Their style, as seen on stages and album covers and in their personal lives, proved pioneering and popular.
The Beatles didn't just change the world sonically, of course. Their style — on stages, album covers and in their personal lives — proved pioneering, influencing the closets of not only their performing peers but also their fawning fans. USA TODAY's Olivia Barker tracks the band's long and winding wardrobe road, from rockabilly rebels to Sgt. Pepperpeacocks to natty knights in white suits.
Greasers in Germany
Hunkered down in Hamburg circa 1960, they followed a fashion that was more fierce than fab: motorcycle jackets, jeans or leather pants, cowboy boots and slick pompadours. (Pete Best, on drums, stuck with his.) It was a Brylcreem-and-popped-collar homage to their musical heroes: Gene Vincent and Elvis Presley.
Tailored moptops
Manager Brian Epstein came aboard the Beatle bandwagon in 1962 and soon nudged the group out of its greaser gear and into something more grown-up: gray, collarless suits piped in black, designed by the quartet's London tailor, Dougie Millings, who was probably inspired by Pierre Cardin's clean-lined "cylinder" collection of 1960. Few pop-culture figures have a coif named after them. But the bouncy Beatle haircut, a borrowed-from-the-German-boys style, balanced out the suits' sleek, slim-trousered silhouette.
Satin soldiers
The cover became as revelatory as the contents — a flower-power platoon that popped from the front of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles' Day-Glo military garb, rendered wryly in shiny satin and worn with decidedly non-military-issue mustaches, re-emerged (a bit more subtly) 15 years later on another pop icon:
Psychedelic savants
By late 1968, with Magical Mystery Tour and a couple of trips to India under their belts, The Beatles had become veritable poster boys for swinging '60s style: paisley tunics and Nehru jackets in Krishna-friendly colors like saffron. While the guys sought higher consciousness, their groovy, velvet-trimmed togs helped them achieve fashion consciousness.
Stark suits
Tom Wolfe may have displayed John Lennon's 1969 style several years earlier, but the Beatle, with his accompanying sneakers and long mane, made the white suit counterculture. First in his Gibraltar wedding to Yoko Ono and then on the cover of Abbey Road, Lennon radiated unfussy formality.
The long and the short of it
The oft-maligned mullet may typically be associated with the '80s (think Bono, Sting and the lads of Duran Duran), but its rock 'n' roll, uh, roots arguably lie elsewhere: A decade before, a now-solo Paul McCartney pioneered the bilevel look for his band-playing British Isle brethren. Sometimes spiky on top, sometimes feathered and usually shoulder-grazing, McCartney's mullet proved to have fashion wings.
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