Figure 1.-This is a page from the Freemans 1973 catalog with schoolwear. It offers shirts and trousers, both short trousers and long trousers. You can see the the English preferece for grey colored schoolwear.

The Freeman's ad here shows ties, shirts, and short trousers, items that were commonly worn at many British schools. Ties usually had to be bought locally as they were so many different combinations. Grey shirts and tousers likethese could, however, been woirn at alarge number of schools.

Ties

I am not sure that Trutex was really offering these ties for sale. Most schools had specific colors. Perhaps theu just wanted to show the boys wearing ties as many schools required them.

Shirt

Most British boys in 1969 wore either white or grey shirts to school. There were a few exceptions such as schools with blue shirts, but the vast majority of boys wore either grey or white shirts. Some schools, especially privateschools, had rules for wearing these scirts--grey for every day and white for speciall occassions. State schools for the most part let the boys wear which ever they wanted. The shirts hear are destinctive in that the collars are not pointed. Tey are also not rounded. Rather they are pointed-style collars with rounded tips. We have not noted them being commnly worn by English school boys.

D. Trutex Shirt

Short Trousers

The destinctive feature of these short trousers are the tab clodsures. Note that there are no belt loops. I do not think that these shorts had elastic half backs--but am not sure. While we do not have the ad copy, we believe that they were offered only in grey. We are also not sure about the material. Note that they are done in the short-cut Contunental style.

F. Fully-lined Shorts

It was common practice in Britain to line school shorts, but not long trousers. The Freeman's ad copy read, "Fully-lined shorts with half-elasticized waistband, two slant pockets and nylon zip fly." Washeable. Material: 55% Terylene, 45% worsted. Colour: medium grey. RG 4180. Sizes: 6B-12B. [The sizes here are explained in the boys size chart at the back of the caralog. ] £2.50 16B-28B £2.70.

G. Fully-lined Shorts

The Freeman's ad copy read, "Fully-lined shorts with half-elasticized waistband, zip fly and two slant side pockets. Washeable. Material: 67% Terylene and 33% Sarille." Colour: Charcoal. RG 4377. Sizes: 8B-14B [The sizes here are explained in the boys size chart at the back of the caralog. ] Price:£1.70 16B-28B £1.95.

David Parfitt

The interesting thing is that the boy on the left is David Parfitt who played the younger boy in the TV show “And Mother Makes Three”. Many of these young actors also modelled clothing. This dates the range to the late 1960s or early 70s by David's age at the time.

Reader Comments

A British reader tells us, "None of the boys at my primary school wore these Trutex clothes. Much more commonly worn were BHS items, but a few boys wore items from catalogs. As I pointed out before catalogue clothes were cheapest but often a couple of years out of date and not many boys liked them.BHS were what most boys wore and were reasonably priced. As I said they used to take out full page adverts in the mass-circulation daily papers ( the “woman's pages”) 2 or 3 weeks before the new school year began. They also used to set up window displays in the stores. BHS shirts and shorts were fairly standard and would not have the elaborations of Trutex – like the round collars or long waist tabs. My point is that catalogues, poster adverts, or even TV shows like “And Mother Makes Three” show what some boys would wear in the 70s ( TV shows would naturally go for more fashionable clothing) but not the mass. The mass market would be sold through newspaper adverts – few of which survive like catalogues or poster adverts do. Probably in some areas of London parents did buy their schoolclothes from smaller shops that stocked non-chainstore brands like “Trutex” or “Banner” but not round our more wworking-class way. The long hair (similar in the TV show “And Mother Makes Three”) is also trying to link in to the “fashionable” aspects of Trutex. The BHS newspaper ads showed boys with short hair as I recall – which most schools still required. By the way – the Trutex adverts also show the new-style Summer grey shirts that I told you came out then. They were nylon – really just grey versions of the standard white shirts, non thick, warm flannelette material like the “proper” grey shirts that I preferred even in Summer. It's interesting that this Trutex advert is from 1969 because it's around that time that BHS brought out a completely new range of boys' clothes – not just schoolwear but their Summer range too before that – more colourful and lightweight clothing like I told you my mum bought for me to go to Germany with. It was a real turning point and I suppose you could say that there really was a distinct 70s style as compared to the 60s. and that the chainstores were starting to capture the mass market and driving out the smaller shops and even local department stores which existed then. So there was not such a variety in the type of clothes worn as chainstores would bulk-buy clothing and sell it heavily. I don't recall there being TV ads. - but these might have been shown later in the evenings when we were in bed. I didn't watch much TV in the Summer preferring to be out and about. I know even now TV ads are not aimed at kids but shown later at night to appeal to parents wishes - cost,easy-clean,hard-wearing etc. rather than “style”. If the manufacturers can appeal to both they can make a killing. HBC readers may want to read more about Bill's observations.

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Created: 12:58 AM 8/8/2009
Last updated: 12:58 AM 8/8/2009