How to Dress 70s With Clothes You Already Own

Open your wardrobe. Jeans. A blazer. A turtleneck. Boots. The trouser suit you put on when you need to be taken seriously. A wrap dress, if you own one.

That is not your wardrobe. That is a list of the seventies' victories.

The decade everyone remembers as glitter, disco and floor-sweeping flares did not actually leave behind a costume. It left an operating system — the one your closet has been running on ever since, so quietly that you no longer notice it, the way you no longer notice electricity.

You are already dressed in the seventies

Run the audit: jeans and a blazer, the trouser suit, the turtleneck, boots under everything, the wrap dress, one bare shoulder for a night worth dressing for. All of it arrived in one decade, and none of it has left since.

This is not a trend returning. It never went away.

Every decade since has had trends. No decade since has had a silhouette — one drawing offered to every woman at once. Here is why.

Why the seventies have no single silhouette

The twenties draw in one line. The fifties draw as one skirt. The sixties draw as one hemline. The seventies cannot be drawn at all — and that is not the decade failing. That is the decade's result.

A silhouette only exists where somebody has the authority to issue one. In 1970 that authority was revoked.

The industry decided to drop the hemline: the trade press and the stores pushed the midi together. Bonwit Teller ordered its salesgirls onto the floor wearing it. Women picketed. Committees appeared with names like GAMS and FADD. Boycotts were discussed. A Harris poll came back 59 to 32 against. The length died on the racks.

For the first time in four hundred years, women refused an ordered hemline. Nobody has successfully ordered one since.

The trousers decided everything

The largest change in what women wear in a century happened right here.

In 1968 Nan Kempner was turned away from La Côte Basque: no trousers on women. She took the trousers off on the spot and walked in wearing the jacket alone — long enough to read as a dress. The rule, technically, was obeyed.

Ten years later there was nobody left to argue with. Trousers took the restaurant, then the office, then the wedding: the most photographed bride of the decade married in the groom's half of the wardrobe. A myth worth correcting, though — at the ceremony itself Bianca Jagger wore a jacket with a long skirt. The trouser suits were her everyday uniform, not the wedding gesture.

And in 1973 came Charlie — the first fragrance a working woman bought for herself. In the advertisement she is mid-stride. Not posing.

A dress that is fifty years old and still working

1974, Diane von Fürstenberg, the wrap dress. No zip, no hooks — it fastens itself, goes on without another pair of hands, and travels from the office to dinner without a change.

"Feel like a woman, wear a dress," she said. By 1976 they had sold in the millions, and Newsweek called her the most marketable woman since Chanel.

The dress is still in production, essentially unchanged. Count how many things in your own wardrobe would survive that test.

Flares: how to wear them now without it reading as fancy dress

Flares are the most dangerous piece the decade offers, because they are the easiest to overplay.

The mechanics: a flare needs length. The hem should almost touch the floor, or the silhouette snaps in half at the knee — which is why they want a heel or a platform underneath, even a modest one. The top half stays contained: a fine turtleneck, a plain shirt, a short jacket. Volume above plus volume below is a party costume.

One rule about shoes. If the flare covers the boot completely, the boot can be anything. If it doesn't, the boot becomes the loudest thing you are wearing, and that has to be a decision rather than an accident.

The night column

Evening is its own chapter. The seventies formula: one colour, one shoulder, liquid fabric, hair pulled back. No decoration anywhere. The face does all the work.

It is the one part of the decade that barely translates into daytime — and the one part that has not aged at all. A heavy jersey column reads today exactly as it read in 1976.

Three rules, if you want to wear the seventies on purpose

One seventies piece per outfit. Never three. The flares, or the print, or the platform. The moment there are two, it is Halloween.

In daylight: relaxed below, tailored above. Jeans and a good blazer. It worked in 1975, and that is precisely why it still works.

When a rule arrives from outside, treat it like the midi. A trend, an office, an algorithm — you are allowed to check it against your own face first. And you are allowed to say no.

Which seventies is yours

The decade left a menu rather than a costume. But not every page of the menu is yours.

The tailored smoking is the Huntress — clothes you can do things in. The romantic maxi and the hand-painted chiffon, the Muse. The torn T-shirt that argues with the room, the Rebel. And the night column — one colour, one shoulder, the face carrying everything — belongs to the type nobody names: dangerous elegance, restraint plus brightness, no performing. It breaks on anything cute — ruffles, pink lace, girlish flirtation.

If that dress feels like coming home, your page may well be that one.

Except whether something suits you is not a question of taste, or nerve, or what the feed says this month. Three layers decide it: the line of your face, your colouring, and your archetype — the character your face transmits before you say a word.

In 1970 women won the right to choose. Working out what to choose by took another half-century.

It takes you three photographs.

---

Archive images: Anefo / Nationaal Archief (CC0), The Museum at FIT (CC BY-SA 2.0), Bruce Monroe (CC BY-SA 2.0), Elisa.rolle (CC BY-SA 4.0), RISD Museum (CC0) — via Wikimedia Commons. Present-day photographs: Selphico.