>> these guys weren't trying to create a fashion trend. they had poured all their heart and soul into their music. they didn't have money to go buy stuff. they're thrifting. and eventually because of the power of their music they transformed from what was not intended to be a fashion movement to truly a worldwide sensation. >> the cnn original series "american style" continues into the 1980s tomorrow night at 9:00 here on cnn. thanks for watching. i'm back tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. eastern. if you need to get caught up, "american style" starts right now. great style is something that is grown from within. >> style is culture. style is expression. >> there is no stopping point short of victory. >> all of us must stand up and say "no more." >> i don't believe that there

has been a fashion decade as tumultuous as the 1960s. >> things like this, basically they're great, they really are. >> people celebrated their bodies literally by showing their bodies. skirts went up. >> the birth control pill is very effective if taken as directed. >> the pill is a symbol of the radical changes in the culture. people realizing that how you presented yourself was a political act. it was an artistic act. it was something to have fun with. >> disco was a wild, mad, drug-saturated party scene. >> the '60s and '70s our style and fashion represents freedom. ♪ ♪

♪ when people think of the '50s, they think of something that's very stiff and conservative. we're talking about a time in which society was completely dominated by white men. this is the sort of era of conformity. >> in the '50s everything was kind of like repressed. >> in the eisenhower era everybody is still buttoned down. things seemed to be in black and white. >> everybody wanted to look like everybody else. nobody wanted to stand out. a man could not be in business in the '50s and even the early

'60s unless you were wearing a hat. >> what happened, the world was changing. the world was changing. ♪ >> the united states elected its 35th president in 1960. john f. kennedy, the youngest man ever elected. >> we stand today on the edge of a new frontier. the frontier of the 1960s. the frontier of unknown opportunities and peril. >> we begin the '60s with the kennedy administration. ♪ >> kennedy represented youthful optimism. >> jack kennedy was becoming president and we were not going to be a rural country anymore. we were now an urban country. jack kennedy was cool and sophisticated and cosmopolitan and so was jackie. >> you see with jack and jackie this idea that they represented something that was young and aspirational and that seemed to people strikingly different from the last few presidential

couples. so different than the eisenhowers, for example. >> to have this new outlook in the white house was definitely helpful to the youth culture because they finally said, okay, there's someone that actually represents us. >> there was a reason that john kennedy took his hat off for his inauguration. he chose to signal to, you know, the millions of people who were watching that this was a new generation. it was a new time. >> and all of a sudden men thought that hats were old-fashioned. [ applause ] ♪ >> john kennedy had a style of a kind of wealthy, upper-class new england person. so was more casual than the sort of typical ruling class person. >> kennedy carried himself with simple style, was never overthought. it was very much with ease.

>> style matters with jack kennedy and his style is grace under pressure. he defines cool. >> president kennedy's youth, his sartorial excellence, and his great physique were all differentiators, i would say, from prior presidents. he looked fantastic. >> jackie kennedy was so beautiful and so stylish and seemed to not sweat the details. >> she was like american royalty. there was a kind of impeccablity about her, but yet it was all so relaxed. simple lines, bright colors and beautiful sorbet colors. >> her pillbox hat. >> we still call those collars that she wore the little rounded collars, jackie kennedy collars. they weren't hers, but she made them hers. >> it was decluttered. it wasn't fussy or overly feminine. it was just chic. >> everyone was picking up on how she dressed. >> people could replicate her

style. >> she was very intelligent about thinking how her style was perceived. she really had a sense of how you could use style from a political point of view to get a message across. >> when she came to the white house and became first lady, it was very important to her to have an american designer, so she turned to oleg cassini who is a fashion designer but he was really a costume designer of hollywood for many, many years and one of the reasons that she turned to him knowing that he was a costume designer, knowing that he knew how to package stars both for the camera and off camera, that was critically important to her. >> the presidential plane landed at orly airport in paris. president charles de gaulle met the chief executive. >> jack kennedy goes to paris because he wants nato to stay supreme. he wants to meet with the french leader.

