Figure 1.--Here I am at 5 years sporting a smart V-neck sweater, bow-tie, and the white ankle socks my mother preferred for special occasions and Summertime. |
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I found your HBC website while trying to refresh my memory for a novel I'm writing, that is set during my own childhood. It was very interesting, and brought back a lot of memories of my boyhood in the 1960s. I just thought I'd pass on some of my own memories of the significance of certain clothes to certain age groups when I was a child in the 1960s.
My parents had definite ideas about the clothes that I should wear. They
gave much more thought to it than I did.
My Mum (Mom) liked me to look neat. Looking back, she bought me clothes that
gave me that smart, middle class look. Red sandals and white ankle socks are
examples of this. She always chose short trousers for me as long as I was in
primary school. Curiously, I can't remember my Mum's views as to whether I
should wear long trousers when I entered my senior school.
My Dad was very much of the opinion that I should go into long trousers when
I entered my senior school because I was moving onto a new stage in my life.
Long trousers were a symbol of being grown-up. I recall being rather
ambivalent about it. I enjoyed Junior School and was nervous about going on
to Senior School. I wanted long trousers because they would make me
grown-up, but I felt sad about giving up my shorts, I suppose, because they
symbolised the carefree childhood I was leaving behind.
We boys didn't think about fashion as modern children do. I often feel,
looking back, that it is a shame that children now do become "fashion
victims" so early. I think it steals a significant part of their childhood
from them.
After school I would normally wear a shirt and pullover in winter, or a
T-shirt during the Summer.
Until I moved up to Senior School, I was in short trousers (pants) all the
time, except on winter fishing trips, when jeans and wellies (Wellington
boots) were worn. It was rare to see boys younger than 11 or 12 years in
long trousers, either for school or play in the area where I lived. Out of
school, I wore one of three pairs of heavy cotton shorts (but lighter than
denim). I never felt embarrassed about wearing shorts or objected to them,
even when I was 11 years old and about to move up to Senior School. They
were what all my friends wore, and I was too busy playing and just being a
kid to take much notice of what I was wearing. I was comfortable. What else
mattered?
Some children at school wore brown or black sandals in the Summer. My sister
and I only ever had red ones. They were a dark red, almost maroon. A
brighter red would have been seen as a style for very young children. This
was between 1960 and 1964 (age 5 - 9 for me). I think sandals were probably
going out of favour for boys by then. Once I was 10, I had white lace up
plimsolls for leisure wear in summer, and black lace up shoes for school all
the year round.
Footwear was the same at home as for school, although I often wore plimsolls
when I was playing in the summer, so that I didn't ruin my sandals. I
preferred to wear my sandals, because they were cooler and red was my
favourite colour, but I had to be careful not to scuff them. My plimsolls
were hot, being the elasticated, pull-on style, and being black they
absorbed the heat on a sunny day, but I knew I could kick around in the dust
or on the beach without worrying about them getting messed up. I had stopped
wearing sandals by the time I was ten. I think my Mum just decided to stop
buying them, because I certainly didn't object to wearing them. But my Dad
may have had a hand in it, as he was always the driving force in each stage
of my growing up. I have recently found a photo of myself, taken on holiday
when I was between ten and eleven years old, wearing pale coloured long
trousers, a black sports jacket, and canvas shoes known as "baseball boots"
at the time. The trousers and jacket were identical to my Dad's, and I am
ninety-nine percent sure they were chosen by him as a first "grown up"
outfit for me. I have very little recollection of wearing them, except that
I felt unable to relax in them the way I did in my everyday shorts and
T-shirts.
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At my school most boys wore grey socks all year round. But the more "middle
class" Mum's, like mine, sent their sons out in white ankle socks in summer.
It was definitely a class thing: the more affluent the family, the more
"cute" were the clothes they dressed their children in. The photograph of
myself aged 5 (Figure 1) demonstrates this. I do not recall having any
preference about knee or ankle socks. Knee socks were warm in winter, but I
was forever having to pull them up. And ankle socks were cooler in the
summer. They were both right for the season I wore them in, I suppose. If
anything, I would have to say ankle socks were easier because they didn't
slide down. But what I really longed for, and never got, were grey knee
socks with a band in the school colours just near the top. Only a couple of
the boys in my class had those and I really envied them.
Another almost universal item of winter clothing for both boys and girls up
to 8 or 9, was a pair of knitted mittens or gloves, attached to either end
of a long tape that was threaded through the arms of our winter coats. It
meant that our mittens stayed with the coat when it was hung up at school
and were less likely to be lost. It also meant that we boys could twirl our
mittens around on the ends of their tape, pretending they were propellers,
and run around playing at being aeroplanes. I think I stopped this when I
was about 8 to 9 years old.
I seem to remember most of our games involved running around being various
modes of transport, the position of our arms signifying what sort of vehicle
we were. If we were cars we ran around holding an imaginary steering wheel
in front of us. If we were steam trains we used our arms to imitate the
motion of the pistons. If we were aeroplanes we ran around with our arms
held out to the side at shoulder height as wings (Mitten-on-a-string
propellers optional). We were certainly still playing like this in the
school year that we celebrated our 9th birthdays. The other great playground
game was tag or "tig", as we called it. It is so universal I don't need to
describe it.
Marbles, conkers, and various chasing and catching games were commonly played up to the first couple of years of senior school. One catching game, called "British Bulldog" used to be played en masse by all the boys at my senior school, from 11 year-olds to 16 year-olds, all together. No-one was left out--even if they wanted to be, which was rare. Happier, more innocent times than most modern boys live in, I think. Materially we had so much less
than them, but in terms of traditional games that brought us all together and gave us a sense of belonging to a school and neighbourhood community, we had far more than they do.
