This nearly pocket-sized mini-book doesn’t hold the appeal of extensive text or impressive knowledge to share, but it sure offers up some amazing photographs and quirky advertising that’s almost guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.
A member of the Taschen Icon series, the hot pink paperback is miniature version of the much pricier coffee-table edition. Not much writing sits between the front and back cover, only a short prologue by Laura Schooling of Style.com that outlines the era and delves into a short description of what it was like to live during the 60's, handily including translations in English, German and French.
The majority of pages are bursting with bright photos that tell aged tales of Pink Shampoo “made just for girls” or Wrangler jeans that stress, “You have to look for the W because it’s silent!” Reading each small-print product description brings a strange feeling of nostalgia to me, even though I wasn't actually alive in the 60's.
My favorite page has to be the hair dye advertisement where the reader is told to cover the man’s half head of grey hair and see how much younger he looks with brown hair only, perhaps a first attempt at the interactive advertising that seems to be storming today’s market? To be fair, he really does look much younger with only the brown…
60's Fashion, Vintage Fashion and Beauty ads by Jim Heimann,
Tashcen, 2007
review by Alyssa Garrison
photography by Erika Neilly
