In case you missed it, it’s festival season in Australia.
That’s if the barrage of glitter-covered boobs (yes, really), sequin-emblazoned festival pictures on your Instagram feed over the last week hadn’t given the game away.
Yes, people have voluntarily given up a warm bed, proper toilet and WiFi to camp in a field with hundreds of thousands of strangers. Oh, and listen to some music.
But over the last few years or so, the tunes have been overtaken by something even flashier – the outfits.
While fashion has always been a big part of festivals since their inception in 1969 with Woodstock, the last decade has seen it explode. You no longer just go to a festival – you meticulously source, plan and dress for it. There’s the ‘you’ in real life, and then the wilder, more carefree and hippy festival ‘you’.
Music festivals provide an opportunity to experiment with fashion, a place where the normal rules of dressing no longer apply. The results? Bright, bold, barely there and probably not suitable for the office.
But while some may look at festival fashion in 2017 and see little more cloth than you would on a tea towel, it’s got nothing to do with modern dressing. In fact, festival style in the last few years has more in common with the original festivals in the 1960s than most other decades, with a move back to the free spirit mode of where it all began.
Top Comments
Some of those glitter boob ones aren't too bad. I think in a festival atmosphere it might be comfortable as hell to go around with no top on.
When I attended Confest (an outdoor hippie type festival) in 2000 there was a good proportion of people going around either completely naked or semi naked. I started doing it, too, and it's so enjoyable!
I seriously hope that by the time my daughter is old enough to attend concerts that young women realise you don’t have to dress like a streetwalker to show you are comfortable with your body. And that males start dressing like men without their genitals in display.
Young women showing off their bodies has always and will always happen, so I woudn't hold your breath!
I remember woodstock with all the nudity etc.That makes me an old geezer
Fingers crossed you're right.