Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually

[LizzieMaine]

One of my cherished items from there was a Columbia hat... it looked like a turquoise baseball cap made out of water resistant material, with purple fleece lining and fleece ear flaps that tied under the chin. I got it on clearance for $5. Growing up on a farm, we'd often spend 5 or more hours a day outside in cold Adirondack winters. My parents made fun of me for always wearing my hat in the winter and never any of the others we had, until one day my mother's hat got soaked and she wore mine while I was at school. Then she started offering to buy me 2 or 3 hats in trade for mine. I gave it to her when I went to college, and that poor thing survived a decade of heavy farm wear.

Winter hats were prized items here, when you were walking to school regardless of the weather. The best winter hat I ever had was a Russian-style "trooper hat" with mouton earflaps that could button up at the top or be lowered down over the ears and snapped into place under the chin -- it was actually my grandfather's, a part of his winter Texaco uniform, but I appropriated it when I was little and wore it for years -- I'd wear a knit ski hat under it to make it fit, and then pull the flaps down and be perfectly warm no matter how cold it was. People thought it was weird, but I had a warm head and warm ears and didn't care about anything else.

I finally lost that hat thru circumstances that remain a mystery -- I think my mother threw it away when the fleece began to shed -- and I never had another one as good again. I thought about buying one of those Soviet military surplus versions that flooded the market back in the '90s, but they were stiffer and not as comfortable as the old Texaco hat.

 

[Bushman]

Winter hats were prized items here, when you were walking to school regardless of the weather. The best winter hat I ever had was a Russian-style "trooper hat" with mouton earflaps that could button up at the top or be lowered down over the ears and snapped into place under the chin -- it was actually my grandfather's, a part of his winter Texaco uniform, but I appropriated it when I was little and wore it for years -- I'd wear a knit ski hat under it to make it fit, and then pull the flaps down and be perfectly warm no matter how cold it was. People thought it was weird, but I had a warm head and warm ears and didn't care about anything else.

I finally lost that hat thru circumstances that remain a mystery -- I think my mother threw it away when the fleece began to shed -- and I never had another one as good again. I thought about buying one of those Soviet military surplus versions that flooded the market back in the '90s, but they were stiffer and not as comfortable as the old Texaco hat.

Isn't it possible to just buy one on eBay or the sort? I know I spot one on eBay right now for a decent price.

 

[BlueTrain]

You are correct in that there are other things going on. In fact, there are always a lot of other things going on.

There really is such a thing as conspicuous consumption, although I think too much is made of it. Most consumption really isn't all that conspicuous. You love sports, meaning you love watching sports on television, so you get yourself a wide-screen TV. I have no idea what they cost or if having one counts as conspicuous consumption or not. But no doubt some one has one just "to keep up." Since I don't watch television, I'm not behind; I'm left out all together. My wife watches TV, though, so it's her problem.

But it's not hard to want something for the sake of the thing itself. There are a half-dozen cars I'd love to own, although half of them have been out of production for maybe 45 years. It isn't a matter of what we can afford; it's a matter of what we're willing to spend just to have basic, reliable transportation. We've had cars that went almost 200,000 miles with virtually no trouble (it was a Ford) and others that developed one problem after another once they went past 100,000 miles (names withheld). Two were actually replaced when they were damaged in accidents (one of which happened while the car was parked in the driveway in front of our house). So in the last fifteen months, we've bought two new vehicles, both lower end of the range, both perfectly satisfactory in every way, given what our requirements were when we bought them. Neither was selected to impress anyone but that would be hard to do where I live anyway. We'd probably make the same choices were we to do it again.

Someone mentioned a rural-city divide. There's probably more divisions than that. I can't speak for the ladies or the women but practically all men have a suit for weddings, funerals and interviews, although I know some do not. Dressing in a certain way, whatever that might be, will help you to be taken more seriously, I think, by other people, but it's difficult to be more specific than that. But I also believe most people are serious enough as it is but the way you present yourself can either help or hinder how others react to you. Naturally, those on the other side have to do their part and may not present themselves as someone you want to trouble yourself to deal with. It works both ways. Either way, it's a pity we have reason to speak of divisions.