>> de gaulle and jack kennedy did not get along terribly well, but he and jackie kennedy got along incredibly well. she completely charmed them. >> jacqueline bouvier kennedy, she loved french fashion. >> she knew who the top french designers were. i promise you bess truman did not. >> mrs. kennedy till this night had been wearing american-designed clothes and french fashion houses were beside themselves and peace came in the form of mrs. kennedy's decision to wear a gown made by givenchy, one of france's leading designers. >> she was one of the first ladies to use fashion diplomacy. she took that opportunity to celebrate french couture in france and sort of honor it that way. >> she certainly captivated the parisians. >> i am the man who accompanied jacqueline kennedy to paris, and i enjoyed it. >> it certainly was the first

time, i think, that europeans had seen a president and a first lady as icons of style, as a couple that shared that particular connection and that value system which had always been very important in europe, but i think, you know, that really was a turning point for how everyone thought about what you could do with an image. >> when kennedy's in paris he is epitomizing the triumph of american culture, the big music in all of europe was rock 'n' roll. the most interesting artists of the era were jackson pollack and his drip paintings and mark rothco and his color codes and russiaenberg and his collages. we were selling our pop culture in art and style all over the world and everybody was buying. ♪ >> but there was also the civil unrest at home. >> we're marching today to

dramatize to the nation and dramatize to the world that hundreds and thousands of negro citizens of alabama, but particularly here in the blitheville area denied the right to vote. >> the civil rights movement is one of the defining moments of the 1960s. freedom rides and the march on washington, martin luther king as a symbolic figure. also someone like malcolm x. these are all parts of that era. >> as a little girl, i can remember very distinctly looking at a black and white television in our living room and these horrific, you know, film of black people in the south having a water hose turned on them and the dogs attacking them and martin luther king and this whole idea of conquering hate with love. >> the television was showing us the plight of people in despair. look at any civil rights footage, these are

african-americans wearing church clothes. it's symbolic to say don't judge me on the color of my skin. >> i think the african-american community always wanted to look nice because they did not want their lack of being dressed properly to be held against them because so many other things were. >> it's not just civil rights of black people. it's civil rights of all people. >> certain people are frightened of other people being included. it's about inclusion. >> you had all these different groups question are we really equal? and when they questioned themselves, they discovered they weren't. so the '60s was like we've got all these issues, what are we going to do about the issues? [birds chirping]

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the firing line with william buckley jr., and hugh hefner. tonight, the playboy philosophy. >> it is, i think, important for the record to establish that you are seeking, in effect, to annul the traditional code about what is proper sexual behavior. let me ask you this -- >> i'm suggesting to re-examine. i suggested that two or three times. it's not true that i'm by any sense because the end that i'm seeking is really very similar. the real key to the philosophy is not offering an alternate moral code to the traditional one, but a suggestion that we're apt to find some better answers if we re-examine many of these old traditional ideas. >> you can't underestimate the power of hugh hefner when he invented the playboy philosophy. >> while he was a sexual revolution pioneer, hugh hefner,

he was also a misogynist. "playboy" magazine was the first time that girly magazines were being sold in reputable stores over the counter. >> there is no magazine after world war ii that has the impact on fashion and style as much as "playboy." >> "playboy" was for men like "vogue" and other magazines were for women. "playboy" taught men to see themselves as consumers and creators and i drivers of culture and consumers of fashion. and there weren't a lot of fashion magazines for men before "playboy." >> the "playboy" man is very sophisticated and hefner's first letter to playboy he said something like, he loves to listen to jazz, read nietzche, make hors d'oeuvres and all this stuff. >> "playboy" had a huge impact on american society. hefner was creating a new sort of male image. it was telling men that they also didn't have to be just conscientious working drones. it marked a kind of shift

between a culture that emphasized productivity and restraint to one that emphasized pleasure and consumption. ♪ >> most people want to decide for themselves how many children they will have and when to have them. >> the pill really has revolutionized in a social as well as medical way the birth control picture in the last decade. ♪ >> there wouldn't have been a sexual revolution without the pill because the pill decoupled women being sexually active from women fearing they're inevitably getting pregnant. >> the pill had an enormous impact on women's lives and their attitudes and therefore also their style. if you could take a pill and not get pregnant, then women's whole behavior could change completely. >> it's a social revolution for women. >> you have a free pass and you can kind of enjoy your life or

your sex life or whatever. you know. >> all of a sudden, it just brought a different spirit to women, more empowered, more freedom, more control over themselves. >> the pill was the single transformative medical miracle for men and women, you know, to change their attitudes toward how you can be as a single person. ♪ >> isn't this whole subject of sex being discussed and written and talked about too much? >> people are now talking about it a great deal, and i don't think that's so bad. >> i do. i think it's a pity. i think it spoils the mystery. [ applause ] >> in 1965 when helen gurley brown took over "cosmopolitan" magazine she completely changed

the magazine, she did a redo. >> helen gurley brown represented the intellectual woman who was liberated and was empowered by her own independence and her self-worth. >> for her first cover which was the july 1965 issue she puts this model named renata beck right on the cover with large breasts and big blond hair in a very kind of like sexual expression on her face, and she wanted to project the image of "cosmopolit "cosmopolitan" as shaking things up. >> "cosmo" was all about giving women permission to be as sexy and sexualized, and articulate about their own sexuality as you wanted to be. >> this was one of the first times in this country that anyone had come out speaking about sex so frankly and honestly and out in the open. >> i did several of the covers myself. they were daring. i remember walking in for one of them and they handed me what looked like a bunch of strings and they said here's your outfit.

