Noting the post from the 80s board, I'm curious if there where major differences in terms of the cars, fashion....

There are plenty differences, but maybe hard to enumerate.

If you see a guy wearing a leisure suit or platform shoes, it's likely 1976 and not 1970.  Hairstyles had evolved, but the difference is hard to describe in words.  Full face beards were less popular in 1976 than in 1970, but that's a broad generalization (some guys still had full face beards in 1976).

Cars were also different.  Since this was post-oil embargo, smaller cars had gotten more popular (ala the Pinto, Gremlin, and Pacer) - although, like anytime, old big cars were still abundant (along with new big cars).  Even new big cars were a bit smaller in 1976 than they were in gas guzzling 1970.

8)

Probably less emphasis on long hair and more emphasis on those short haircuts ala what Travolta in Saturday Night Fever or, if there was longer hair, it was the feathered medium style favored by again, Travolta in Welcome Back Kotter. In 1970 a great deal of men had long sideburns...In 1976 not so much.

As far as clothes, Hippie clothes (Denim, Tunics, etc) fell out and more Leather, such as Leather Jackets, (Punk Rock) and Disco inspired--dressier clothes, suits. Less bell bottoms and more platform shoes. More cleane shaven faces and less beards and mustaches.

As far as cars, you can tell the early 70s from the late 70s by a more boxy appearence to the cars and a greater number of square headlights rather than the round headlights of early 70s cars.

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why?

Just interesting to see how the '70s evolved.
I'd say that the 70s are probably the most transitional and rapidly changing decade next to the '60s.
I mean consider that we wear largely the same things now that we wore in 2000--Same or similar styles I mean. Others have come and gone yes, subcultures, but the main style has stayed the same for over a decade.

You can't say that with the way everything changed between 1960 and 1969 and 1970 and 1979. 1970 looked little like 1979.
And I believe 1972-1975 was the years of transition...These are the years when the 60s as a cultural period transitioned into the '70s. 1976 was when the transformation was really noticeable or had became fully mainstream. The nitty, gritty, dirty, early '70s, with all of it's activism, chaos, darkness and turmoil was over; It ended either in 1974 when Nixon resigned or in '75 when Vietnam was finally and fully over for us. A new, brighter, and more commercial era began. In 1974 and 1975 we got Jaws; a whole new slew of shows hit television that year like Happy Days, Starsky and Hutch, Barney Miller, the Jeffersons, Saturday Night Live, Welcome Back Kotter. TV became less about the issues of the day (think All in the Family) and more about escapism or nostalgia. People didn't want to watch the present problems be discussed on their TV shows or movies; They wanted distractions. And thus modern television and cinema began.

By '76 the Hippie culture was basically, as a mainstream movement, dead, except for little pockets of people here and there who still held on to their fashion and ideals. But by '76 America was becoming the land of corporate arena rock and Disco. The earthy, activist, back to roots '60s was long dead by '76. Consider just two years later in '78 Up in Smoke came out--Already Hippies were a joke, cultural anachronisms fit for mocking with their excesses. In 1970 and 1971 they and the college students were still a dominant, powerful cultural force.

So I'd say '76 is sort of the year where the 70s fully realized itself as a cultural period, sort of like how the '90s didn't truly become the '90s culturally until sometime between 1992 and 1994.

1969 - 1974:

http://guidedbywire.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/easy_rider_peter_dennis_and_jack_on_cycles.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/1970sgirl2.jpg/426px-1970sgirl2.jpg

1976 onward (I don't know about in between):

Well...I'm having some trouble finding good examples of that, so someone will have to throw me a bone. :D  I don't watch enough late '70s movies to know where I can find a good example, but at least I'll know it when I see it! ;D

1970 and 1976 seem like they were pretty similar to me, aside from the disco subculture that didn't yet exist in 1970. Then again, I wasn't born yet  :P

Just interesting to see how the '70s evolved.
I'd say that the 70s are probably the most transitional and rapidly changing decade next to the '60s.
I mean consider that we wear largely the same things now that we wore in 2000--Same or similar styles I mean. Others have come and gone yes, subcultures, but the main style has stayed the same for over a decade.

Hm no, you're wrong, the colors are brighter and the style is more "80s-ish", and there is the whole scarve, v neck shirt, waistcoat thing, even the fit of clothes has changed since 2000, I will say that the change is not very dramatic though. I'm confused by this, the early '70s don't look THAT different from the late '70s(to me at least), if you want a bigger change, look at the difference between the early '90s and late '90s. I remember some of my teachers in the early '90s still had puffy big hair(lasted circa mid '80s-mid '90s).

Yes, the changes are more noticeable, but keep in mind that the styles between the early 70s and the late 70s changed from looking very hippie to looking much more modernized.  That's because in a way the 70s more than the 60s represent the change from a modernizing world into a modernized world.

Probably less emphasis on long hair and more emphasis on those short haircuts ala what Travolta in Saturday Night Fever or, if there was longer hair, it was the feathered medium style favored by again, Travolta in Welcome Back Kotter. In 1970 a great deal of men had long sideburns...In 1976 not so much.



Not to carp, but the earliest anyone would have seen Saturday Night Fever is December, 1977.  The movie did reflect seventies urban chic, but if you lived in the 'burbs or the sticks, the heyday for the SNF copycat fashion was 1978 and 1979.

Not to carp, but the earliest anyone would have seen Saturday Night Fever is December, 1977.  The movie did reflect seventies urban chic, but if you lived in the 'burbs or the sticks, the heyday for the SNF copycat fashion was 1978 and 1979.


Well, I just used SNF as an example...I know it didn't come out till '77.
My father, who lived in a very urban setting, left for the army in the summer of 1976. Where he lived, most of the kids were wearing short haircuts and that whole Disco style (wide collared shirts, etc), whereas he was a long haired guy in jeans and a t-shirt...He was stationed down South in 1977 and down there, it was almost like it was 1969 still in terms of the fashion and hairstyles as he recalls it. The "late '70s" hadn't reached Colorado at least as of 1977.

I think at least as early as 1975 you have the whole Disco look coming into play. I've posted before a picture of my late grandfather wearing what is clearly a Disco-style shirt, along with long sideburns. The picture was taken around the end of May 1975, and he was a 55 year old man who had suffered a stroke two years prior, so he wasn't going to clubs or anything...But even he, an older man, was wearing the late '70s fashions as early as 1975.

Just some observations...Sorry if it came off rambling, haven't slept much.