawing on styles that had begun to emerge in 1938–1939,set the pattern for women's fashion generally until the 1960s. Harking back in some ways to theBelle Epoqueof the late 19th and early 20th centuries – and thus not a 'new' look as such – it was criticized by some as excessively feminine and, with its accompanying corsets and rustle of frilledpetticoats,as setting back the "work of emancipation won through participation in two world wars".It also, for a while, bucked the trend towards boyish fashion that, after theFirst World War,tended to follow major conflicts.

Rive Gauche

American influences had been discouraged during theNazi occupation of France,but, notably in the form ofbe-bopand other types of jazz, were strong among intellectualcafé societyin the mid-to-late 1940s.In 1947,Samedi-Soirlifted the lid on what it called the "troglodytesof Saint-Germain ",namely bohemians of the ParisianLeft Bank(Rive Gauche) district ofSaint-Germain-des-Prés,who appeared to cluster aroundexistentialistphilosopherJean-Paul Sartre.These includedRoger Vadim(who married and launched the career of actressBrigitte Bardotin the 1950s), novelistBoris Vian(since described as "the epitome of Left Bank Bohemia, standing at the center of its postwar rehabilitation" )and singerJuliette Gréco.

Juliette Gréco in 1963

Juliette Gréco

At theliberation of Parisin 1944, the American journalistErnie Pyleobserved that the women were all "brightly dressed in white or red blouses and colorful peasant skirts, with flowers in their hair and big flashy earrings."whileLady Diana Cooper,whose husband,Duff Cooper,became British Ambassador to Paris that year, wrote that, during the occupation, Parisienne women had worn "grotesquely large hats hung with flowers and fruits and feathers and ribbons" as well as high carved wooden shoes.However, in contrast to such striking bohemian adornments and subsequently the "New Look" (which itself scandalised some Parisennes), the clothes of the post-war bohemians were predominantly black: when Gréco first performed outside Saint-Germain she affronted some of her audience by wearing "black trousers, her bare feet slipped into golden sandals".In old age she claimed that this style of dress arose from poverty:

When I was a teenager in Paris, I only had one dress and one pair of shoes, so the boys in the house started dressing me in their old black coats and trousers. A fashion was shaped out of misery. When people copied me, I found it a little ridiculous, but I didn't mind. It made me smile.

Performing in London over fifty years later, Gréco was described as "still oozing bohemian style".

Saint-Germain in retrospect

Capturing the spirit of the time,David Profumohas written of how his mother, the actressValerie Hobson,was entranced by Roger Vadim's flatmate, the directorMarc Allégret,while she was filmingBlanche Furyin 1947:

Allégret's apparently bohemian lifestyle appealed sharply to her romantic side and she revelled in the Left Bank milieu to which he introduced her during script discussions in Paris. There were meals withAndré Gide,Jean Cocteauand the long-leggedZizi Jeanmaire.For an attractive British woman who felt deprived of attention... this was an ideal situation for some sort of reawakening.

The previous year a perfume created for Hobson had been marketed as "Great Expectations" to coincide with her role asEstella HavishaminDavid Lean'sfilmof that name, based onCharles Dickens' 1861 novel. In England, this attracted the custom of then-University of Oxfordundergraduate Margaret Roberts, later British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher,who, a little daringly for the time, also shopped for "push-up" pink brassieres.In 1953, when Hobson starred in the musicalThe King and Iin London, it was apparent that she had retained a Parisienne mix ofchicand Bohemianism. ADaily Mirrorjournalist described her "pale, ladylike looks, her well-bred clothes... she likes embroidery and painting", while a youngEtonianwho visited her dressing room recalled that "it had been freshly painted pink and white for her, and was like entering a risqué French apartment".Ten years later, when Hobson's husband, the politicianJohn Profumo,was involved in asex scandalthat threatened to destabilize the British government, Prime MinisterHarold Macmillanwrote that "his [Profumo's] wife is very nice and sensible. Of course, these people live in a raffish, theatrical, bohemian society where no one really knows anyone, and everyone is" darling "".

Post-war Paris was recalled fondly in 2007 whenFrance introduced a banonsmokingin public places. The aroma ofGauloisesandGitaneswas, for many years, thought to be an inseparable feature of Parisian café society, but the owner ofLes Deux Magots,once frequented by Sartre,Simone de Beauvoir,Albert Camusand other writers, observed that "things have changed. The writers of today are not so addicted to cigarettes".A British journalist who interviewed Juliette Gréco in 2010 described Les Deux Magots and the Café de Flore as "now overpriced tourist hotspots" and noted that "chain stores and expensive restaurants have replaced the bookshops, cafés and revolutionary ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre andSimone de Beauvoir's Rive Gauche ".As measures of changing attitudes tocuisineand fashion, by the early 21st century 80% of Frenchcroissantswere being made in food plants, while, by 2014, only one factory continued to manufacture the traditional maleberetassociated with printers, artists, political activists and, during the inter-war years, the tennis playerJean Borotra.

