Bill: London Observations--Buying Clothes, 1960s-70s


Figure 1.--.

Most of my clothes had always just seemed to suddenly just be there – I don't remember much going shopping much for them. The one eception was shoes. Most of my clothes came down from my brother or mum just bought them and we wore them. The only exceptions I can remember was a small shop that sold knitting patterns, wool, cotton buttons and the like. Since so many children wore the same type of clothes to school every item had to be labelled so they wouldn't get mixed up after P.E. lessons etc. - but that's another subject. There was a special shop where mum got labels for us.

Normal Practices

I told you how before I went off to Germany my mum took me shopping for new clothes.This was quite an event in itself as most of my clothes had always just seemed to suddenly just be there. I don't remember much going shopping much for them – except for shoes. Most of them came down from my brother or mum just bought them and we wore them.

Our Preferences

Our Mum did always try to dress us in what we wanted. Shorts were never an issue as most boys wore them but my Mum did have problems trying to seperate my brother and me when we were fighting over who wore what shorts to school and whether we were to wear corduroy (my preferred) or cotton (his) when we went shopping but we normally forgot all about it once we were in them. The only exception as I have said many times were those check shorts and it is of them that I have my most vivid memories as I hated them so much. Even then - looking back - my Grandmother had bought them for me to help my Mum out and normally, even at ten, I would realise that and go along with what Mum wanted me to wear but the fact that I did always kick up such a fuss shows how strongly I felt about those particular shorts and also, despite her generally allowing us to wear what we wanted (within reason), there were some times when Mum put her foot down and insisted on something. I think I also have said how Mum wanted us to look our very best when we went up to Leeds so that was something to do with it too - especially as my Grandmother had a strong eye for clothes and their quality as she used to make clothes for my Mum and uncle when they were little. She was always complaining about "modern" clothing - especially the finishing. Anyway that's something else I could expand on if you like - especially when she took me and my cousin on a shopping trip in Leeds.

Leeds Shopping Trip


Sisters' Shop

One store that I can remember in great detail is a shop that sold knitting patterns, wool, cotton buttons and the like. This was a small shop on the corner down a side street. It was run by two old women – I think they were sisters. Mum used to go down there sometimes when she wanted to buy elastic for our garters or cotton for mending something.She also sometimes bought wool.

Other Smaller Shops

The only other smaller shops I remember going in to were a menswear/boyswear shop on the High Street and Millets. I only remember my mum buying our school ties and belts in the menswear shop. The big stores didn't seem to carry them – but she may have bought other items there when I was not there. Millets sold all sorts of outdoor wear and work overalls. They had them hanging up outside. They also sold Scouting stuff and I remember going there when my brother got his first Cub uniform – jumper, cap, garters, scarf and woggle. I wasn't impressed.

BHS Summer Purchases (June 1968)

I can give an example of how mass marketing by the chainstores started to affect boys fashions around this time. I told you how before I went off to Germany my mum took me shopping for new clothes. This trip to BHS was then a major clothes shopping trip for me. All the clothes were laid out in rows of racks and it was all brightly lit and colourful compared to those small shops. I've already told you what we bought and how I hardly wore the new stuff while I was on my trip to Germany. When I got back to England though everyone seemed to be wearing these sort of clothes – so they must have been popular. Maybe they were not entirely new that year as I've noticed my brothers are wearing similar clothes the year before in our holiday photo. They were new to me though and although I normally liked to wear something different to other boys, My mum made me wear them as she'd bought them especially for me and I soon got used to them and to like them.

School Purchases (August 1968)

Then came the time for getting ready to go back to school. This was always foreshadowed by BHS changing it's window display to schoolwear and always put a damper on the last days of the holidays. That's about the time my mum got into a whirl of activity – normally two Saturdays before we were due to go back. I hated this as she'd make us stay in all morning while she turned out all the cupboards and had us try out what school clothes we had to see if they still fittted or needed mending. Then she'd make a list of what we needed new. That year my older brother was due to start at his secondary school and he had a list from the school of what he needed to buy so it was me who inherited all our primary school clothes so didn't need anything new. (For instance I now had TWO blazers and more socks than I'd need). He was also going to get long trousers for school so I got all the shorts too. This annoyed me as they were all worn out and I felt that I should have something new too, I'd even given the “best” pair a hammering by wearing them all the time in Germany. Anyway as it turned out when my mum came back from buying my brother's school uniform a week later she did buy me a new pair of shorts and the jumper I told you about. This was very important to me as they were the first new school clothes that I remember being for me and not coming down to me from my brother.

