Figure 1.--A HBC reader has provided this image from the fashion section of a 1969 issue of "Parents Magazine". We see American boys by the late 1960s wearing short pants more commonly than in the early 1960s. Nostly it was casual shorts that were becoming popular. Dressy outfits like this were much less common. We see them, however, in fashion magazines. Note the long bangs, no doubt influenced by the Beatles."

Camp shorts appeared in the 1960s and short pants increasingly began to be seen as casual clothes. Fashion magazines often showed boys wearing dressier short pabnts outfits. A HBC reader has provided us some information from a 1960s Spigel catalog.

1960

1961

A popular style or youngr boys wer shortalls. The fact that the son of the new president, John F. Kennedy, wore shortalls helped to popularize them. A popular style of casual short pants for boys in 1961 were play and camp shorts. Sears offered camp shorts in sizes to age 22.

1962

1963

1964

1965

The United States committed combat troops to Vietnam in 1965. The war was to affect fashions as have earlier wars. A HBC reader reports, "I was at my public library last week and I found a 1965 Spiegel catalog. They sold a large array of boys and men's clothes and they are all in color with peopl modeling them. There was a section titles "Shorts and Sers". Remember the page on camp shorts on HBC? They show a boy modeling three pairs of camp shorts, navy blue, khaki/tan, and sky blue. The Spiegel camp shorts had seven pockets on them compared to the five pocket type that I wore as a boy. They also had the half elastic back same as mine. The extra two pockets were on the left and right sides of the shorts. That is the first time that I ever saw those type of camp shorts. Mine came from Sears, Wards, Horn's, and Kauffmans. I guess the reason for that is because we did not get the Spiegel catalog. They also show the same boy, he looks to be about 12 or 13 years old, modeling three different pairs of jean shorts. They were regular blue denim, ecro white, and a sort of grass green color. The ad copy stated that the jean shorts had an extra strong back yoke. The same boy modeled each of the three colors with different types of shirts. In the blue denim shorts he wore a striped blue jersey with white tube socks. In the ecro white shorts he wore one of those western style cowboy jackets it was also ecro white. In the green shorts he wore a long sleeve checked shirt, just like Timmy wore in Lassie. All of the shirts and jerseys were tucked in on the boy model presumably so that the waist features of the shorts could be seen. The excepton was the ecro western style jean jacket. With the camp shorts he wore a blue and white stripped jersey, also present in all six color photos were the white tube socks with different color bands on the top and what looked like Keds tennis shoes. The odd thing about all these photos is the boy was not wearing a belt and all the shorts had belt loops on them. It looked to me that all the clothes did fit him perfect, so maybe that is why he did not wear a belt in any of the pictures. One other possibility is that Spiegel wanted to show the entire product without any frills or attachments. The price range was $5-6 for the shorts. The jackets, shirts, and jerseys were also in that price range. All the shorts on that page were cut mid lenth and all were hemmed. The size range for all the shorts was size 8 to 20."

1966

We note that union suits were still offered into the 1960s. Here we have union suits in the Sears 1966 catalog.

1967

1968

There were ads for Scout uniforms, both in the big mail order catalog and in Boys' Life, the Boy Scout magazine. The BSA promoted the short pants uniform for summer wear. An example is a Boys' Life ad (June 1968). The BSA stressed the comfort factor. More Scouts were wearing shorts in the q960s, but Cubs usually chose long pants.

1969

Casual styles were increadsingly popular. Fewer boys were wearing suits. Most boys in the 1960s were wearing long pants suits. We still see some younger boys wearing short pants suits. This seems most common with conservative, affluent families. We note some dressy short pants outfits with kneesocks in fashion magazines such as the outfit seen here (figure 1). We note a double breasted short pants suit in the "Family Fashion" section appearing in a 1969 issue of the Parents Magazine. We notice some fad fashions in the 1960s. One such style was Nehru jackets, but they do not seem to have been very popular. Spieleg in 1969 offered Nehru jackets for boys. This is an indicator that Hippy styles were entering main-stream fashion. They were offered for boys 6-12 years of age.

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Created: January 3, 2003
Last updated: 5:27 AM 11/6/2005