The New York Times
The Moment

Women's Fashion Section
August 20, 2009, 4:07 am

Woodstock Fashion | What Would Jim and Joni Wear?
By Alix Browne

If you missed Woodstock, don’t worry. You are in good company. Bob Dylan wasn’t there, either. Or for that matter Joni Mitchell, Michelle Phillips or Jim Morrison. And while tie-dyes and bell bottom jeans are so summer of ‘69, the style of these musical icons is very fall 2009. Here’s how to get their looks.

Michelle Phillips
By Lindsey Gathright, T Magazine’s fashion assistant

Woodstock seemed like an obvious destination for the the Mamas & the Papas and their dreamlike sound, but overwhelming conflict within the foursome, spurred on by overnight fame and romantic quarrels, disbanded them just short of Woodstock in ‘68. The singer Michelle Phillips was the natural ’60s beauty with her soft blond hair and easy style that consisted of metallic ethnic coats, flowing prairie dresses and tomboy tees paired with colorful corduroys. Three decades later her look lives on.

Tory Burch T-shirt, $125; Tory Burch fur and leather vest, $1,950. Available at Tory Burch New York, 257 Elizabeth Street. Call (212) 334-3000. A.P.C. corduroy pants, $200. Go to apc.fr

Bob Dylan
By Bifen Xu, T Magazine’s associate fashion editor

Bob Dylan was one of the first musicians to discover Woodstock. He lived above Café Expresso in Woodstock for much of the ’60s, and it’s where he recorded the groundbreaking “Basement Tapes” with the Band. So it’s a little surprising that Dylan did not play at the Woodstock musical festival in 1969. Why? Well, Dylan was in negotiations to play the festival, but he had to drop out when his son became sick. Dylan was also unhappy about all the newcomers in Woodstock — he felt like they were intruding on his peaceful refuge — but he might have approved of this homage to his style: wayfarers, a beat-up denim jacket, plaid shirt and worn-out leather boots.

Ray-Ban sunglasses, $140. Go to sunglasshut.com. Levi’s jacket, $68. Go to levi.com. Paul Smith boots, about $437. Go to paulsmith.co.uk. Vince shirt, $180. Available at Barneys New York, 660 Madison Avenue. Call (212) 826-8900.

Joni Mitchell
By Melissa Ventosa Martin, T Magazine’s senior market/fashion editor

Joni Mitchell is sometimes called the “mother of Woodstock” — despite the fact that she wasn’t even there. She famously missed the festival because her agent thought that appearing on the Dick Cavett show was more important. After hearing about the three days of peace, love and music from friends, she wrote the song “Woodstock” to commemorate her loss. If she had performed, Mitchell surely would have worn a billowy blouse like this updated version from Tucker. No folk singer is fully dressed without some velvet and turquoise, and although these Chloé boots wouldn’t have lasted in the mud, they are essential for more urban locales.

Tucker blouse, $265. Go to tuckerwebshop.com. Chloé by Hannah MacGibbon boots, $695. Available at Chloé, 850 Madison Avenue. Call (212) 717-8220. Skirt by MiH Jeans, $197. Available at Saks Fifth Avenue, 611 5th Avenue. Call (212) 753-4000.

Jim Morrison
By Andreas Kokkino, T Magazine’s design market editor

The Doors were supposed to play Woodstock but canceled at the last minute. Some people say it was Jim Morrison’s distaste for the whole hippie movement, others that he hated large outdoor venues. Whatever the case, if they had played, the Lizard King would probably have worn a pair of leather pants, a necklace and (even if it didn’t stay on for long) some sort of gauzy henley like this one from Roberto Cavalli.

Roberto Cavalli shirt, $650. Available at Roberto Cavalli, 711 Madison Avenue. Call (212) 755-7722. Lost Art leather pants, $2,500. Available at Lost Art, 509 West 27th Street. Call (212) 594-5450.

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08...-and-joni-wear/

Joni would no more have worn that ugly outfit than she would have flown to the moon. She was and still is very artsy and elegant. That outfit is neither.

