Army fatigues gave way to pilot jackets; tie-dyed T-shirts became slogan T-shirts; the miniskirt – which briefly reappeared in the '90s - was replaced by an inconsistent hemline. The belted shift dress gave way to the baby doll dress in the '90s, only to return to its original form years later.
"[Those] styles have not lost their places in everyone's wardrobe," said Janice Lewis, head of the fashion-design department at the Moore College of Art and Design. "It came to us from 1968."
During the 1960s, extravagant fashion trends came and went, but it all came to a head in the turbulent year of 1968.
The year marked a period of civil unrest, mile-high emotion, excessive drug use and uninhibited sexual behavior. Fashion served as the backdrop to that raucous time, fashion experts say.
"In the early '60s, fashion was what you thought was cute," said Lewis. "In 1968, all the cute stuff fell apart. Young people were being drafted. Things changed. It was a time of social revolution."
Youth in particular rejected the staid fashion styles of previous generations and began charting their own courses, said Lewis, 55, who was a teenager that year.
"What you wore symbolized a little bit of something of your personality," she said. "People on the streets started to make their own fashion. They wanted to make their own story."
Those stories - which embodied an explosion of individualist fads - were told through an array of clothing: army fatigues and combat boots worn by Vietnam War protesters; Afrocentric prints in the black community; hippies frolicking in distressed jeans and peasant skirts; Grateful Dead heads in tie-dyed T-shirts.
