Fashion often changes in broad, pendulum-like swings, and this is a good example of the phenomenon. But while the question is deceptively simple, the answer is complex, because it involves explaining several social and historical convergences. Bear with me, if you will, and I hope all will become clear:
In the early 70's, there came about, pretty abruptly, a strong visual backlash against the electric, high-chroma,"psychedelic" colour palette that was such an iconic feature of the late 60's hippie culture; in short, the style got old very fast. The reasons were multiple: America was now deep in a quagmire of war; thousand were being drafted and returning home in coffins, mere weeks after their induction; protesters were being beaten and jailed; every day, the newspapers revealed our leaders to be ever more egregiously stupid crooks, liars and fools. Madness and anarchy seemed to lie around every corner.
Somehow all that celebratory, fun, acid-saturated colour now seemed silly and self-indulgent. It became as inappropriate as wearing a "Smile" t-shirt to a schoolbus rollover. And all the gentle social upheaval and genial questioning of institutional values that those bright colours once cheekily promised? Well, they no longer carried much appeal. In fact, they seemed frightening - just more uncertainty and conflict, in already uncertain and conflicted times.
People were suddenly in the visual mood for something more muted, contemplative and restrained. The faintly mournful "autumn" colour palette - dark orange, oxblood, copper, brown, harvest gold, avocado green - filled that need so well that, as you point out, it literally became symbolic of the decade. Perhaps simply because it reminded folks of a less complex time, when subtle, visually digestible, vegetable-based dyes coloured our surroundings, rather than incomprehensible, knock-your-eyes-out chemical pigments.
Concurrently with the shift in colour preferences, smaller, meticulously repeated patterns once again began to appear on fabrics and wallpapers, as sharp stylistic counterpoint to the free-form, Yellow Submarine-esque, "supergraphic rainbow" visuals that had overwhelmed every available wall surface during the previous decade.
Those autumn colours also thematically supported, and were cross-fertilized by, the decade's nascent "natural" movement. Still inspired by the lofty ideals of their older siblings' recently failed hippie paradigm, and boosted by the first vague stirrings of the modern ecology movement, '70s boomers forsook (at least temporarily) their parents' blatant consumerim, and instead embraced the generationally dormant, homespun handicrafts of their grandparents: macramé, crochet, bargello, weaving, leatherworking, cutting down old beer bottles into drinking glasses. The handicrafts they created and proudly decorated their homes with were mostly made from organic materials, so they just looked better when surrounded with earth-tone colours.
Chromatic colour was out, because it detracted from the workmanship - which was, after all, what differentiated handmade-and-unique from factory-extruded and common.
This attitudinal shift towards muted, "homemade" colour and texture, and away from slick, obviously industrial colours and finishes was, at least in part, probably a subconscious side-effect of the 70's generation's fast-growing resentment of both the politician-buying industrial complex, and its ongoing material support for a war they despised. The war ended in '75, but resentments lingered. It was, if you will, a form of protest, or boycott: a generation's tentative, somewhat pathetic attempt to re-exert control over their own visual destiny, and to wrest whatever tiny part of their environment they still could, away from the overbearing and apparently malignant industrial and commercial forces that were threatening to overwhelm them socially, financially and politically.
At the same time as these color and design changes took hold in home decor, people began gradually shifting their wardrobes back to natural wools and cottons. After a decade and a half of collecting increasingly slinky, shiny, uncomfortable, odiferous and obviously synthetic garments - which were themselves a pendulum-swing away from the ossified white-cotton-shirt, gray-flannel-suit ethos of the two decades following WWII, the fabric-choice pendulum was again swinging back. And in clothing, as in interior design, autumnal, natural colours were generally seen to be more complementary to natural materials than chromatic colours.
That all being said, the prevalence of the autumnal palette wasn't really as all-encompasing as retro media like That 70's Show would have us believe. Designers frequently go kind of over-the-top when they try to recreate a period look, a generation or more later. Frankly, even Mad Men, though certainly very well researched, is visually a little overbearing in its representation of the period; after all, not everything in the Sixties was of the Sixties; some of it hailed from the Fifties and Forties, even the Thirties.
Just as we still occasionally see an 80's wood panelled Buick land-shark station wagon in the Walmart parking lot, or a suitcase-sized VCR parked under a friend's tube TV, I long to see a cheap postwar suit on some poor agency schlub who supervises the steno pool. Instead, everybody wears Brooks Brothers. All the time.