New influences in 1960s

The bohemian traits of post-war Paris spread to other urban parts of the French-speaking world, notably toAlgiers,where an underground culture of "jazz clubs, girls and drugs" grew up – in the words ofpunk rockproducerMarc Zermati,who was in the city at the height of theAlgerian warin the late 1950s, "all very French".However, that war marked a turning point which, in the view of some, was so traumatic that "ordinary French people" looked instead to America as "a new model for pleasure and happiness". This, in turn, led to theye-yemusic of the early to mid 1960s (named after the British band, theBeatles' use of "yeah, yeah" in some their early songs) and the rise of such singers asJohnny HallydayandFrançoise Hardy.

The French also adopted a number of British singers (Petula Clark,Gillian Hills,Jane Birkin) who performed successfully in French, Birkin forming a long-term relationship with singer-songwriterSerge Gainsbourg,who was a seminal figure in French popular music in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1968 major industrial and student unrest in Paris and other parts of France came close to ousting the government of PresidentCharles de Gaulle,who, after leading theFree Frenchduring the Second World War, had returned to power at the time of the Algerian emergency. Theevents of 1968represented a further significant landmark in post-war France,although their longer term impact was probably more on cultural, social and academic life than on the political system, which, through the constitution of theFifth Republic(1958), has remained broadly intact. Indeed, one paradox of 1968 was that the first student demonstrations broke out atNanterre,whose catchment area included the affluent and "chic"16th and 17tharrondissementsof Paris. Its students were moremodishand "trendy" than those of theSorbonnein the city'sLatin Quarter,being described at the time in terms that typify more generally the styles and attitudes of young people in the late 1960s:

It is the girls that give the show away –culottes,glossy leather,mini-skirts,boots – driving up inMini-Coopers... Rebellious sentiment is more obvious among the boys: long hair, square spectacles,Che Guevara[Cuban revolutionary, died 1967] beards. The picture in Nanterre in May was lots and lots of painted dollies cohabiting with unkempt revolutionaries.

America: the beat generation and flower power

Snejana Onopkaon the runway forAnna Suiin November 2011.

In the United States adherents of the "beat"counter-culture (probably best defined byJack Kerouac's novel,On the Road,set in the late 1940s, written in 1952 and published in 1957) were associated with blackpolo-neck(or turtle neck) sweaters, blue denim jeans and sandals. The influence of this movement could be seen in the persona and songs ofBob Dylanin the early- to mid-1960s, "road" films likeEasy Rider(1969) and thepunk-oriented "New Wave"of the mid-1970s, which, among other things, produced a boho style icon inDeborah Harryof the New York bandBlondie.(However, as with some American musicians of the mid-1960s, such asSonny and Cher,Blondie came to international prominence only after a tour of Britain in 1978.)

Greenwich Village and West Coast

New York'sGreenwich Village,which, since the late 19th century, had attracted many women withfeministor "free love"ideals,was a particular magnet for bohemians in the early 1960s. Bob Dylan's girl-friendSuze Rotolo,who appeared with him on the cover of his second albumThe Freewheelin' Bob Dylan(1963), recalled that the Village was "where people like me went – people who didn't belong where they came from... where the writers I was reading and the artists I was looking at had lived or passed through".These "beatniks" (as they came to be known by the late 1950s) were, in many ways, the antecedents of the hippie movement that formed on the West Coast of the US in the mid-1960sand came to the fore as the first post-warbaby-boomersreached the age of majority in the "Summer of Love"of 1967. TheMonterey Pop Festivalwas a major landmark of that year, which was associated with"flowerpower",psychedelia,opposition to theVietnam Warand the inventive music and flowing, colorful fashions of, among others,Jimi Hendrix,the Mamas & the Papas,Jefferson Airplaneand the British group,The Beatles,whose album,Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,is said to have caused the guru of psychedelia,Timothy Leary,to remark that "my work is finished".