I like the Cavalli tunic (what did they call it - a Henley? Er - no.)

Everyone makes such a deal out of being at Woodstock or not, when the truth is that nobody suspected that this festival would become a watershed moment. I remember Graham Nash remarking to me in London that he and David and Steve had decided to appear because they thought it would be a smallish turn-out, and let them work the material from their first album to a live audience without too much attention being paid to them! Ha ha! That's why Joni, etc. didn't show as well.

Oh, Jim WOULD HAVE worn it had he been there. I bet Jim would have worn a Yamaka had he been Jewish. Put me down for 2

I didn't realize that it was a gay interior designer from NYC who actually brought the festival to Bethel, after the original deal fell through with Wallkill, NY. Eliot Tiber's family owned a small motel in Bethel and also the only music festival permit. Eliot reached out to the organizers, housed them at his parents' motel, and the rest is history - as well as the subject of a movie, Taking Woodstock, which comes out August 26, directed by Ang Lee.

http://www.answers.com/topic/taking-woodstock

It's 50/50 with Ang Lee whether Taking Woodstock is going to be a good movie. Evidence, Brokeback Mountain vs The Hulk

I think this is more of a comedy than anything else. Just like the real backstory of Woodstock was. Max Yasgur allowed the use of his land to piss off the local authorities, who had been less than obliging towards him.

Here's Max's speech to the crowd.

"I'm a farmer...(interrupted by cheering from the audience)...I don't know how to speak to twenty people at one time, let alone a crowd like this. But I think you people have proven something to the world — not only to the town of Bethel, or Sullivan County, or New York State; you've proven something to the world. This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place. We have had no idea that there would be this size group, and because of that you've had quite a few inconveniences as far as water, food, and so forth.

Your producers have done a mammoth job to see that you're taken care of... they'd enjoy a vote of thanks. But above that, the important thing that you've proven to the world is that a half a million kids —and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you are — a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and I - God bless you for it!"

Max, btw, was a Russian Jew from Manhattan, who wound up farming upstate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Yasgur

In my opinion, the designers are taking advantage of the all the publicity that surrounded Woodstock's 40 Anniversary. They just jumped on the gravy train in hopes of drawing attention to their own products.

I have a question - Theres an article from the Mercury News (Aug 12) where a person named Lee Housekeeper is interviewed. He says he was an agent for Jim Morrison. This could well be, but I have never heard of this person before and I can't recall reading the name in any of the bios I have. Anyone know this person?

"Housekeeper was a kid who saw his life take a "hard left turn" when he came to California and met a singer and poet named Jim Morrison, who formed The Doors and for whom Housekeeper would become an agent."


Mercury News

New survey on eve of Woodstock anniversary shows 'generation gap' has widened but softened
By Mike Swift

Posted: Aug 12 2009 12:01:00 AM PDT
Updated: Aug 12/2009 10:30:17 AM PDT

Lee Houskeeper remembers sitting on the stage at Woodstock 40 years ago this week, thinking that the sea of young people represented a generation coming into its own.

And its values were very different from those of his father's generation. "If your parents didn't like it, you loved it," said Houskeeper, who helped coordinate artists for the legendary festival in an upstate New York field and is now a 61-year-old publicist in San Francisco.

As America marks the 40th anniversary of a moment when youth culture crystallized in the 1960s, a flash point in "the generation gap," a surprising national survey suggests that the divide between how young people and their elders view the world has actually grown since Woodstock.

Yet the new survey from the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project finds a far "gentler" generation gap today, with fewer people seeing those differences as cause for angst. The survey of 1,815 people found that the strongest divides in society aren't between the generations, but between immigrants and the native-born, the poor and rich, and blacks and whites.

And where the young baby boomers of the 1960s saw themselves as a moral force, ready to restore the ideals their parents' generation had "sold out," the Pew survey found the mantle of moral authority has flipped. Younger and older adults agree: A generation that once warned against trusting anyone over age 30 has moral values superior to todays youth.

