In contrast, the current revival has little of the impetus that drove the original hippies. It is likely nothing more “than a cyclical fashion thing,” Mr. Wolsky suggested, “part of the endless recycling of styles that has been with us since the ’70s.”

Indeed, this pendulum swing is more reactive than inventive, a form of protest, yes, but only against the current glut of fashion juvenilia — the rampant little-girl look that exasperates some merchants.

“I sometimes walk into a showroom full of baby-doll dresses and ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” said Lauren Silverstein, the owner of Amalia, a boutique in NoLIta. “ ‘Don’t you know people don’t want this anymore?’ ”

In its place her customers are craving a look she describes as “flowing, sensual, kind of sexy acid trip” — something akin to the dress Ms. Silverstein wore on Saturday afternoon, a sidewalk-sweeping halter dress from a line called Fourties, awash in Yellow Submarine tints of lemon mauve and green.

If those customers are in revolt, it is mostly against fashion literalism. Karin Bereson, a stylist and fashion retailer in New York, champions what she calls a hippie mix, “but one not done in a costume-y way.” Ms. Bereson, who favors clashing neon patterns that owe a debt to the psychedelia revived in the late ’80s at rave clubs in London, wears tailored men’s waistcoats layered over billowing maxidresses.

“My look is Pakistani tailor,” she said. At her downtown boutique, No. 6, she updates the flower-child style — all vintage Indian-printed voile dresses and bib-front coveralls — with unorthodox accents like unlaced white jazz shoes or studded gladiator sandals.

Beth Buccini, an owner of Kirna Zabête, the progressive shop in SoHo, is an advocate of a hippie revivalism that mingles the tough with the tender. “Accent your hippie look with neo-punk to make it modern,” Ms. Buccini urged.

At Teen Vogue, Gloria Baume, the fashion director and a self-professed neo-bohemian, observed: “The summer of love 2007 is very different from the original. On lower Broadway, young girls are wearing little corduroy or patchwork dresses mixed with modern elements: a piece of crystal, sandals in metallic or patent leather.

“It’s a look we’ve never seen before — ‘hippie’ mixed with patent leather. All of a sudden it all feels modern.”