I am reminded here of a book about buying a house in the country, written around 1940. So many thing suggest that 1940 was a wonderful year. Anyway, the book seemed to be aimed at a city dweller, say from New York, who wanted to buy a place in the country, say in Connecticut or maybe even upstate or even in across the river in Pennsylvania. The writer described how easy it was to tell the difference between the local rustics and the city slickers when they went to town. The local folk would be dressed up in suits and nice clothes while the folks coming in from the city would be wearing little more than handkerchiefs. And that was in 1940, presumably in the summer.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Yes, it used to be that everyone tried to dress and present themselves as being one step up the social ladder from where they actually were. Now the thing is to dress and present yourself as being a couple of steps DOWN the social ladder from where you actually are with the expectation that the cognoscenti will recognize the maneuver and accordingly mentally elevate you ABOVE where you actually are. Try to sort it out at your own peril.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The rot really set in in the 1960s. That is when men's clothiers got the bright idea that they could sell more clothes if they introduced fashions to men's clothes, the way they did women's. If they kept up a regular supply of new fashions, men would have to buy new suits every year and not wear the same thing for 20 or 30 years. This is where the Nehru jacket, paisley shirt, wide tie, platform shoe and leisure suit came in.

Some wise critics said they were cutting their own throats. If they undermined the old standards with their 'anything goes' attitude pretty soon anything would go, and nobody would bother buying their suits anymore, and that is the way it worked out.

 

[MikeKardec]

There really is such a thing as conspicuous consumption, although I think too much is made of it.

I too think that too much is made of it and that there is something more to it, something I don't yet understand completely. I come from the land of conspicuous consumption (though I also come from the land of rapidly changing fortunes, which may be an aspect worth considering) and I never saw what I recognized as bitterness or envy until I lived in some other, more strictly middle class, countries. This may be true in other parts of the USA (though I've lived quite a few places in the West) but, until just recently, and only in very specific circumstances, I've made it through my life without having to witness much of it.

My cousin works for a major car manufacturer in one of those "other countries." He is able to lease any vehicle they make for a very low price (his income is quite modest for being a 30 year vet) ... but his neighbors seem to quite spitefully hold it against him that he always has a new German car. At a guess the attitude difference is that he and I grew up in a place where no matter what you made today you might, just might, find a way to make it big tomorrow. I think it's that because there was the potential to do so more than that too many actually did. I think the people who thought they could do better seemed happier with the success of others than the people who had been convinced, probably wrongly, that they were stuck under the weight of limited circumstances their whole life.

I do, however, realize that we grew up in what was one of the most flexible economies of all time ... that makes a big difference.

 

[BlueTrain]

It's a little hard to explain in just a couple of paragraphs, especially when you take into account all the exceptions.

 

[BlueTrain]

He is (yet) another thought about men's clothing. Our comments on them generally are limited to what we have observed in our lifetime, beginning with whenever we were old enough to notice such things. Hence the comment that someone things "the rot" began in the 1960s. The implication is that fashions for men had never changed up until then. Obviously that was not the case. Prior to the 60s (or 50s or 70s, whenever), there were men who followed fashion, wore the latest styles and were careful about the way they dressed. They were called "sharp dressers," although some might have other terms for men like that. Or should I assume that those who thought men's fashions in the 1960s had rotted were still dressing the way their grandfathers dressed, with heavy, three-piece suits, a fedora, high-top shoes and a collar pin worn with the dress shirt? My wife tells me one of her grandfathers always wore a suit, even at home. He had been employed at a boy's boarding school, retiring sometime in the late 1940s or 1950s. He was the one you would have considered properly dressed--all the time. But nobody else in the family.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You can see that in the popular culture of the periods in question. People ridiculed Herbert Hoover in the 1930s because of his insistence on wearing celluloid collars of the sort that had gone out of style decades earlier. In the 1940s articles about Connie Mack never failed to comment on his 1910s-era suits -- "black, or rarely, one of his festive dark greys" -- his Hooveresque collars, and his straw boater in the dugout. In the 1950s, if a TV show wanted to show someone as being a real cornball, they'd depict them dressed in the style of a 1920s college boy, in a raccoon coat carrying a ukulele. And the very essence of the modern slang term "goober," as in a naive and clueless fellow, was epitomized in the 1960s by Goober on the "Andy Griffith Show," who, you will recall, went to any event requiring "dress up" in a seedy, badly-fitting 1930s double-breasted suit.

In each case named, the out-of-date fashion choices of the men or characters involved were seen as defining them as behind the times, out-of-touch, and a bit ridiculous by other men wearing belt-in-the-back plaid sport coats, or "bold look" suits or grey flannels or pencil-neck ties. O tempora! O mores!

