A Saturday Evening Blast From the Past
Posted on December 12, 2015 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
Look, it’s me (in the pink denim shirt) on the first day of second grade. My sister is about the start the fourth grade. My mother, if memory serves, is 27 in this picture, and can be excused for what she is wearing because it was the 70s and everyone alive in that era did things they regret today. Better that ensemble than, say, cocaine.
Anyway: Hey! I was young once. True story.
That’s harsh. It’s a perfectly cromulent outfit. Your sister’s ensemble is a bit off, but not horrible.
Unclear there: your mom’s outfit is cromulent and yours seems pretty bland.
The decade of double-knit!
If memory serves, my mom had a very similar outfit. Maybe a tad worse. 100% polyester, of course.
Not that can cast stones. I believe it was third grade when I regularly wore brown plaid bell bottoms.
Started reading and was really hoping it would go off the rails the way it started to. Alas, you rescued it and tied the post up probably right where it needed to end :P
Heheh, I remember moms and kids dressed like that, oh, yeah. School or church, what have you.
Pink or a sort of brick red / russet red with white interwoven? I’ve seen both. A light red shirt can look pretty good, or, if a guy can carry it off, pink is fine too. As an aside, there’s a thing about “Tough guys wear pink,” including a protest by straight boys of how a gay boy was treated for wearing pink.
Hmm. The 70’s, in elementary school, I had this reddish denim jacket with some kind of belt, not the usual denim jacket you think of. I probably could only wear it a year or so, but still liked it when I’d outgrown it, the color and the style.
And yeah, if you saw one of my junior high class photos, lots of 70’s kids in 70’s clothes and hair. Oh, wow!
As a boy, around 2nd grade, I also insisted on wearing a suit to school one day. Yeah, I don’t really remember, but it probably was not well received. LOL!
And… My mom was an artist and ran an art shop, did custom framing, taught painting classes. She was overweight and going prematurely grey, until she started dyeing her hair. In the shop, therefore every weekday unless she went out somewhere, she often wore wild print blouses that were popular back then. Some had “butterfly” sleeves. Some had a more mod or African influence (Mom was white). She loved color and pattern, and those wouldn’t show paint. ;) So she had this very bohemian sort of look, even though she was really pretty conservative. Geometric prints, florals, paisleys, mod patterns, you name it. She’d often wear pants, either jeans or polyester slacks witht these. And because framing and matting deals with heavy mouldings and cutting glass, and Mom had really bad ankles besides — Yes, my mother really *did* wear Army boots. Actually, they were hiking boots, Red Wing or others, tan, but not your typical feminine footwear! LOL! Er, however, Mom could also dress up really well as businesswoman or for an evening out. So there were dresses and pants suits. … There was also one really questionable early 70’s heavy coat, then considered stylish, with dark navy and bright kelly green and I think it was orange, in a plaid or other common pattern. Plaid, I think. She got tired of it, as you can imagine.
Yeah, really wild.
As a kid, I usually dressed pretty plainly, but there were some Garanimals pants with plaid, and some Qiana shirts, and a few from my mom and grandmother that had tiny floral patterns that yes, boys back then did wear.
As I grew older, into my teens, and grew more self-conscious about my masculinity, I steered clear of anything floral, except maybe a paisley tie. By high school, it was the 80’s and styles were changing. Be it noted, I grew up short and very skinny and pale, and got picked on by other boys a lot, so I got very conscious of looking boyish, manly. (Plus, starting my teens, I was beginning to be more aware that I liked othere boys, but couldn’t accept it yet. This also made me overly aware of how I looked.)
But all in all, I looked about like any 70’s and 80’s kid. The bookish, geeky, smart kid sort of kid. Who drew and kept writing stuff in notebooks. Who was already a big science fiction fan. Heheh.
Hey, your mom was young once too.
Those clothes go great with that K-mart music.
My family had the same corner shelving unit. But you three had the hair. Great hair.
All of you were on trend. From the pants suit to the giant shirt collar to, what I am guessing is snaps, not buttons, on your shirt.
My pants suit was lime green Dacron polyester *with* bell bottoms. I felt very much the rebel when I received special permission from the school principal to wear it on Picture Day (girls did not wear pants to school in 1969).
OMG! I’m old enough that I wore (once, really. Well, maybe more than once) a checked outfit like that in the 1970s.
That means…. I’m old enough to be your mother. OMG!!!
HEH to the ‘pink = girl, blue = boy” stereotype. Back in the 1800s it was the opposite – pink/red was for boys, blue for girls. Changed around the late 1800s – early 1900s… (I am a volunteer museum guide, and this is one of the facts we talk when discussing clothing of the 1700s and 1800s… including the fact that boys also all wore dresses until they were around 7, when they were put in short pants/shorts… you see that photo of the baby in the long dress? If the hair is parted on the side it is probably a boy; if the hair is parted in the middle it’s probably a girl. Only way to tell many times!) (Gives an entirely new perspective on “Little Boy Blue” painting as well – hah!)
Mom still has some of those pantsuits in her closet. Hey they don’t shrink, they don’t fade and they don’t wear out. Her gg granddaughters will be able to wear them when they come back in style.
My late mother was older but did have a few polyester clothing items in her attic when I went through her belongings this year. They’re vintage now, and I may be able to sell them.
My first thought was that somehow you had managed to get hold of a picture of a young Sigourney Weaver, but who are the two rug rats with her?
“Non, je ne regrette rien” anything I wore in the 70s, but preferred what I wore in the 50’s and 60s.
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Edith Piaf – Non, je ne regrette rien – (original) – YouTube