Fashion Trends During High School

By Susan Knight

Next question in my fill-in-the-blanks book: What were the fashion trends from your school days?

I believe I lived in THEEE most fashion trendiest time of ever—the 1960s-1970s. Bell-bottoms, hip-huggers, mini-skirts, platform shoes, midriffs, and the shortest short-shorts called "hot pants" made up the wardrobe of the hippie wannabes in my high school. The summer of love, you know? Woodstock?

Midriff and bell-bottoms

bell-bottoms made from jeans

Hot Pants and white boots.
I forgot about the white boots!

Before 1970, we all wore dresses and skirts to school, and the boys wore collared shirts and ties with nice slacks. I remember there were loops on the backs of the boys shirts and it was a “trend” for girls to pull on them and rip them off (don’t ask me why, but it was a sort of coup).

I remember being on a committee in 1970 to do away with the dress code. My boyfriend at the time was on the Student Council of my intermediate high school in tenth grade. I used to go to meetings with him and I remember voting and making posters—Down With the Dress Code!  We want to wear jeans!

Then, YAY! we were allowed to wear jeans! Only my mother wouldn’t let me wear jeans. I could wear nice slacks, corduroys—or skirts—no jeans. Alas, I never wore jeans during the rest of my high school days, even after it became an accepted “trend.” And don’t tell my kids (because they never read this blog, even though I set it up for them), but by the time they were in high school, I was on a committee to try to get the school board to write a policy for students to wear uniforms, even though that was another vow I made—I would never wear a uniform again. I guess it took old age and maturity to realize the stress release from not having to decide what to wear every day and having no competition in dress.

Ali MacGraw as Jennifer Cavalleri
wearing the famous 1970 cloche

"Love Story," a screenplay and novel written by Erich Segal in 1970, popularized the cloche hat when the movie aired that year. Every teenage girl who swooned over Ryan O'Neal wore a cloche. I learned to crochet, just so I could make and wear a cloche hat like Jennifer Cavalleri in the movie, played by Ali MacGraw.  I think I made some for friends, too. It helped keep my hair down, too.

Did you know, that movie started the trend of naming babies Jennifer that lasted more than thirty years?

I probably had a mini-skirt like this.
When we sat down, we were really
sitting on our butts. True story!

                                                      

                                                       Maxis and Midis--all good hippies wore these

By my senior year, in 1972, girls broke through the mini wall and came to school wearing maxi-skirts, then midi-skirts. Finally, it didn't matter what length your skirt was—maxi, midi, mini—it was all groovy. And it didn't matter if your hair was straight or curly—in fact a new trend was born—the Afro, worn by black and white alike.

And, BTW, I vowed never to wear mini-skirts, hip-huggers, platform shoes, or short-shorts ever again once I left the 70s behind. 

Doesn't this just scream sprained ankle?!?
I ran through an airport once in platform shoes.
It was like running on stilts. . .

I also vowed never to straighten my hair by wearing beer can rollers at night or by ironing it. Danger, Will Robinson!

My mom ironed my hair just one time,
but I'm pretty sure I didn't have a smile on my face.
After that, it was beer can rollers. Ugh!

thehairhalloffame.blogspot.com
I think this is a photo straight out of 1970.
My rollers were just like this. They were a gold color.
I slept on these "beer can rollers." How did I put up with that?
See why I vowed never to straighten my hair again?

Look girls! We could have been popular!

Why couldn’t someone have invented the straightening irons they have now back then? I could have had long, straight hair like all the popular girls. Oh, yes, if you had curly, frizzy hair, you were taboo—a pariah. I wore ponytails, braids, slicked my hair down severely,  and laboriously tried to straighten my hair all through high school, just so I wouldn’t be freakish. So sad.

Yep, that's me on the left with the slicked down hair pulled back
into a severe ponytail at the nape of my neck. Yeah, that's
where we wore ponytails in those days--at the nape of the neck.
My friends and I are also wearing mini-scooter skirts. Woo-HOO!

Heck, the blow dryer wasn’t even invented until I was a freshman in college—and all that did was make my hair frizzier—not straighter. Hot rollers were the thing when styles allowed hair to be curly again. But second degree burns were not groovy. In my senior year and after, layering became the standard and has been revived many times in the last forty-some years.

Oh, the things we used to do to be “cool.” Only “cool” wasn’t really a term used by the early 1970s. It came into the vernacular in the 1950s with beatniks, but bounced over the 1970s and ended up in the 1980s again. Cool in the late 1960s, early 1970s, was “neat” or “nifty” or “groovy” or “sharp” or “far out.”

In the late 1970s, I got a haircut called “The Savage” (pronounced like sah-vahghe—French-like). My girlfriend cut my hair in many layers all over, then I turned my head upside down and blew dry my curls, lifted my head up and shook the messy waves and scrunched. Voilá. I wore my hair like that for years. So easy. I remember telling my mom I didn’t even own a comb. She said, “Well, that’s obvious.” (sigh)

I have said many times, when I am resurrected, I want to look like when I was 25 and had the Savage, and I was thin and fit, and still had good eyesight, good hearing, and good teeth. Ha-ha!

What do you remember about the trends from high school days?

I'd enjoy reading your comments :_)