Hipies in my mind are a cool type of people who don't give a care in the world. I mean without hippies, Jimi hendrix wouldn't exist, tie die wouldn't bring joy to other people. Hippies are a insiration to many people.
Hippies sought to free themselves from societal restrictions, choose their own way, and find new meaning in life. One expression of hippie independence from societal norms was found in their standard of dress and grooming, which made hippies instantly recognizable to one another, and served as a visual symbol of their respect for individual rights. Through their appearance, hippies declared their willingness to question authority, and distanced themselves from the "
straight" and "
square" (i.e., conformist) segments of society.
At the same time, many thoughtful hippies distanced themselves from the very idea that the way a person dresses could be a reliable signal of who he was, especially after outright criminals, like
Charles Manson, began to adopt hippie personas, and also after plainclothes policemen started to "dress like hippies" in order to harass legitimate members of the counter-culture.
Frank Zappa admonished his audience that "we all wear a uniform": the San Francisco clown/hippie
Wavy Gravy said in 1987 that he could still see fellow-feeling in the eyes of
Market Street businessman who'd dressed conventionally to survive.
As in the beat movement preceding them, and the
punk movement that followed soon after, hippie symbols and iconography were purposely borrowed from either "low" or "primitive" cultures, with hippie fashion reflecting a disorderly, often
vagrant style.
As with other adolescent, white middle-class movements,
deviant behavior of the hippies involved challenging the prevailing
gender differences of their time: both men and women in the hippie movement wore jeans and maintained long hair,
[68] and both genders wore sandals or went
barefoot.
Men often wore beards,
while women wore little or no makeup,
Hippies often chose brightly colored clothing and wore unusual
styles, such as
bell-bottom pants, vests,
tie-dyed garments,
dashikis, peasant blouses, and long, full skirts; non-Western inspired clothing with Native American, Asian, Indian, African and Latin American motifs were also popular. Much of hippie clothing was self-made in defiance of corporate culture, and hippies often purchased their clothes from flea markets and second-hand shops.
Favored accessories for both men and women included Native American jewelry, head scarves, headbands and
long beaded necklaces.
[37] Hippie homes, vehicles and other possessions were often decorated with
psychedelic art.
