1970s Clothes

70's clothes are popular again today.  I for one can remember the 1970s because I was busy growing up during that time.  The funny thing is, when I look back, I don't recall very much of the civil unrest and other political stuff.  I don't even remember a whole lot about the time in general.  No, I was not partaking in the drug culture, I was only in elementary school so my biggest memories are of doing things with my friends.

Most of my 70s memories related to clothing revolve around having to wear Toughskin jeans from Sears.  Man, I hated them.  I guess they were cheaper than Levis though and they were *supposed* to last longer because of the reinforced knees.  I still always managed to destroy them during normal play activities.  If you never had to experience Toughskins, just count yourself lucky and move on.  They were available in a variety of colors to ensure that you could never use the "they don't match" excuse.  They were stiff, uncomfortable and like a giant bull's eye for kids to zero in on and make fun of when they ran out of ants to burn with magnifying glasses.  Here I am all of these years later, and the thought of them still makes my stomach clench.

Other 70's Fashions

There was a lot more going on in the 1970s than fashion. The country was a mess. That is a topic for another Hub though. 70's clothes started out as a carryover from the rebellious 1960's fashions. I'm of course concentrating here on the most prevalent fashions of the time and the ones that are remembered when we look back. For me, that is what my older brother and sister and their friends wore since they were in their teens and twenties at the time. Most parents of the 70's just wore "grown up clothes" that nobody who mattered really noticed. I know that sounds terrible, but it is said with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

Many younger people in the 70's just stuck with the standard uniform of jeans and t-shirts that always seems to be in fashion. Those who were more into wearing what was cool might be found in anything from hotpants to large flowing dresses.  1970's fashion wasn't something that everyone suddenly agreed to wear.  My parents used to constantly "discuss" fashion with my sister before she left the house. My brother was older and sort of fell into the jeans all of the time look. My parents didn't care because he was going to school and had a job. At the time, that was pretty good compared with some of the alternative methods of expressing one's self, so they left him alone.

Personally, I get a kick out of anything historical.  I love watching the History channel and reading about things that have happened in the past.  Fashion, although never major concern for me, does interest me because I find it amazing to look at how millions of people all follow a trend like a giant school of fish.  The irony is that they often do it as a way of rebelling against the former norm. 

Looking at fashion from the 60's and 70's, you can see that over and over again.  As society struggled through the tumultuous 70's, it seems that people finally felt the need for something new.  Unfortunately, what came out of that was the disco look.  A dirty little secret of mine is that the first album I ever owned was the first one put out by the Village People.  One of my Mom's friends bought it for me as a birthday gift.  Thank goodness I wasn't looking to the famous as a guide to getting dressed.  Seriously, people needed a change and it showed itself in flashy metallic looking outfits that shone under the spinning disco ball.  I was spared this indignity because I was too young to go to discos and dance the night away.

For as much as people who are into a "retro" 70's look, the truth is that not everyone in the 1970's dressed like they were on Saturday Night Fever. I can remember my sister and her friends going out to discos and dressing up a little bit like that, but nothing as extreme as you see portrayed in the movies of the time. I had the opportunity to get my hands on a bunch of old yearbooks from my old high school. I was looking at them with my brother and sister and asking annoying questions, like I'm prone to do when I get curious. They confirmed that most people just dressed "normal" at the time.

My impression after researching the yearbooks was that the kids in the school I graduated from must have been quite a bit different than what was portrayed on TV and in the movies. The prevailing "look" from the mid to late 70's definitely seems to be influenced a lot more by the hard rock culture that was also growing at the time. There was a very strong "disco sucks" movement that viewed disco lovers with disdain. Obviously, you wouldn't see a member of the KISS Army walking around with a form fitting satin shirt unbuttoned halfway to his navel.

Actually, the late 70's is around the point where I can start to speak more from personal experience.  I had some hard rocking cousins who absolutely loved KISS.  They had everything KISS related that you could think of and I learned to love that type of music hanging out with them.  I guess I kind of fell into the concert shirt wearing crowd as I moved into the 1980s and at that point the rift was between people who liked groups like AC/DC and Michael Jackson lovers.  That is a story for another Hub though!

The point of this whole thing is that in any decade, you will see extremes of fashion just as you see extremes in any area of society.  In the '70s the extremes were the hippies and the disco culture.  Not everyone dressed the same way at any time during that strange decade.  Both ends of the fashion spectrum look sort of silly in retrospect in my opinion, but that's just me.  If you enjoy dressing in one way or another, go for it.  Just do it because you like it, not because everyone else is doing it.

***A pointless side note.  I didn't see my KISS loving cousins for about a year around this time, and when I saw them again, they were both very into Rick James and had quit the whole KISS army thing.  I was staying with them for a week and by the time I left, the whole Super Freak album had been permanently burned into my memory.  It was a strange time.