In effect, that younger generation was saying, 'We've got a better way,' " Paul Taylor, director of the Pew project, said of the friction between generations in the Woodstock era. "Today's youth are saying, 'Yeah, we're different than mom and dad, but no reason to get upset about it.' "

Another Pew study this year found 79 percent of Americans feel there are major divides in the viewpoints of younger and older adults — up from 74 percent in 1969. But while most people surveyed see "big differences" in terms of the use of technology, work ethic and moral values, Taylor added, "what we have here is a portrait of generations that have found a way to disagree, without being disagreeable."

Stronger moral values

Pablo Lopez, 14, of San Jose, says that while his parents don't know how to text or download music, they have stronger moral values, both because of their age and the times in which they grew up.

"I think because older people are more mature than us and understand situations more than us, we don't see the value in life, because we are just teenagers," he said. "We are more into ourselves than other people."

Nearly half of those under 30 don't even know what Woodstock was, the survey found, but the baby boomers' music — rock — has gone mainstream. An anthem of rebellion once vilified by many Americans — rock was the least-liked musical genre in 1966 — has become America's most popular music, according to the Pew survey, a telephone sample taken between July 20 and Aug. 2.

Nathanael Fairchild, a 20-year-old college student from San Jose, sees irony in what has become of the Woodstock generation.

"Woodstock was kind of like an anarchy thing. It's kind of funny: Most people who were at Woodstock are now 'the Man,' " Fairchild said.

Youth, then and now

The 1960s was a time when there was a literal

"youth explosion." Nearly 1 in 3 three Americans were in their 20s at the time of Woodstock; just one in seven Americans are now. The number of young adults between age 20 and 25 had surged by 52 percent between 1960 and 1970, as those born in the post-World War II boom came of age.

But despite their commitment to change, the youth of the Woodstock era were a far more homogeneous group in terms of race and national origin than today's young.

Nearly 90 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds were white at the time of the 1970 census, which was released about half a year after Woodstock. Today, the figure is closer to 60 percent. Then, less than 5 percent of the nation's population was foreign-born, less than half the rate today.

With so many of today's young people growing up with people from other races and cultures, it's tougher to have the same monolithic values that can generate conflict between generations, said Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of San Francisco-based Age Wave, a think tank that focuses on the demographics of generations.

"My class pretty much all looked like I did," said Dychtwald, a baby boomer. But things had changed tremendously when her kids went to high school and college. "I think that is a huge difference."

Dychtwald said there also was a sharp difference in levels of education between the baby boomers and their parents — particularly for women. That gap is much less significant between the boomers and their children.

Gathering of 'hippies'

Houskeeper was a kid who saw his life take a "hard left turn" when he came to California and met a singer and poet named Jim Morrison, who formed The Doors and for whom Housekeeper would become an agent.

Wednesday, Houskeeper will gather in San Francisco with a dozen "old hippies" and musicians who were at Woodstock, including Barry Melton of Country Joe & The Fish and Lester Chambers of the Chambers Brothers band, to promote a 40th anniversary Woodstock concert planned in Golden Gate Park for Oct. 25.

Somebody else will be there: 28-year-old Catherine Hill, a Canadian writer and musician who will be taking notes for a book she is writing about the values and experiences of the Woodstock generation. The book is not being written for nostalgia, Hill said this week, but with a critical eye to what her generation might learn from the failures and successes of the boomers.

With Housekeeper, who has become a friend, as a source for meeting '60s musicians, Hill said the Pew survey rings true about the strength of the moral values of many old hippies she's met. She sometimes feels she was born 30 years too late.

"I didn't identify with my generation," she said, "because I didn't feel like there was anything really meaningful for me to grasp onto."

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13040393

Lee's the real deal. He's been around since the mid-60s up in San Fran. He was/is a publicist.

Here's some photos from a recent party thrown in his honor.

http://www.altmanphoto.com/Higher.1.html