Abstract: The lifetimes of the first excited 2(+) states in Fe-62 and Fe-64 have been measured for the first time using the recoil-distance Doppler shift method after multinucleon transfer reactions in inverse kinematics. A sudden increase of collectivity from Fe-62 to Fe-64 is observed. The experimental results are compared with new large-scale shell-model calculations and Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov-based configuration-mixing calculations using the Gogny D1S interaction. The results give a deeper understanding of the mechanism leading to an onset of collectivity near Ni-68, which is compared with the situation in the so-called island of inversion around Mg-32.