Merry Prankster outfit designed by Gretchen 'Fetchin' Douglas, 1964

The Merry Pranksters were a group of artists and dropouts from San Francisco. In 1964 they travelled around the US in a customised bus advocating a counter cultural lifestyle. They put across their message of rebellion against conformity through dressing in customised clothing, living communally and extending their awareness through psychedelic drugs.
'Babbs, Kesey and Paula go running and kicking and screaming towards the lake and she dives in -and comes up with her head covered in muck and great kelpy strands of green pond slime- and beaming in a way that practically radiates out over the face of the lake and the desert. She has surfaced euphoric-
'Oooh! It sparkles!'
-pulling her long strands of slime slithering hair outward with her hands and grokking and freaking over it...
-and Babbs is euphoric for her-
'Gretchen Fetchin the Slime Queen!'...
And it is beautiful. Everybody goes manic and euphoric like a vast contact high, like they have all suddenly taken acid themselves.'
Tom Wolfe's 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test', 1968.

Worn and lent to the Streetstyle Exhibition, 1994 by Gretchen Douglas