You Babe” raced up the charts, hitting Number 1 in America. It eventually sold four million copies. In 1965, after trying to have a hit by Bonnie Jo Mason, Cherilyn, Don Christy, and Caesar & Cleo, Cherilyn Sarkisian and Salvatore Bono finally found overnight fame as Sonny & Cher. Their journey as pop stars had officially begun.
Around this same time, Sonny and Cher had decided that they needed a whole new “look” all their own, and Cher began designing her own bizarre-looking bell-bottom pants, and Sonny came up with this crazy idea of taking animal skins and making fur vests with them.
With regard to his own unique look, Bono was to recall,
The “caveman” look came from Phil [Spector]! Phil had long hair before the Beatles and anybody—he was the first hippie that I had ever met. Phil was this real unique dresser. He had vests and he’d have this and that—Phil liked to be different than anybody. Then our clique—[Jack] Nitzsche, Nino Tempo, and me—all of us started dressing individually. We all personally had little contests to see who could come up with their own little clothes (32).
Out of their outlandish costume competition, “the Sonny Bono look” was born, and it is still one of the most indelible fashion images of the mid-1960s rock and roll era.
Due to the tremendous success of “I Got You Babe,” Sonny & Cher were seen on all the hottest pop music television programs, sporting clothes and a fashion sense that were uniquely their own. No one had ever seen outfits quite like theirs. Between his fur vests and her unique one-of-a-kind bell-bottom pants, they created an instant fashion trend. Sonny & Cher were “Bohemians,” nonconformists, and hippies, long before the term “hippie” was ever coined to describe the counterestablishment style that characterized the latter half of the 1960s. It was Cher who single-handedly popularized the whole fashion of wearing bell-bottoms, a fashion trend that lasted well into the 1970s.
Explains Cher of the evolution of their wardrobe, “We had these two friends, Bridget and Colleen. They were my girlfriends and they were real space cadets. I mean they were terrific, but they were really spacey chicks—and Bridget was into making clothes. We’d pool our money, I’d design things, and they’d make them. We were crazy dressers” (18).
According to her,
When I met Bridget, she had on these grommeted and laced up suede bell-bottoms, and I just said, well, that’s what I want! I’d sent away to England for some pantsuits from the back of a magazine and the first thing I got was a tobacco-colored small-waled corduroy suit, double-breasted with stovepipe pants—real hip-huggers with big, wide belt loops, and a poor-boy shirt, the first one I’d ever seen. I got all of it from England and it was really cool, but when I saw the bell-bottoms I thought that was for me. They were nice, but then we developed something we called “elephant bells.” I don’t remember how many inches across they were, something like twenty-five or thirty inches [diameter at the widest point of the hem]. They were really ridiculous, because when you walked they just flapped back and forth. My mother [has] saved some of those for me (39).
Due to the success of their hit record, Sonny & Cher began appearing on a host of nationally broadcast American television shows like Shindig, Hullaballoo, The Lloyd Thaxton Show , and the most important record-launching program of them all, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand . Even on Shindig , recalls Cher, they looked strange next to all of the groups in beaded dresses and suits. “We weren’t really accepted there,” she says, “because of the way we looked. It’s weird, you know, people forget thatthe early sixties were still suffering from a bad case of Doris Day and Rock Hudson.” Says Cher, “We were thrown out of every fucking place you can imagine. People were constantly trying to punch Sonny out because of the way he
Around this same time, Sonny and Cher had decided that they needed a whole new “look” all their own, and Cher began designing her own bizarre-looking bell-bottom pants, and Sonny came up with this crazy idea of taking animal skins and making fur vests with them.
With regard to his own unique look, Bono was to recall,
The “caveman” look came from Phil [Spector]! Phil had long hair before the Beatles and anybody—he was the first hippie that I had ever met. Phil was this real unique dresser. He had vests and he’d have this and that—Phil liked to be different than anybody. Then our clique—[Jack] Nitzsche, Nino Tempo, and me—all of us started dressing individually. We all personally had little contests to see who could come up with their own little clothes (32).
Out of their outlandish costume competition, “the Sonny Bono look” was born, and it is still one of the most indelible fashion images of the mid-1960s rock and roll era.
Due to the tremendous success of “I Got You Babe,” Sonny & Cher were seen on all the hottest pop music television programs, sporting clothes and a fashion sense that were uniquely their own. No one had ever seen outfits quite like theirs. Between his fur vests and her unique one-of-a-kind bell-bottom pants, they created an instant fashion trend. Sonny & Cher were “Bohemians,” nonconformists, and hippies, long before the term “hippie” was ever coined to describe the counterestablishment style that characterized the latter half of the 1960s. It was Cher who single-handedly popularized the whole fashion of wearing bell-bottoms, a fashion trend that lasted well into the 1970s.
Explains Cher of the evolution of their wardrobe, “We had these two friends, Bridget and Colleen. They were my girlfriends and they were real space cadets. I mean they were terrific, but they were really spacey chicks—and Bridget was into making clothes. We’d pool our money, I’d design things, and they’d make them. We were crazy dressers” (18).
According to her,
When I met Bridget, she had on these grommeted and laced up suede bell-bottoms, and I just said, well, that’s what I want! I’d sent away to England for some pantsuits from the back of a magazine and the first thing I got was a tobacco-colored small-waled corduroy suit, double-breasted with stovepipe pants—real hip-huggers with big, wide belt loops, and a poor-boy shirt, the first one I’d ever seen. I got all of it from England and it was really cool, but when I saw the bell-bottoms I thought that was for me. They were nice, but then we developed something we called “elephant bells.” I don’t remember how many inches across they were, something like twenty-five or thirty inches [diameter at the widest point of the hem]. They were really ridiculous, because when you walked they just flapped back and forth. My mother [has] saved some of those for me (39).
Due to the success of their hit record, Sonny & Cher began appearing on a host of nationally broadcast American television shows like Shindig, Hullaballoo, The Lloyd Thaxton Show , and the most important record-launching program of them all, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand . Even on Shindig , recalls Cher, they looked strange next to all of the groups in beaded dresses and suits. “We weren’t really accepted there,” she says, “because of the way we looked. It’s weird, you know, people forget thatthe early sixties were still suffering from a bad case of Doris Day and Rock Hudson.” Says Cher, “We were thrown out of every fucking place you can imagine. People were constantly trying to punch Sonny out because of the way he
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