A reminder from my age mates

The lasses who grew up with me in the ‘70s have rebuked me for not mentioning their flowing maxi skirts of that age in my perorations of last week.   The maxi arrived concurrently with the twin names Yves Saint Laurent and of American hippies. We were hearing about them for the first time.

Hippies were the ultimate youthful rebels. They dressed after their own fashion and listened to what they called psychedelic music. Strangely, they loved this overflowing skirt from Yves Saint Laurent. If the Americans thought it was good, then it must be good for us! Striving for space was the midi skirt, newly returned from oblivion, where the revealing and expressive mini skirt had cast it in the 1960s. Now we thought we were more imaginative. We said that we could undress you with our eyes. We left revelation and expressiveness to dull minds.

A common extra were dark glasses, in the fashion of Isaac Hayes and Manu Dibango. Apart from looking the part, it was said that the future was too bright. You needed dark glasses to slow it down a little. When you went dancing at the Inn on the Park, at the Starlight, Hallians or at the Garden Square Restaurant, you never left your sunglasses – for the future was too bright. You even sat in the movie house at Cameo munching and watching, in your sunglasses! Yes, the future was bright. You would think along with the poet William Wordsworth who said of the age of revolutions in Europe, “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive; but to young was very heaven – oh!”

The adult population never tired of reminding us that we were “future leaders.” Our day would come – I guess it has come. For we now tell younger generations that they are the future leaders. I have not listened to them to find out about their modish sunglasses. I don’t know whether they also “signify” an excessively bright future that must be tamed with dark glasses. Or do theirs signify a bleak future, which they need to begin getting used to?