
1960s · 1960s · American
Designer
Willi Smith
Production
ready-to-wear
Material
cotton with plastic thread
Culture
American
Movement
Space Age
Influences
ikat textile tradition · Space Age color experimentation
A structured blazer jacket featuring a vibrant geometric ikat-style print in purple, orange, green, and blue vertical bands. The jacket displays classic tailoring with notched lapels, a double-breasted or wrap-front closure, and long sleeves with fitted cuffs. The cotton fabric incorporates plastic thread, creating a distinctive texture and sheen characteristic of 1960s synthetic material experimentation. The geometric pattern consists of irregular vertical stripes with blurred edges, creating an optical effect typical of Space Age fashion's embrace of modern printing techniques and bold color combinations.
These two pieces reveal how wartime austerity planted the seeds for 1960s liberation. The British utility slip, with its clean geometric panels and functional seaming, stripped away Victorian frippery in favor of engineered efficiency—a modernist blueprint that would resurface twenty years later in that American blazer's bold geometric abstraction.
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