Photo by Muffy Aldrich
The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy

Sunday, April 18, 2021

What People Wore

Photos by My Father































 

49 comments:

  1. In the "Nuclear Arms Race" photo - what a chic white dress. Wonder if she was part of the movement/protest (if so, how fashionable!) or just a passer by.

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  2. For men the ties today are a tad wider, and the Reynauds are long gone. The rest seems pretty much the same. For women, not so.

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  3. Loved the real tennis rackets.

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    1. Those are not real tennis racquets. They are lawn tennis racquets.

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  4. Oh, you didn't go back that far. Where are the double-breasted suits, top hats, frock coats, white flannel pants on the tennis courts, or high-top shoes?

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  5. Love the Ray Ban Olympian sun glasses in the second photograph!

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    1. And again in #23. I suspect he is hungover in both photos, but that may say more about me than anything else.

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    2. I'd forgotten about those glasses. Good for skiing.

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    3. You are doubtless correct, but in the mid 1960s I thought these were too cool.

      https://www.ebay.com/itm/193939255285?hash=item2d27ae2ff5:g:BoYAAOSw7AxgNMot

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  6. I'm all in on that tweed pantsuit in the art gallery. Fab.

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  7. Can't imagine a coat and tie on college campus now. You wear your "nice" sweatpants only for special occasions.

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  8. Timeless classics! Thank you so very much!

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  9. Your father's photographs are extraordinary.

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  10. Fun photographs from another world away. I love the one of the Irish wolfhound (too bad they have such short lifespans). That one of the lady in a tweed pantsuit in a museum could have been me!!

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  11. My favorite picture is the one of the man who is wearing a Jones Style Hat. Got a photo of my Dad wearing one of those while holding his two beagles.

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  12. How I miss good honest station wagons. You could haul the world in them. Much more useful than the SUV's we have been steered into.

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    1. I have a theory about this. I believe that some automakers will eventually begin making SUVs that are lower and sleeker. Vast amounts of money will be spent on retooling and marketing. The result will be a station wagon going by some other name because station wagons are supposedly uncool and we mustn't be uncool. This will appeal to the same people who purchased a line of clothing that was treated at the factory (at considerable expense) to look old and that was called "Authentics." It will be difficult for those of us who truly like station wagons to become involved in any of this.

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    2. Bring back the term 'Shooting Brake"!

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    3. A station wagon to some, is a mom car. We've had four, three Volvos and one VW, which is the one sitting in the garage now. Sitting outside of the garage is an honest SUV, neither a Volvo or VW. That's what I drive. My wife got the garage.

      When I was driving Rovers, I never missed not having a station wagon or hatchback. I did miss my Land-Rover "estate car."

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  13. I wish they dressed that way on college campus. Love the style. So classic. Guess what... I still dress like that.

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  14. What school is that in numbers 13 and 14.Looks so familiar, but am unsure.

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  15. Wow, these took me back! Thanks for the nostalgia.

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  16. Oh, lord, girls in pea coats....

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  17. What wonderful photos! Thank you so much for sharing them.

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  18. I remember a time when gentlemen professionals in offices like the old Hale and Dorr Law Firm and the prehistoric Tucker Anthony brokerage house smoked from well-crafted pipes in their offices as they contemplated over case studies and graphs. They wore similar outfits -- grayish suits by Press or Brooks and thick Henry Kissinger glasses minus the sinister ambition of world conquest.

    One time, Governor Weld watched with nonchalance as thieves in the People's Republic of Cambridge drove away in his Jeep. There was another time, he dove into the Charles wearing a light blue oxford button-up shirt, chinos and boat shoes to demonstrate the progress made in clean up efforts of "that dirty water".

    About an hour's north of Louisburg Square, there are charming coastal towns where old Brahmin families, college professors and retired lawyers lived. They would haul their small boats behind wood-paneled Jeeps or fill their Volvo wagons with half-empty paint cans. These men wore seasoned boat shoes, smoked pipes and were probably as eclectic as the late great Peter Matthiessen.

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    1. Might you mention John McPhee in the same breath as Peter Matthiessen? What about, from across the pond, Patrick Leigh Fermor?

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  19. Nice one with the 2 boys talking to the cop. The one in the middle is wearing an N 1 US Navy deck jacket. The Japanese ( Buzz Rickson,etc.) do really nice repros. They will outlive you.

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  20. These photos remind me of the year I started college, 1964. Most of the students were in fact dressed like that, especially the law school students who looked down on the other students passing by, only a few steps down from the front porch of the law school building. There was even an expectation that freshmen wear those silly beanies.

    Well, I didn't do all that well my first year. So I spent the next three years in the army and somehow managed to graduate in 1971. Even so, I finished before someone who I got to know my freshman year and was still in school. Anyway, the world had changed. A few still dressed up but long hair, beards and old army fatigues were everywhere. Maybe I just noticed it more because I'd been away for a while. Heaven knows what it's like now, except the enrollment has doubled, there's a new football stadium and a new law school building, which has an even higher porch than the old one. They would probably call it a portico.

