Hippy at Heart

I look back on those carefree
days of the nineteen-seventies
and smell pungent Afghan coats,
see maxi skirts and knee-high boots,
although I preferred to go barefoot.
I loved Indian cheesecloth blouses,
bangles, beads and loon trousers,
bird-covered and scoop-necked
t-shirts, and velvet Biba rejects,
patchouli oil, hats and mood rings,
and so many other things
that I thought made me different
but, of course, it was just another trend.

As soon as punk came along,
I wasn’t really interested in the songs,
I just enjoyed having cropped peroxide hair,
no safety pins, they were everywhere,
but I cobbled together an eclectic style
all my own: wrap-around dresses made of voile;
Doctor Martens boots with coloured laces;
glittery scarves, silver earrings, braces
(the British word for suspenders),
and my trusty old pale green duster
coat that trailed along the ground
behind me and only cost about five pounds.

I think that back then I looked the part;
I hope I still do – I am a hippy at heart.

Kim M. Russell, 28th May 2024

It’s Tuesday and we are fashioning poems with Merril for Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub.

She says that today the theme is fashion in any way we want to interpret it, writing metaphorically or true to life, about our own fashion foibles or faux as, historical fashions, or about an item a loved one wore. She has given us inspiration in poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Terrence Hayes and Janice Mirikitani, as well as art by John Singer Sargeant, and a satire of eighteenth-century ‘macaroni’ fashion.Merril says that there is no required form or style. Mine is true and I made it light-hearted.

40 thoughts on “Hippy at Heart”

  10. I remember those fashions though had to wait until I left home and bought my own clothes to follow any of them. I went straight to the post-punk arty stuff, Camden Market style. Did you ever go to the Top Shop on Oxford Street? They had a sort of bargain basement warren of boutique clothes they couldn’t sell, really strange clothes at rock-bottom prices.

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    1. It was always Camden, Portobello Road, Petticoat Land ane Kensington High Street. Although there was a fabulous Indian Emporium in Croydon, which was affordable and closer to home.

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      1. You’re a Londoner though. I was only there a few years, not enough time to find the best places. I did go to Portobello a few times, one of my sisters lived close for a short while, but I lived at Archway/Hornsey Lane, so Camden was my stomping ground.

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  11. You perfectly encapsulate fashion from Hippy to Punk, Kim… I once met Poly Styrene – that is the sole extent of my involvement with Punk!

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  13. I am “bo-ho” at heart, your poem delighted me! I would wear this right now in my 80s: “Wrap-around dresses made of voile; Doc Martens (might stick with black laces” ~~~ and my friends have come to expect it.

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  15. A lovely look back at history, Kim! Bell-bottom trousers, which were often purple, was my ‘thing’! Hahahaha. Thanks for the memories!

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