It is also instructive to realize that within any fashion era "look" you'd care to examine, competing visual ideas constantly jousted with one another for dominance. Visual style is a roiling river, not a still pond. Remember that the "natural, homespun" 70's were also the era that gave birth to platform boots for men, polyester lounge suits, "designer" jeans, disco, the New York Dolls, foil wallpaper, smoked glass coffee tables, naugahyde sofas, spherical stereo speakers, shag carpet, gold-veined mirror tiles, chrome overhead lamps, and pink Christmas trees. For further proof, take another look at Goodfellas, with an eye to the set decoration and costumes; it is a veritable omnibus of questionable 70's design.
from
In the early 70's, there came about, pretty abruptly, a strong visual backlash against the electric, high-chroma,"psychedelic" colour palette that was such an iconic feature of the late 60's hippie culture; in short, the style got old very fast. The reasons were multiple: America was now deep in a quagmire of war; thousand were being drafted and returning home in coffins, mere weeks after their induction; protesters were being beaten and jailed; every day, the newspapers revealed our leaders to be ever more egregiously stupid crooks, liars and fools. Madness and anarchy seemed to lie around every corner.
Somehow all that celebratory, fun, acid-saturated colour now seemed silly and self-indulgent. It became as inappropriate as wearing a "Smile" t-shirt to a schoolbus rollover. And all the gentle social upheaval and genial questioning of institutional values that those bright colours once cheekily promised? Well, they no longer carried much appeal. In fact, they seemed frightening - just more uncertainty and conflict, in already uncertain and conflicted times.
People were suddenly in the visual mood for something more muted, contemplative and restrained. The faintly mournful "autumn" colour palette - dark orange, oxblood, copper, brown, harvest gold, avocado green - filled that need so well that, as you point out, it literally became symbolic of the decade. Perhaps simply because it reminded folks of a less complex time, when subtle, visually digestible, vegetable-based dyes coloured our surroundings, rather than incomprehensible, knock-your-eyes-out chemical pigments.
Concurrently with the shift in colour preferences, smaller, meticulously repeated patterns once again began to appear on fabrics and wallpapers, as sharp stylistic counterpoint to the free-form, Yellow Submarine-esque, "supergraphic rainbow" visuals that had overwhelmed every available wall surface during the previous decade.
Those autumn colours also thematically supported, and were cross-fertilized by, the decade's nascent "natural" movement. Still inspired by the lofty ideals of their older siblings' recently failed hippie paradigm, and boosted by the first vague stirrings of the modern ecology movement, '70s boomers forsook (at least temporarily) their parents' blatant consumerim, and instead embraced the generationally dormant, homespun handicrafts of their grandparents: macramé, crochet, bargello, weaving, leatherworking, cutting down old beer bottles into drinking glasses. The handicrafts they created and proudly decorated their homes with were mostly made from organic materials, so they just looked better when surrounded with earth-tone colours.
Chromatic colour was out, because it detracted from the workmanship - which was, after all, what differentiated handmade-and-unique from factory-extruded and common.
This attitudinal shift towards muted, "homemade" colour and texture, and away from slick, obviously industrial colours and finishes was, at least in part, probably a subconscious side-effect of the 70's generation's fast-growing resentment of both the politician-buying industrial complex, and its ongoing material support for a war they despised. The war ended in '75, but resentments lingered. It was, if you will, a form of protest, or boycott: a generation's tentative, somewhat pathetic attempt to re-exert control over their own visual destiny, and to wrest whatever tiny part of their environment they still could, away from the overbearing and apparently malignant industrial and commercial forces that were threatening to overwhelm them socially, financially and politically.
At the same time as these color and design changes took hold in home decor, people began gradually shifting their wardrobes back to natural wools and cottons. After a decade and a half of collecting increasingly slinky, shiny, uncomfortable, odiferous and obviously synthetic garments - which were themselves a pendulum-swing away from the ossified white-cotton-shirt, gray-flannel-suit ethos of the two decades following WWII, the fabric-choice pendulum was again swinging back. And in clothing, as in interior design, autumnal, natural colours were generally seen to be more complementary to natural materials than chromatic colours.
That all being said, the prevalence of the autumnal palette wasn't really as all-encompasing as retro media like That 70's Show would have us believe. Designers frequently go kind of over-the-top when they try to recreate a period look, a generation or more later. Frankly, even Mad Men, though certainly very well researched, is visually a little overbearing in its representation of the period; after all, not everything in the Sixties was of the Sixties; some of it hailed from the Fifties and Forties, even the Thirties.
Just as we still occasionally see an 80's wood panelled Buick land-shark station wagon in the Walmart parking lot, or a suitcase-sized VCR parked under a friend's tube TV, I long to see a cheap postwar suit on some poor agency schlub who supervises the steno pool. Instead, everybody wears Brooks Brothers. All the time.
It is also instructive to realize that within any fashion era "look" you'd care to examine, competing visual ideas constantly jousted with one another for dominance. Visual style is a roiling river, not a still pond. Remember that the "natural, homespun" 70's were also the era that gave birth to platform boots for men, polyester lounge suits, "designer" jeans, disco, the New York Dolls, foil wallpaper, smoked glass coffee tables, naugahyde sofas, spherical stereo speakers, shag carpet, gold-veined mirror tiles, chrome overhead lamps, and pink Christmas trees. For further proof, take another look at Goodfellas, with an eye to the set decoration and costumes; it is a veritable omnibus of questionable 70's design.
from
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