Hippiedom and the Pre-Raphaelites

The documentary film,Festival(Murray Lerner,1967), recorded how the "clean-cut college kids" who attended theNewport (Rhode Island) Folk Festivalin 1963–1964 had, by 1965 (whenBob Dylan caused a sensationat that year's festival by playing an electric guitar), become "considerably scruffier": "the hippies were waiting to be born".Among other things, the wearing of male neckties, which, in the mid-1960s, had often drawn on 19th century paisley patterns,declined asmuttonchopwhiskers andteashades(sunglasses) came in: by the time of theChicago 7trial (late 1969), hair over the collars had become so commonplace that it was beginning to transcend Bohemian style, taking on mass popularity in the 1970s. The London art dealerJeremy Maasreflected in the mid-1980s that:

there [was] no question that the Hippy[sic]movement and its repercussive influence in England owed much of its imagery, its manner, dress and personal appearance to the Pre-Raphaelite ideal... It was observed by all of us who were involved with these exhibitions [of pre-Raphaelite paintings] that visitors included increasing numbers of the younger generation, who had begun to resemble the figures in the pictures they had come to see.

Jimmy Pageof the British bandLed Zeppelin,who collected Pre-Raphaelite paintings, observed of Edward Burne-Jones that "the romance of theArthurianlegends [captured in his paintings] and the bohemian life of the artists who were reworking these stories seemed very attuned to our time ",while the author David Waller noted in 2011 that Burne-Jones' subjects "have much in common with the sixties rock chicks and their pop-starpaladins".

London in the 1950s

Although the annualSaturday Bookrecorded in 1956 a view that "London's now nothing but flash coffee bars, with teddies and little bits of girls in jeans",the "Edwardian" ( "teddy boy") look of the times did not coincide with Bohemian tastes. For women, the legacy of the" New Look "was still apparent, although hemlines had generally risen as, as one journalist put it in 1963," photographs of those first bold bearers of the New Look make them seem strangely lost and bewildered, as though they had mistaken their cue and come on stage fifty years late ".The Bohemian foci during this period were the jazz clubs andespressobars ofSohoandFitzrovia.Their habitués usually wore polo necks; in the words of one social historian, "thousands of pale,duffel-coat-clad students were hunched in coffee bars over their copies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Jack Kerouac ". Variouspublic housesand clubs also catered for Bohemian tastes, notably theColony Room Clubin Soho, opened in 1948 byMuriel Belcher,a lesbian fromBirmingham.As with the literary phenomenon of the so-called "Angry Young Men"from 1956 onwards, the image was more a male, than a female, one. However, when the singerAlma Coganwished to mark her success by buyingminkcoats for her mother and sister, the actress Sandra Caron, the latter asked for a duffel-coat instead because she wanted to be regarded as a serious actress and "a sort of a beatnik".In 1960 the future authorJacqueline Wilson,who, as a teenager, lived inKingston-upon-Thames,Surrey, captured this look after spotting two acquaintances in a record shop "inturquoiseduffle coats, extremely tight jeans andcha-chashoes being cuddled by a group of horrible spotty teddy boys ".

Continental influences

InIris Murdoch's novelThe Bell(1958), an art student named Dora Greenfield bought "big multi-colored skirts and jazz records and sandals". However, as Britain emerged from post-warausterity,some Bohemian women found influences from continental Europe, adopting, for example, the "gaminelook ", with its black jerseys and short, almost boyish hairstyles associated with film actressesAudrey Hepburn(Sabrina,1954, and as a "Gréco beatnik"inFunny Face,1957) andJean Seberg(Bonjour Tristesse,1958 andA bout de souffle,1960), as well as the French novelistFrançoise Sagan,who, as one critic put it, "was celebrated for the variety of her partners and for driving fast sports cars in bare feet as an example of the free life". In 1961Fenella Fieldingplayed "a mascara-clad Gréco-alike" inThe Rebelwith comedianTony Hancock,while, more recently,Talulah Rileyreplicated the look for scenes in ITV's 2006 adaptation of Agatha Christie'sThe Moving Finger,set in 1951.

Others favored the lower-cut, tighter styles of continental stars such as Bardot orGina Lollobrigida.Valerie Hobson was among those whose wardrobe drew on Italiancouture;in addition to a large collection ofstiletto heeledshoes, she possessed a skirt made frompythonskin.More generally, European tastes – including theLambrettamotor scooter and Italian and French cuisine, which the widely traveled cookery writerElizabeth David,herself a bit of a Bohemian, did much to promote– not only began to pervade Bohemian circles, but offered a contrast, from 1955 onwards, with the brasher Americanism ofrock 'n' roll,with its predominantlyteenageassociations.