put that on. it was norma camali's first time on a magazine cover, and that was the kind of cover that dared women to go where they'd never gone before. >> the effect of cosmopolitan rocked the whole culture. helen gurley brown really impacted the nation of women, particularly young women. ♪ >> skirts went up and people celebrate their bodies literally by showing their bodies. >> the mini skirt is just a physical embodiment of a desire for sex in some ways. it's meant to attract the eye. >> they are out in front and they are taking control and using their sexuality as something that's very powerful for the first time. >> there's an ongoing debate about who originated the mini skirt.

most people associate the mini skirt with mary kwan. >> andre kournlg always said i was the man who popularizeded the mini skirt and it was -- mary kwan just popularized it. and mary kwan said it wasn't courage or me, it was the girls in the street. it was definitely not a question of fashion designers imposing the miniskirt. it was a question of coming out of youth culture girls were wearing shorter and shorter skirts. they were taking it upon themselves to give themselves their own identity. so fashion designers were really just kind of reflecting back to them what they saw that they were interested in. >> it came from young people who wanted to style themselves in a way that signaled their departure from mainstream society. >> it was stunning. this nation and the world had never seen anything quite like it. ♪ i should try nicorette.

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everyone is coming to the new york world's fair. they're coming from the four corners of the earth, and from five corners idaho. >> in 1964 world's fair was the most well-attended event of human history. over 75 million people attended. >> they have all of these

incredible pavilions showing you what the modern world's going to look like. >> i believe what was so captivating was we had proven ourselves in world war ii, we had now become a world leader as a country. we had a lot of technology we were very proud of and we were really upping our game in the space race and it became a huge parts of american inspiration and american pride as well. >> the space race was very influential in design. >> people were wearing unusual manmade fibers. they were wearing sleeker silhouettes and they were wearing moon boots. >> there were bubbles everywhere and a-line mini dresses. >> architecture was changing and it was becoming more modern. so the world was really changing. >> the saarinen terminal was iconic. there was a lot of imagination to this approach. ♪

>> there was john lautner who made you feel like you're walking into the future. >> lautner grew out of frank lloyd wright. i knew him personally, and i loved everything he did. he did something that not very many people did. >> he took nature and this kind of futuristic architectural look and pushed them together like no one had ever before. that's what's magical about his architecture. it's very livable. >> space had an impact on everything, design across the board. ♪ >> we want nothing for ourselves, only that the people of south vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. >> you know, when john f.

kennedy died, in his place comes lyndon b. johnson. the youth culture never embraced lbj. he's wearing big belt buckles, cowboy hat, plaid shirts. he's seen as something alien and he has none of the cool of jack kennedy, none of the cosmopolitanism that they're craving. >> youth culture starts to rebel against lyndon johnson, the vietnam war, and ultimately comes to split the society and so when you look at hippie culture it's really appositional to the vietnam war. ♪ >> they have no concept of outloving the enemy. so we're going to change it. but we're not going to change it with bombs and guns.

we're going to change it with funny sweaters and flowers. >> fashion has always been a tool of protest. clothing has always been a symbol of the opposition. >> people realizing that how you presented yourself was a political act. it was an artistic act. it was something to have fun with. >> young people were having their own style, their own attitudes which were expressed in their clothing. it was egalitarian. it was anti-hierarchy. it was about asserting your individualism against a social authority. >> we saw influences of sort of hinduism and eastern asian culture coming in. >> women aren't shaving their legs or their armpits and no one's wearing deodorant and women are wearing mumus and caftans and jesus sandals are in abundance. >> if you're dropping acid and seeing 85,000 new colors you haven't seen before, yyou want o wear some pretty crazy outfits. >> men are wearing torn clothes and going shirtless and people don't care about grooming. >> for men, that is when long

hair really began. they grew the beards. everything was about let it go. >> when men had their hair long it was a statement of anti-establishment attitude. it was a statement of individuality, that you're going to be your own person and not just this kind of corporate flunky who did everything to serve the man. >> don't be afraid. don't be ashamed. we want black power! we want black power! we want black power! what do you want? >> black power! >> what do you want? ♪ >> the late '60s sees the emergence of a different approach to racial politics. it's not the civil rights movement anymore. it is the emergence of what comes to be known as black power. you have the emergence of a younger generation led by groups like the black panther party.