 

[Fading Fast]

He is (yet) another thought about men's clothing. Our comments on them generally are limited to what we have observed in our lifetime, beginning with whenever we were old enough to notice such things. Hence the comment that someone things "the rot" began in the 1960s. The implication is that fashions for men had never changed up until then. Obviously that was not the case. Prior to the 60s (or 50s or 70s, whenever), there were men who followed fashion, wore the latest styles and were careful about the way they dressed. They were called "sharp dressers," although some might have other terms for men like that. Or should I assume that those who thought men's fashions in the 1960s had rotted were still dressing the way their grandfathers dressed, with heavy, three-piece suits, a fedora, high-top shoes and a collar pin worn with the dress shirt? My wife tells me one of her grandfathers always wore a suit, even at home. He had been employed at a boy's boarding school, retiring sometime in the late 1940s or 1950s. He was the one you would have considered properly dressed--all the time. But nobody else in the family.

IMHO, there were "fashionable updates" within a pretty clear construct for men's clothing in the '30s-mid-'60s. Sure, lapel or tie widths changed, shoe models evolved, brown was "in" this season, blah, blah, blah, but basically a man who wore a suit, shirt and tie in the '30s, could, pretty much, wear the same suit, shirt and tie in the mid-'60s and - while he might be a bit "out of fashion" or "behind the times -" he would still be in the basic construct of what was acceptable for men to wear.

What changed in the late '60s is that that construct was pushed aside for a more "anything goes" approach. Initially, jeans, t-shirts, then '70s crazy stuff, '80s Miami Vice and '90s business causal to today where people wear pajamas on planes (seen it done). Of course, that last sentence is a massive oversimplification, but the main idea, the construct of men's clothing - suit/shirt/tie - that was followed by a large segment (but not all) of the male population was tossed out starting in the '60s. Now men have more fashion thrown at them, IMHO, because there is no accepted construct to start from - men's clothes have become more like women's in that sense.

Whether the above is good or bad, reflects a "rot" or not is an interesting but separate conversation about the social and political context around the change, etc., but that it happened is, IMHO, pretty close to a fact.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You can see a similar "rot" setting in around the end of the 18th Century and the start of the 19th, when the longstanding upper-class men's fashion of knee breeches, silken hose, and powdered wigs rather abruptly gave way to the "informal" sack suit and the cravat. Some attribute this to the influence of the French Revolution, where the sans-culottes made the wearing of ordinary pantaloons a political statement -- the 1790s equivalent of the Castro cap and Che T-shirt -- and others suggest it was simply a natural evolution. But it happened rather suddenly, and no doubt in its wake Ye Tricorne Lounge was all abuzz with prophecies of social doom.

 

[HudsonHawk]

You can see a similar "rot" setting in around the end of the 18th Century and the start of the 19th, when the longstanding upper-class men's fashion of knee breeches, silken hose, and powdered wigs rather abruptly gave way to the "informal" sack suit and the cravat. Some attribute this to the influence of the French Revolution, where the sans-culottes made the wearing of ordinary pantaloons a political statement -- the 1790s equivalent of the Castro cap and Che T-shirt -- and others suggest it was simply a natural evolution. But it happened rather suddenly, and no doubt in its wake Ye Tricorne Lounge was all abuzz with prophecies of social doom.

Socrates was right...it all went to hell once those punk kids decided the traditional toga wasn't hip enough.

 

[BlueTrain]

The toga was Roman and Socrates was Greek but I understand what you're saying.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I wasn't referring to changing fashions per se. I meant that some time in the mid to late sixties, manufacturers of men's clothing (possibly influenced by the Boys from Madison Avenue) deliberately set out to make their customers look like bums, by introducing new fashions at regular intervals. The idea being to stimulate sales, as men would have to buy new clothes to be in fashion, the way women do, not just because their old suit was worn out.

These new fashion trends undermined the traditional dress codes, written or unwritten, that were in effect in the white collar world.

The result was that men stopped wearing suits and ties and instead of increasing sales, the instigators of the 'anything goes' fashions went bankrupt.

I hope this is clear.

 

[BlueTrain]

I'm not sure I agree.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm not either. I think the catalyst for the break with the traditional men's construct of suit/shirt/tie was the '60s cultural, social and political changes. The start transformation in men's clothing (from suit/shirt/tie to jeans, t-shirts, etc.) was driven by that and not the manufacturers.

That's not to say that, as the trend took off, some manufacturers didn't see a opportunity to sell men an entirely new wardrobe and in trying to create regular fashion cycles like in women's clothes (some did, some didn't), but again, the horse, IMHO, was the larger societal changes and the cart was men's clothes.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's interesting to look at the progression of men's wear in the Sears catalog in the postwar era. There's quite a lot of outre looks in the late 1940s -- there's a much greater emphasis on sportswear and "leisure wear" around 1948-49 than was in any way common before the war, including outfits that look not too far removed from the much-reviled "leisure suits" of the early 1970s, and by 1950 there are bizarre looking corduroy sport coats that look like cut-off bathrobes, complete with a sash. Some of the shoes appearing by the early 1950s are quite outlandish, and would have been right at home in 1970 -- weird bootie looking things decorated with fake gold chains, multicolored woven-toe oxfords, and so on and on.

