40th Anniversary: Flashback to 1968 - The Look Book -- New York Magazine

A Flashback to 1968

"My money says the pantsuit will go everywhere within six months."

By Amy Larocca
Published Feb 10, 2008

(Photo: Andrew Eccles)

Do you get a lot of heat about your hair?
HE: My father talks about the bad associations with long hair. Armies always shave hair to deprive the soldier of his masculinity. So if long hair just happens to be the peace thing, it’s an appropriate happening. I want everyone to see me and say, there goes an enemy of the state.
SHE: Well, you’ve been given so much praise that you can afford to take a little criticism.

I bet it gets you noticed a lot.
HE: Try walking down Fifth Avenue in a $400 suit with a $150 cordovan attaché case. Nobody looks at you.

What do you do?
SHE: I’m in advertising.
HE: She wants to make a million and work eighteen hours a day.

It’s an election year; have you been watching the ads? Anything like LBJ’s infamous daisy ad from 1964?
SHE: Some people thought it was in bad taste, but isn’t it worse taste to have your country blown up?

What do you think about restaurants that still forbid women from wearing pants to dinner? Have you ever been thrown out?
SHE: The maître d’ of the Colony said, “You look glamorous, chic, completely of today, marvelous—you can’t come in.” At Lafayette, la patronne said, “Next you’ll want to come in your birthday suit.” My money says the pantsuit will go everywhere within six months.

Where do you shop?
SHE: On First, Bert Stern’s new store. I’m going to drape myself in James Lee Byar’s veil-loincloth and take Maxwell’s Plum in a storm of pulchritude.

You look like actors. Caught any movies lately?
HE: Everyone goes on and on about Last Year at Marienbad, but we prefer Secret Ceremony, which is about a slightly insane girl adopting a lesbian streetwalker as a friend to replace her dead mother.

“Look Book” interviews assembled from sentences appearing in New York in 1968.

Styling by Alex Slavycz for Magnet NY; hair by Alejandra for Kerastase/Artists by Timothy Priano; Makeup by Deborah Altizio for Fresh Makeup/Exclusive Artists; clothing available at Amarcord Vintage Fashion; She: Michelle Ouellet at Marilyn; He: Blair von Nort, singer of Young Lords.