Buying Shoes

Getting new shoes was a big event. They were the most expensive items we bought and a lot of care was taken by the assistant in getting the correct fit. Clarkes did halfsizes and they had different width fittings. Sometimes we would spend ages getting the right fit in the shop - and the assistants were always very patient too and had time for you. I, as ever, used to get frustrated spending so long in getting shoes as I wanted to just get out and play - but now I'm glad that my Mum did take so much care as some people still have foot trouble due to wearing ill fitting shoes as children. Even if our shoes hadn't worn out but our feet had grown so that they were pinching Mum always found the money for a new pair for us. Anyway - I could tell you a bit more about procedure in the shoeshop if you want - that and the barbers was always an event for me as Mum would get off work early and meet us from school to take us for new shoes or haircuts.

BHS School Shorts (1968)

The point is that this new style of BHS shorts were worn by most of the boys in my class when I got back to school and the rest got them as the year progressed. It had become the fashion. Before this boys had worn various styles of shorts bought from all different types of shops but now the majority were wearing the BHS ones who were starting to dominate the market.

Increasing Fashion Concsciouness

Boys in the lte 1960s began to give increasing attention to clothes and fashion. It's a hard thing to put your finger on, but looking back I recall several inidents that show this was indeed happening. The incident that comes most o mind was the baggy shorts that one of the boys at school wore.

I remember something starting up that year after we had a slide show in the school hall which showed how we were becoming more consious of fashion at that time. These slide shows were held occaisionally and we always found them tedious – even though they got us out of lessons for an afternoon. They were held in the school hall and the whole school used to be brought in to them like at morning assembly. Some of us older boys would help prepare the hall for the show under the direction of the school caretaker – pulling down the blinds and setting uo the screen. As a reward we were allowed to sit on a bench at the back of the hall – everyone else sat on the floor, with the teachers down the sides on chairs. This particular show was about India and given by someone from the church our school was associated with. I don't think he was a missionary or anything but he'd been out there and had brought back thousands (it seemed to us) of slides that he proceeded to show and comment on. Everyone was bored and we at the back had already been warned to stop whispering to each other by our teacher – especially as we were supposed to be setting an example to the younger children who must have been even more bored as they were all shuffling about. Then came a series of slides on elephants working in the forest which was quite interesting for a while except it went on and on.

The speaker then came to a couple of close-ups of the elephants and made a comment on the thick folds of skin on their legs. One of my mates made the comment that they looked like David's shorts. David was a boy in our class who still wore particularly baggy and old-fashioned shorts and though we'd all noticed we'd never really got on to him about it. This seemed so funny to us that we couldn't stop laughing and even though our teacher warned us again we kept bursting out laughing and eventually the headmisstress noticed and stopped the show while we were identified and sent out to stand outside her office. Normally this would have sobered us up but we were still laughing as we went out and still carried on as we waited for her to arrive. When she did arrive and had us in her room we were still laughing – we couldn't help it but when she asked us what the joke was we couldn't tell her which seemed to make it even funnier to us. Eventually she gave us the usual lecture about letting the school down in front of the guest and setting a bad example to the younger children and after telling us that we'd be banned from future slide shows (which was not a punishment at all) she caned us. We'd stopped laughing then but when we got back to our classroom and saw David sitting at the front we burst out again and our class teacher sent us to stand in the four different corners of the room where I still found it hard to supress a giggle.

Anyway this carried on for some weeks after and we'd call any boy who wore the more old-fashioned shorts “elephant legs”. It even caught on among the younger boys in the school – who didn't really know where it came from. As usual with these things they come to rebound on you at some point and David and his mates would take great delight in turning the tables on me on those occaisions when my mum had not got round to washing my new shorts and sent me off to school in an old pair of my brothers. They also got an unexpected revenge later on in the year when we had a trainee teacher for P.E. and this too was due to the fact that boys clothes were being sold by just one or two major high street stores rather than several different shops but I'll write about that some other time if you'd like.

Fashion Adverts

This also goes to point out that adverts do not always accurately reflect what was commonly worn in the 1970s. At my secondary school boys did wear more expensive brands like “Trutex” and “Banner” but that was due to the type of school it was and it was the minority who wore the mass-marketed clothes from BHS like me but I don't remember this being any major concern.




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Created: December 8, 2003
Last updated: 7:32 PM 9/11/2005