Hamburg and Beatlemania

Bobbed hair revival:Barbara FeldonwithDon AdamsinGet Smart(1965)

In 1960, when the Beatles (then an obscureLiverpudliancombo with five members, as opposed to their eventual "fab" four) were working inHamburg,West Germany, they were influenced by a Bohemian "art school" set known asExis(for "existentialists" ). TheExiswere roughly equivalent to what in France became known asles beatsand included photographerAstrid Kirchherr(for whom the "fifth Beatle"Stuart Sutcliffeleft the group) and artist and musicianKlaus Voormann(who designed the cover for the Beatles' albumRevolverin 1966).

John Lennon's wifeCynthiarecalled that Kirchherr was fascinated by the Beatles' "teddy-boy style", but that they, in turn, were "bowled over by her hip black clothes, heravant gardeway of life, her photography and her sense of style ".As a result the group acquired black leather jackets, as well as fringedhairstylesthat were the prototype of the "mop-top"cuts associated with"Beatlemania"in 1963–1964. The latter coincided with the revival of the bobbed style for women, promoted in London by hairdresserVidal Sassoon,initially for actressNancy Kwan,and adopted by, among others, singersCilla Black,Billie Davisand, in America,Bev BivensofWe FiveandTammi Terrell,fashion designersMary QuantandJean Muir,American actressBarbara Feldonin the TV seriesGet Smart,and, in the form of a longer bob,Cathy McGowan,who presented the influential British TV pop music show,Ready Steady Go!(1963–1966).However, when longer blonde hair (associated with, among many others,Julie Christie,Samantha Juste,Judy Geesonand fashion modelLorna McDonald,who, at the end of each edition of the BBC'sDee Time,jumped intoSimon Dee's openE-type Jaguar) came to typify the "sixties" look, advertisers turned to the Bohemian world for inspiration: through its use of herbs,Sunsilkshampoowas said to have "stolen something from the gypsies".

Swinging London

Beatlemania did not of itself create the apparenticonoclasmof the 1960s; however, as one writer put it, "just asNoël CowardandCole Porterreflected the louche, carefree attitude of the [Nineteen] Twenties, so did the Beatles' music capture the rhythm of breaking free experienced by an entire generation of people growing up in the Sixties ".By the middle of the decade, British pop music had stimulated the fashion boom of whatTimecalled "swinging London". Associated initially with such "mod"designs as Quant'smini-skirt,this soon embraced a range of essentially Bohemian styles. These included the military and Victorian fashions popularized by stars who frequented boutiques such asGranny Takes a Trip,the "fusion of fashion, art and lifestyle" opened byNigel Waymouthin theKing's Road,Chelseain January 1966,and, by 1967, the hippie look largely imported from America (although, as noted, London stores such asBibahad, for some time, displayed dresses that drew on Pre-Raphaelite imagery). TheRolling Stones'Keith Richards,whose early girlfriend,Linda Keith,had, in her late teens, been a bohemian force inWest Hampstead,noted on the Stones' return from an American tour in 1967 how quickly hippiedom had transformed the London scene.

Victorian imagery

Lewis Carroll'sAlice(John Tenniel)

This fusion of influences was discernible in two black-and-white productions forBBCtelevision in 1966: the seriesAdam Adamant Lives!,starringGerald Harperas an Edwardian adventurer who had beencryopreservedin time andJuliet HarmerasGeorgina Jones,a stylish "mod" who befriended him, andJonathan Miller's dreamy, ratherGothicproduction ofLewis Carroll's mid-Victorian children's fantasyAlice in Wonderland(1865).(Confirming the aspiration,Sydney Newman,the BBC's Head of Television Drama in the 1960s, reflected ofAdam Adamantthat "[they] could never quite get [the] Victorian mentality to contrast with the '60s".)

On the face of it, Carroll (a pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) had been a rather conventional and repressedOxfordUniversity don,but he was a keen and artistic photographer in the early days of that medium (taking, among other things, rather bohemian looking pictures ofAlice Liddelland other young girls)and he developed an empathy and friendship with several of the Pre-Raphaelites;the sculptorThomas Woolnerand possibly even Rossetti dissuaded him from illustratingAlicehimself,a task that was undertaken instead byJohn Tenniel.The imagery ofAlice,both textually and graphically, lent itself well to the psychedelia of the late 1960s.In America, this was apparent in, among other ways, the "Alice happening" inCentral Park,New York (1968) when naked participants covered themselves inpolka dotsand the lyrics toGrace Slick's song "White Rabbit"(1966) –" One pill makes you larger/And one pill makes you small "– that she performed with both theGreat Societyand Jefferson Airplane, including with the latter at Woodstock in 1969.

