Soon after its birth in the Bay Area, hippie fashion spread across the nation, a clear sign that it was being folded into the mainstream. The above advertisement appeals to the revolutionary in its language: “Do something revolting?” But the source of the ad, Tads Pants ‘n Jeans, is puzzling. It’s almost comical to think that a clothing company based out of Fitzgerald, a small conservative city in Georgia, is offering up such a slogan. The ad announces the revolutionary potential of “pants ‘n jeans for guys” and “Chicks, too.”  The language and visual culture of the hippies in San Francisco had become so prominent that even a company in Georgia could try to capitalize upon it.

In the history of the late-60s that she put together for the de Young Museum’s Summer of Love exhibit, Jeanne Rose noted that the radical Diggers lamented early on this commercialization of countercultural values. For the Diggers, the narrow idea of “the hippie,” grafted through visual culture, was an invention of the media, ultimately used to try to sell ‘cool.’