>> black panthers adopted a more militant stance toward social justice and racial politics in america. >> the black panthers used style. they used their bodies. they used fashion. >> black panthers, the big symbol becomes the beret. they're taking a military look that's not part of the vietnam soldier look and adopting it to urban warfare. >> the black panther look, it was natural hair, it was wearing lots of black clothes, it was black leather jackets and it was definitely associated with revolutionary liberation movements around the world. that was a very, very powerful and stylish look that presented an image of powerful and chic and proud black people. >> black panthers, they pioneered a broader style culture that was not just about fashion, but it was also about gestures and language and speech and music as well. >> and so the style imagery from the black power movement is

something that would be appropriated by various cultural forms and groups in many generations long after the black power movement itself had passed on. ♪ i'm a little bit country. and i'm a little bit rock 'n' roll. i'm a little bit of memphis and nashville. with a little bit of motown in my soul. i don't know if it's good or bad. but i know i love it so. with a little bit of country. and a little bit of rock 'n' roll. the all new chevy silverado. it's a little bit country, and it's a little bit rock 'n' roll. ♪ at first slice pizza lovers everywhere meet o, that's good! frozen pizza one third of our classic crust is made with cauliflower but that's not stopping anyone o, that's good!

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roy h. frowick dropped his first and his last names and won fame and fortune as halston. halston was once known primarily as the man who put jackie kennedy into a pillbox hat. >> halston was an iconic designer of the 1970s. >> if you looked at clothing and fashion of the '60s and then saw the '70s you were like, this is a radical change. >> i worked with halston when he was the hotshot movie star fashion designer. his parties were legendary. >> i knew halston socially. conversations would happen. i was an actor. i wasn't in fashion. he was interested in my opinions because i wasn't in fashion, and he offered me a job being one of his assistants. his staff was very young. we were still connected to the streets. we were still connected to the younger people and not the rich people that were buying his clothes. and that's what we brought as assistants into the house of halston. he had the classicism and he had

the street as well and the street was where the party was. >> halston first became famous for his hats, his little pillbox hats, and then he moved into making very modern, streamlined clothes. very, very easy-looking garments, but with a lot of panache. >> it allowed the fabric to just kind of graze over a woman's curves. and it was revolutionary. >> it was very new because it was minimalistic and we hadn't seen minimal in fashion. >> halston's view of american fashion was about stripping it of ornamentation, so halston was all about the cut and all about the fit and all about the movement of whatever the fabric was. >> everyone wore his clothes. ♪ >> in the history of american fashion there really had not been very many famous american designers. halston was the first rock star of american fashion. ♪

>> in 1973 this franco-american alliance decided to put a fashion show on to raise money for the restoration of versailles because versailles was in bad shape. >> it was the brainchild of a brilliant person named eleanor lambert. and she would create these events that were amazing. >> eleanor lambert conceived it as a fashion show. eleanor lambert knew it was no fashion show. she was telling everyone it was a battle. >> and it featured five american designers and five french designers. >> as far as the american designers are concerned, we had halston, oscar de la renta, bill blass, stephen burress and anne klein. her number one assistant was donna karan. >> anne was the only woman and so all the practicing was sort of going on in new york. you know, and picking out the clothes and how we're going to

do it. and then we hit versailles. >> now, the french went all out. ♪ >> the french put on very elaborate fashion shows with beautiful clothes and elaborate sets. >> the french part lasted 2 1/2 hours. they had so much scenery and so much things they had nothing to do with the presentation and it it big imitation boats that were he highly decorated and coming in with the girls standing still with the french designs on it. the french show was so long and so boring and so overstuffed. the fashion was lost. it was a hodgepodge. when the americans came on, from the very first moment we pumped up the music. ♪ i don't think they ever heard al green played in the royal theater of the palace royale. they never heard barry white and love unlimited. >> now, the whole idea of models

moving to contemporary music was new. >> monjour paris opened the show with umbrellas and raincoats and liza minnelli. >> we used music and lights and the girls themselves to show the clothes. >> our girls strutted and walked. the movementish the energy, the throwing the clothes, the showing the clothes. the clothes never stopped moving. >> and that was the first time that kind of modeling had hit the runway. you know, that the clothes were free. the bodies were free. the energy was free. >> the french didn't know what was happening. they'd never seen anything like this at all. and they went wild. >> they were standing up. they were trying to dance. and when it was all over, these beautiful silk programs that i think cost $200 to buy, they were throwing them up in the air and throwing them on the stage as if they were at a rock concert. >> we were dominated by african-american models.