Women in the late 1960s and early 1970s

Mid 1970s dresses by Laura Ashley exhibited at theFashion Museum, Bath,England in 2013

By the late 1960s shops such asLaura Ashley(whose first London outlet opened in 1968)were routinely promoting the "peasant look" and selling a range of "uniquely eccentric clothes... The magic was being able to step into a 'Laura Ashley' dress and imagine you had found something out of a dressing-up box". At around the same time too, and into the 1970s, the brassière (or bra), which, as noted, had been seen as a liberating innovation in the early part of the century, came to be regarded by some women, such as the Australian academicGermaine Greer(The Female Eunuch,1969), as an unduly restrictive symbol of traditional womanhood. However, the much-publicised incidence of "bra burning"in the 1970s tended to be overstated and came to be satirised: for example, in the 1973 film,Carry On Girls,and a poster by Young & Rubicam,one of a mildly subversive series forSmirnoff vodka:"I never thought of burning my bra until I discovered Smirnoff". It was also seen by many, including Greer herself, as a distraction from the cause ofwomen's "liberation". AVermontlawyer later observed wryly that "like every good feminist-in-training in the sixties, I burned my bra", but that "now it's the nineties... I realizePlaytex[underwear manufacturer] had supported me better than any man I know. "Claire Perry,who became aConservativeMember of Parliamentin 2010 and later a government minister, reflected that, as a "women's officer" at Oxford University in the early 1980s, she was "a bra-burning feminist with a hideousnew-romantichaircut ", but that her feminism had, in her view, matured.

"Girl power"

By the mid-1980s, the American singerMadonnahad turned the bra into a positive, even provocative, fashion statement. Madonna's flamboyant and gritty style (notably seen to bohemian effect alongsideRosanna Arquettein the 1985 film,Desperately Seeking Susan) was, in turn, a precursor of so-called "girl power"that was associated in the 1990s with various prominent young women (such as singersCourtney Love,who played the 1999Glastonbury Festivalin a headline-grabbing pink bra,and the more commercially orientedSpice Girls) and offbeat or quirky American television series (Xena: Warrior Princess,Buffy the Vampire Slayer,Caroline in the City,Sex and the City).

Since the 1960s: hippie/boho-chic

Main article:Boho-chic

Zooey Deschanel(left) performing withM. WardasShe & Him,Newport Folk Festival,2008

Journalist Bob Stanley remarked that "the late 1960s are never entirely out of fashion, they just need a fresh angle to make themde jour".Thus, the features of hippie fashion re-emerged at various stages during the ensuing forty years.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, variants of the short and fundamentally un-Bohemianrah-rah skirt(which originated withcheerleaders) were combined with leather or denim to create a look with some Bohemian or evengothicfeatures (for example, by the singing duoStrawberry Switchbladewho took inspiration from 1970spunk fashion).In the 1990s the term, "hippiechic",was applied toTom Ford's collections for the Italian house ofGucci.These drew on, among other influences, the style, popular in retrospect, ofTalitha Getty(died 1971), actress wife ofJohn Paul Gettyand step-granddaughter of Dorelia McNeil, who was represented most famously in a photograph of her and her husband taken byPatrick LichfieldinMarrakesh,Morocco in 1969.Recalling the influx of hippies into Marrakesh in 1968,Richard Neville,then editor ofOz,wrote that "the dapper drifters in embroidered skirts andcowboy bootswere so delighted by the bright satin '50s underwear favored by the matrons of Marrakesh that they wore them outside their denims à la Madonna [the singer] twenty-five years later ".

In the early 21st century, "boho-chic" was associated initially with supermodelKate Mossand then, as a highly popular style in 2004–2005, with actressSienna Miller.In America, similar styles were sometimes referred to as "bobo- "," ashcan chic ", or"luxe grunge",their leading proponents including actressesMary-Kate OlsenandZooey Deschanel.As if to illustrate the cyclical nature of fashion, by the end of thenoughtiesstrong pre-Raphaelite traits were notable in, among others, singerFlorence Welch,modelKaren Elsonand designerAnna Sui.

In Germany, terms likeBionade-Bourgeoisie,Bionade-BiedermeierorBiohèmerefer to former Bohemians that gained a sort ofCultural hegemonywith theirLOHAlifestyle;the phenomenon of such former (young) bohemians becoming established during the years is a typical aspect ofgentrificationprocesses. Abon motofMichael Rutschkyclaimed that at the end of the 20th century, "not theProletariat,but theBohèmebecame the ruling class ".The group in question uses especially food as a means ofdistinctionand separation.Among others, the lemonade trademarkBionadehas been connected with the phenomenon.

See also

• Bohemia in London