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  21. this may be too obvious to mention, but a big reason why clothes from the past look so good to us now is because so few people back in the 60s and 70s were overweight. today it feels like everyone is extremely muscular, with clothes designed to show off their gym-toned physiques, or else they're obese (and that group represents the vast majority, sadly). i suspect moderate exercise and smaller portions kept figures "normal" back then.

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    1. Definitely. Not only did the clothes display a sense of moderation and proportion, so did the people. I've noticed that even the sartorial extremes of the '70s don't look quite so ridiculous if the wearers themselves are not extreme in any way. I did a little research, and although the height of the average man and woman hasn't changed much since the late '60s, the average American woman today weighs what the average man did then, and the average man weighs what the average NFL defensive back did then (bear in mind that receivers tended to be bigger then than now, so the DBs were too).

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    2. Good point.

      And back then there just wasn't that many opportunities to lead a sedentary life. We only had three (bad) TV channels, no computers/laptops, no DVD players, no cable, and, of course, no internet. One couldn't simply sit in front of a screen night and day so we had to move around to entertain ourselves. Get out of the house, do something, go somewhere. I must admit, today I find it hard to imagine living in such a world. And yet we did -- we didn't know any better.

      Sure, we had junk food in those days too, but I don't remember it being pushed so extensively as now. We're all ambushed at the checkout line to make sure we didn't forget our unhealthy treats. What -- I forgot the Doritos and candy bars? Can't have that. Here, let me throw them on the conveyer belt.

      Worse, I don't see how our current downward state is going to change any time soon.

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  22. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

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  23. Really cool photos! I wonder what/where that building is in the first picture?

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    1. I was actually wondering what the car was in that picture. English Ford, maybe?

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    2. Well, I've been around since '67, lol!, and am from London originally. To me that car looks American. I could be wrong of course, but I think any British car would have looked smaller and maybe more angular in this photo. My husband is from the frozen North and thinks the building is for salt storage perhaps...

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    3. I've been around since 1961 and as a child could name every American car on the road, and that car is not American. It looks an awful lot like a Ford Anglia. The grille, side trim, and rear window shape are all Anglia-esque, but the pic is a bit blurred. It's too small for an American car; at that time, the Ford Falcon and Chevy Nova were considered small (my dad had those as company "economy" cars), and they were barges compared with the car in the photo. The styling of the car above is also completely different from that of American cars of the period in question.

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    4. It looks like a Hillman Minx to me.

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    5. Tim Irvine, thank you! I kept wracking my brain, trying to think of Hillman, because I knew there was a British make that was eluding me and I wanted to Google for photos. I believe you are correct.

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    6. Tim Irvine, bingo!

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    7. Tim Irvine & Garrison Haibut, shows how much I know! But I didn't even learn to drive until I was 28 and moved to the US. I do miss the old cars of my childhood. There was a good variety in London, lovely Volvos, Saabs, Citroens, not to mention the German and Italian cars, and then some of the more 'flash' ones: Aston Martins, Jensens, Bristols, I'd love to see some of those lesser spotted English cars again.

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    8. Jules, the decline of the British auto industry is absolutely tragic, not only because of the loss of some of "flash" cars you mention but also because of the more ordinary makes, and especially the inexpensive sports cars like MG, Triumph, and Austin Healey.

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    9. Garrison, yes, you're absolutely right. It's hard to get that excited about cars nowadays. Have you ever read the interesting story of the Morris Oxfords that eventually morphed into the Hindustan Ambassador in India? I remember an uncle had one that was lovely. The very impressive Cuban car owners/mechanics who maintain the old 1950s American cars there are an inspiration too.

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    10. The automotive industry, more than most, has lost many aspects of national identity. A badge may be associated with a country, but increasingly the association is limited to where its concept was born and designed. I think the notion of incorporating important parts was a mixed blessing. Yes, GM transmissions and air conditioning were better than the transmissions in the old European builds or the hilariously ineffective air conditioning in old Volvos, but those changes paved the way for things like Minis that are actually BMWs and BMWs that are assembled in South Carolina. The coachwork on most cars has become eerily unvaried. I find myself looking at a car and noodling over whether it is a Hyundai or a Lexus, a Chrysler or a Bentley. The newer cars are far cleaner to operate, but the loss of cachet is very real. Thanks, Muffy, for so often including cars of interest in your shoots.

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  24. Sorry to say that this is when we as a country/culture were at our height. Now... You know where we are going. Don't want to bring people down but at some point one must face the truth.

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  25. In picture 2: is that not the actress Sylva Koscina—possibly on the set of "A Lovely Way to Die" (filmed in New York City and around Greenwich, Connecticut)?

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  26. Your father did a splendid job of capturing the feel of an era.
    I always enjoy his photos.
    The handsome beast, I mean canine, gets a thumbs up from me.
    I'm ignorant of the breed. By comparison, perhaps the fellow is rather short, but the dog is one of the tallest I have ever seen.

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