>> it was a coincidence that there were so many black models in the show. >> we weren't counting. nobody was counting quotas. nobody was saying we have eight black girls and only four white girls. nobody was doing that kind of math. >> it was not intentional. these were all girls who knew how to show clothes beautifully. >> american designers totally cast the french fashion world into the shade and the battle of versailles became famous right away. it was such a shock both for the french and the americans to see the americans doing so well. >> the battle of versailles legitimized the idea of american style and design. they said this thing really does exist. it isn't just copies of european fashion which is what everyone had sort of dismissed it as. >> it changed from then on because france started imitating america after that. it really was the beginning of a seismic shift in fashion, in the world.

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♪ >> "charlie's angels" was a very popular television show in the late '70s. farrah fawcett was the most identifiable of the show's stars. >> farrah fawcett is perhaps best known for the iconic poster that she did in the 1970s. >> there was the sarape blanket behind her. her blond locks were feathered to the gods. >> the hair was the first thing that entered the room. it was like, whoo. hair. it did this. just without any help. >> she chose to wear her red norma kamali bathing suit. >> farrah was a great customer. i did a test of these red swimsuits and i only made i think six of them. and i said we've got to change the fit, i hate this. and then i see this poster. and that was the suit she wore. >> and that was on the wall of

every little straight boy that i knew when i was an adolescent in the 1970s. >> i even had the farrah fawcett poster. >> the poster was an unprecedented success. 6 million posters were sold. >> lucky for me it's in the smithsonian now, if you can imagine. >> i think one of the reasons it resonated so much is she really embodied a look of what the ideal american girl was in the 1970s. outdoors, athletic, healthy. >> but there's kind of a sexual ferocity that's also mixed in there. >> and even to this day if i do photo shoots if they're trying to give a period look they say farrah fawcett. >> everyone talks about farrah fawcett in the red bathing suit and what i think that shows everyone is the way an item of clothing can become a symbol of a moment, a kind of totem of a time in our culture.

>> when it comes down to american style, you cannot leave out farrah fawcett. ♪ >> in the 1970s, as women are going into the workforce more, some women moved towards trousers and pantsuits. others were saying, you know, can you wear a dress and still be a successful working woman? >> diane von furstenberg went to a guy she knew in italy and said i have this idea for a dress, can you make it for me? >> i made a few samples, and i came to america. i knew nothing about american fashion. and i lived an american dream. at age 25. >> diane was really in the middle of the cool because she was hanging out with everyone at studio 54 and everyone looked at diane as becoming the new girl in town with an incredible look of her own, with her mane and the wrap dress. >> the wrap dress is really like a kimono.

it's a dress with no zipper, no button. and it existed before, but nobody did it in jersey. cybill shepard wore it for "taxi driver." there was such a moment at that time. >> it has an elegance and a sophistication. at the same time, it's so easy. put it on like a shirt and wrap it around. nothing could be easier. >> it was relatively affordable. it came in a million different prints and it sold like hot cakes. >> it's extremely flattering. it is both proper and sexy. you get the guys and their mothers don't mind. ♪ >> the little wrap dress was worn not only by secretaries who could afford it, but it was worn by socialites and it was the first dress that liberated american women and said this is the go-to dress for every woman. office to boardroom to society. >> how many iconic items of fashion can we cite that were

created fairly recently that have had staying power? that wrap dress is a phenomenon. >> diane von furstenberg became a symbol of women's liberation, women's empowerment, and that dress embodied all of it. >> 45 years later it's still around. i made the dress, but really the dress made me. ♪ >> there's a new form of assault on city streets these days, an audio assault. the sound of disco music pouring from portable radios and cassette tape players. it's part nuisance, part culture, and part sociology. >> so disco gets its start from funk and soul music of the 1960s and '70s. >> disco was a wild, mad, drug-saturated party scene. you danced the night away with all your gyrations. you were covered with sweat and

people were absolutely captivated by the whole experience. ♪ >> disco was very important in terms of people being free to express themselves. it showed us that we can party together. you know, we can enjoy one another. >> there are elements of disco culture that grow out of african-american culture. there are elements of disco culture that grow out of gay culture. it had been going on but it was underground, and in the '70s it came above ground. >> it was definitely an important music phenomenon and had a big impact on fashion for that decade. >> disco brought out some peacocking. disco very much said i care how much i look and i want to look good. and not just women presenting sexually in that way but also men. >> studio 54 was the mecca.