This type of stuff was clearly not being marketed to Old Conservative White Men, who are still very much in evidence in their funereal blue serge suits elsewhere in the catalogs, but there was very much a market for it among "young men" -- that is, men born in the 1920s, guys just out of the service and sick and tired of wearing uniforms. I submit that this trend repeated itself with the rise of the "mod look" in the late 1960s and 1970s -- young men who specifically didn't want to look like Old Conservative White Men were the ones who were buying this stuff, and to whom it was targeted, not bank presidents and mortgage brokers. Possibly some of the former young men of the late 1940s who were now middle-aged men of the 1970s were looking at this stuff and remembering how much fun it had been to tweak the nose of the establishment before they got sucked into being part of it -- hence the spectacle of your Uncle Louie flouncing around in a mustard-colored leisure jacket and a sky-blue Freddie-from-Scooby-Doo neckerchief. And hence the spectacle of paunch-bellied balding baby boomers trying to seem "hip" and "relevant" by showing up for work in t-shirts and acid-washed jeans in the 1990s.

 

[Fading Fast]

It's interesting to look at the progression of men's wear in the Sears catalog in the postwar era. There's quite a lot of outre looks in the late 1940s -- there's a much greater emphasis on sportswear and "leisure wear" around 1948-49 than was in any way common before the war, including outfits that look not too far removed from the much-reviled "leisure suits" of the early 1970s, and by 1950 there are bizarre looking corduroy sport coats that look like cut-off bathrobes, complete with a sash. Some of the shoes appearing by the early 1950s are quite outlandish, and would have been right at home in 1970 -- weird bootie looking things decorated with fake gold chains, multicolored woven-toe oxfords, and so on and on.

This type of stuff was clearly not being marketed to Old Conservative White Men, who are still very much in evidence in their funereal blue serge suits elsewhere in the catalogs, but there was very much a market for it among "young men" -- that is, men born in the 1920s, guys just out of the service and sick and tired of wearing uniforms. I submit that this trend repeated itself with the rise of the "mod look" in the late 1960s and 1970s -- young men who specifically didn't want to look like Old Conservative White Men were the ones who were buying this stuff, and to whom it was targeted, not bank presidents and mortgage brokers. Possibly some of the former young men of the late 1940s who were now middle-aged men of the 1970s were looking at this stuff and remembering how much fun it had been to tweak the nose of the establishment before they got sucked into being part of it -- hence the spectacle of your Uncle Louie flouncing around in a mustard-colored leisure jacket and a sky-blue Freddie-from-Scooby-Doo neckerchief.

I've seen those catalogues as well. And occasionally in a '50s era movie or magazine or some other similar contemporaneous source, some of that attire appears (and it can be jarring when you see what basically is a '70s leisure suit in a '50s movie, but it happens), but it didn't seem to get the wide-acceptance then that it would in the late-'60s/'70s.

You definitely see some subculture stuff here and there - but again, in never seemed (and I could be wrong as I didn't live through it and am basing it on books, movies, etc.) to go mainstream like in the late-'60s/'70s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think part of the difference too is that the world in 1950 was still being run by people born in the 1890s. They were the ones signing the checks and giving the orders and running the show, and they weren't the ones buying the Ricky Ricardo jackets and the basket-weave slip-on shoes and the aggressive socks and saying "hubba hubba" when they were excited. It took a while for that 1890s generation to pass from the scene, but it did. And as each subsequent generation has come along, the envelope has been pushed out further. Which when you think about it, is the natural order of things. Otherwise, we'd all be wearing animal skins.

 

[HudsonHawk]

It's interesting to look at the progression of men's wear in the Sears catalog in the postwar era. There's quite a lot of outre looks in the late 1940s -- there's a much greater emphasis on sportswear and "leisure wear" around 1948-49 than was in any way common before the war, including outfits that look not too far removed from the much-reviled "leisure suits" of the early 1970s, and by 1950 there are bizarre looking corduroy sport coats that look like cut-off bathrobes, complete with a sash. Some of the shoes appearing by the early 1950s are quite outlandish, and would have been right at home in 1970 -- weird bootie looking things decorated with fake gold chains, multicolored woven-toe oxfords, and so on and on.

You know, say what you will about the leisure suit, but at least it was a attempt to be put together. It may not have been aesthetically appealing through today's lens, but at least it was putting your best face forward given the face with which you were born. It was still light years better than the unkempt, unshaven, man bun-wearing street bum look that apparently drives the womens wild these days.