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My normal school wear in junior school was a white cotton shirt (short
sleeved in Summer), V-neck pullover and charcoal grey shorts, with grey
knee-socks and black lace-up shoes in winter, or white ankle socks and red
sandals in Summer. Interestingly, I do not recall ever discussing clothes
with my friends at school. I don't think we really took much notice of each
other's clothes except that they were a way of recognising each other from a
distance. There was no official school uniform at my junior schools,
although we all wore the universal dark grey shorts and a grey, red or navy
pullover, so I could always recognise my friends across the playground by
the shade of their pullovers or the style of their coats, or the particular
shade of grey, and the length, of their shorts. We were not
clothes-conscious in any more sophisticated way than that, as far as I can
remember.
My senior school was a tiny private school, a very small school indeed.
There were actually a total of ten in my class, 6 boys and 4 girls. By the
time I was 16 we were down to 7 of us. The year below mine was the biggest,
with 20 pupils. The average class size was around 15 pupils. My parents sent
me there because my Junior School headmistress said I was too quiet to
survive in a big school. I wasn't told this until quite recently, but
looking back I think they were probably right to send me there. It was a
very happy, homely school. [HNC note: "homely" in Brit English means "homey"
in American English. To Americans "homely" means ugly.] And it was a mixed
school, i.e. there were girls there too. I think mixing girls and boys
probably made it more civlised than an all boys school.
I'd forgotten this until I was specifically asked about cord shorts, but two
brothers at my school, the elder of whom was one of my best friends, were
wearing cord shorts in 1965-66. They had at least four pairs between them,
in fawn, navy blue, dark green and a sort of chestnut brown colour. My Dad
was not impressed. He thought cord shorts were too babyish for boys who were
aged 9 and 11 years old at the time. Once again it was a "class" thing. The
boys came from a relatively affluent home and were dressed in more fancy
clothes than most of the other boys. Generally though I would say that cord
shorts were going out of fashion. Actually, I think this is the "class"
thing. The better off, or socially aspiring parents, used to dress their
sons more traditionally, which would be seen by many people as dressing them
in a more childish or more "old fashioned" style than the norm.
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I don't remember my legs ever feeling cold in the Winter. I certainly don't
remember suffering the agonies of frozen knees described in the newspaper
article from 1951 that is reproduced on this site. I remember my fingers and
toes aching with cold after we'd had snowball fights in the playground, but
not cold legs, even though I was not a particularly hardy child. In all the
time I was in short trousers I can't remember any of my friends complaining
of cold knees either. One reason we did not suffer as the 1951 writer did,
may be that we all wore winter coats that reached just below the knee. These
would usually be gaberdene raincoats, in grey or navy blue and often with a
tartan lining, or duffle coats with hoods. Headwear, for those without
hoods, would often be a "Balaclava helmet", a sort of close fitting knitted
hood/hat, with an opening for the face, which covered the entire head and
neck. I always wanted one of these but was never allowed one. There was a
navy blue school cap, with the school badge on the front, which I had, but
it was not compulsory to wear it. I remember feeling comfortably warm in my
duffle coat, with the hood up to keep out the cold wind, and my hands tucked
in the pockets. Only my toes were cold. The funny thing is, that once I
started wearing long trousers for School, and my legs were no longer used to
being exposed to the elements, my knees and thighs used to sting with the
cold when I had to wear shorts to play Soccer during the winter.
One rite of passage, in moving from shorts to long trousers, was learning to
cope with zipper/button front openings on my trousers. A lot of modern
school shorts do just have an elasticated waist and "false fly" (basically a
pleat where the fly opening would normally be). All of mine, except one of
the pairs I had for home wear, had a zip fly and hook fastening tab on the
waistband, but I never bothered to use it. Anyone who wore shorts as a boy during this period will know what I mean by this without me explaining it.
I wasn't a Cub or Boy Scout, although some of my friends were. I remember thinking the Cubs' uniforms looked very smart being a dark green colour with yellow trim, while the Scouts' outfit was a rather drab khaki. I was not really outgoing enough to join any out of school group or club. I had various interests at home that kept me busy. I did a lot of reading and drawing, and enjoyed making models and going fishing with my Dad.
Maybe I look back through rose-tinted spectacles at my boyhood, but it was a
happy time for me. We were never rich, but never poor either. I was never
short of friends, was only bullied once, and spent two wonderful years
living in a quiet country village, where we could roam the lanes all day in
safety. I suppose you could say my childhood was quite idyllic, and I never
felt any burning desire to be grown-up. Maybe this is why I look back with
less resentment to my days in short trousers and sandals than some of the
other contributors. The clothes I wore as a child were never a source of
embarrassment to me, or of disagreement with my parents, and I was never
teased by older siblings or schoolmates, so I tend to look back with
nostalgia rather than irritation, to running around with bare legs, even in
the winter!
The thing that seems really strange now, when shorts are common Summer wear
for all age groups, and only traditional prep schools compel Junior School
boys to wear shorts, is that the moment I stopped wearing short trousers for
School, I took it for granted that I should stop wearing them for leisure
too, even though shorts would have been much more comfortable than jeans in
the Summer. It's only in the last year or so that I've overcome this idea
that shorts are for children, and have started to wear them again in hot
weather without feeling embarrassed about it. I wish I'd done it years ago!
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