and what would you wear to studio 54? the flashiest outfit you could possibly find. >> guys would often wear suits. women would often wear dresses. platform shoes were big. the disco sunglasses were sometimes in vogue as well. it was very much a kind of upscale aspirational music. and so the sense of fashion was also upscale and very much aspirational too. when i kept finding myself smoking in my attic. dad! hiding when i was supposed to be quitting. i thought, i should try something that works. i should try nicorette. nicorette mini relieves sudden cravings fast.

anytime. anywhere. nicorette mini. you know why. we know how. nicorette mini. zack. poor uncle edward. [ somber music playing ] he's passed away six times this year. [ cheering ] [ upbeat music starts ] let's go! let's go! let's go! and we don't even have an uncle edward. and yet somehow, i think this is what he would have wanted. [ cheering and screaming ]

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♪ macho, macho man ♪ i've got to be a macho man each member of the village people was dressed as a kind of anthemic male masculine style. >> gay men eroticized archetypes that aren't typically very gay-friendly. construction workers, cops are cliche bigots and homophobes. >> but it was so cam. and over the top it's amazing a lot of straight people didn't know what was happening at all. >> when i was a kid one of my favorite groups was village people. i was kind of naive, no gaydar at all. so i was just taking village people at face value. i'm like these guys are some cool-looking dudes.

you've got an indian, a police officer, a guy with all the leather. these guys are amazing. >> i'm singing songs, one song is fire island. i'm like this is the bomb. i didn't get it until somebody broke it down. but even after that i was like, so what? the music's still great. >> this is officially the world's largest anti-disco rally. >> 50,000 people, the largest crowd of the season, showed up at chicago's comiskey park. many had come for disco demolition night. >> local radio morning man steve dahl was the catalyst. he is anti-disco. >> a huge box containing thousands of disco records was blown up. fans stormed out onto the field in the thousands. disco records were hurled like frisbees. bonfires were set. bottles were thrown. the melee lasted an hour and a

half and resulted in 39 arrests and minor injuries. >> why did they get all hyper? >> they wanted to blow up the disco records. they don't like them. >> disco revolution destroyed sox park, burning disco records. they had to cancel the game because they so screwed up the ball field. and it was a kind of rage. >> there was a lot of pushback, and some of it was racist and smfr some of it was sexist and some of it was homophobic. >> so many of the major successful disco artists were black or latino. part of the reaction was that you know, let's get some whiter music back on the radio and back into popular culture. >> disco was just perceived by some as a threat because this was the music of queers and this was the music pouring out of clubs where there were gay people dancing with straight people and white people dancing with black people.

and it was perceived of violating on multiple levels at multiple times different taboos. >> i think the reason why disco was such a phenomenon is if you look at what was happening in america there wasn't very much fun. >> there's a malaise that comes into the american life. disco was a way to break from the malaise. >> disco brought so many cultures and genders, race, class together. the music had a joy to it. and no matter what was going on in your life, when that music was on you were free. >> the 1960s were a combination of sort of the highest of highs in american history and the lowest of lows. >> the '60s is an era of assassinations, civil rights,

counterculture, and the birth of feminism. >> all the many different styles that american youth adopted in the late '60s and early '70s had some bearing upon rebellion in american society. >> so you had everything from blue jeans, black leather jackets, natural hair. >> there's a transition in the 1970s. >> a lot of stuff that came out of the '70s. wide ties, flares, sort of the terrible muddy colors. things that we first thought oh, god, that was a mistake, have become part of like the grab bag of history that's endlessly referenc referenced by designers. >> one cannot overestimate how the '60s and '70s just smashed paradigms. it divided the country into two between main strael culture and counterculture. so we look at the '60s and '70s as about a 20-year period of revolution and style. >> the 1980s was excess on top

of excess. >> with every ying there's a yang. a pendulum swing to one side so far it swings back to the other. and the world changes. profoundly. how you live and what your values are, that's what style is. >> style is how you surround yourself. >> it's each generation finding their identity. >> have you ever broken any rules? >> i'm looking at the '40s and '50s. there's a tremendous amount of change. >> the bikini was the biggest thing since the atom bomb. it's scandalous.