Swinging sixties

The term Swinging London refers to a youth-driven cultural revolution that took place in London during the mid-to-late 1960s. It saw a flourishing in art, music and fashion, and was symbolized by the city's "pop and fashion exports," like the British Invasion, Mary Quant's miniskirt, popular fashion models such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, the mod subculture, the iconic status of popular shopping areas (such as King's Road, Kensington and Carnaby Street), the political activism of the anti-nuclear movement; and sexual liberation. Music was a big part of the scene, with "the London sound" including the Who, the Kinks, the Small Faces and the Rolling Stones; bands which were the mainstay of pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Swinging Radio England. The Swinging London also reached British cinema, which "saw a surge in formal experimentation, freedom of expression, colour, and comedy." During this period, "creative types of all kinds gravitated to the capital, from artists and writers to magazine publishers, photographers, advertisers, film-makers and product designers."

During this era, London "[metamorphosed] from a gloomy, grimy post-War capital into a bright, shining epicentre of style." The phenomenon was caused by the large number of young people in the city (due to the baby boom of the 1950s) and the postwar economic boom. Following the abolition of the national service for men in 1960, these young people enjoyed greater freedom and fewer responsibilities than their parents' generation, and "[fanned] changes to social and sexual politics." However - and despite shaping the popular consciousness of Britain in the 1960s - Swinging London was a West End-centered phenomenon that only happened among young, middle class people, and was considered "simply a diversion" by some of them. The swinging scene also served as a consumerist counterpart to the countercultural British underground of the same period. Simon Rycroft writes: "Whilst it is important to acknowledge the exclusivity and the dissenting voices, it does not lessen the importance of Swinging London as a powerful moment of image making with very real material effect."

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