Last Thursday, September 26, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston offered a college night for students in the city. Many schools, including Northeastern, got in for free. The theme of the night was “Hippie Chic.” Outside of the museum were vintage VW vans that people could explore the inside of and take pictures in. The event also featured the MFA’s newest fashion exhibit, Hippie Chic, which featured colorful long dresses and tunics with eccentric “acid” patterns and mismatched umbrellas, fantastic star shaped and tinted sunglasses, and clogs and high knee boots. All of the mannequins had the popular long, flowing hair of that time period. Music from the era played throughout the exhibit. If you watched those who lived in the 60’s and 70’s walk through the exhibit, you could tell that they felt a sense of nostalgia. Though the fashion is very different from today’s trends, some aspects have clearly resurfaced in the fashion world.
The night also included a tie-dye workshop in which Charlotte Hamlin gave a background on the history of tie-dye and taught the audience how to make their own on small pieces of cloth. Charlotte is an artist who teaches at UMass Dartmouth. Tie dye was very popular in the 1960’s and 1970’s as many hippies enjoyed crafting their own clothes and making them unique. Tie-dye is based off of compression. It isn’t random, like many think it is, but instead requires a certain technique. Cloth is bound by folding, pleating, or twisting to create certain patterns, which Hamlin showed us how to do. The amount of resistance also affects the pattern. Using the dye in small quantities works best. Being meticulous about preparation when creating the square greatly affected the finished product.
The whole night was a really fun way to enjoy a night out. It was interesting to learn about an era I never experienced and see styles that have been reborn in different ways.