Note the remarkable change in clothing styles over the years.
Showing posts with label Clothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clothing. Show all posts
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th Edition appendix. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes. So does Beyonce Knowles. And stuff.
The Sydney Sweeney jeans ad praising her genes is genius: How nice to have the Sydney Sweeney “great genes” controversy. It is happily of no consequence, which is . . .
Froma Harrop.
The massive overreaction to Sweeney being in an American Eagle ad while being white continues on, and is nicely addressed by Froma Harrop above. Harrop's article reminds us of a few other pretty women, which likely means that it's a good thing the article was written by a woman.
Coincidentally, Beyoncé Knowles ad campaign for Levis continues on as well. It predates Sweeney's ad for American Eagle. I don't know anything about American Eagle jeans at all, but I do about Levis as I wear them a lot.
Knowles is also hot.
From Knowles Levis commercial
Knowles, of course, is an African American.
Of interest in this, both Knowles and Sweeney manage to be hot while fully clothed, a good trend.
Sweeney from her American Eagle ad.
Also of note, they're both actually really curvy and not sticks. In other words, they look like actual women, which is of course what they are. Knowles is particularly notable as she's been regarded as hot all along, even though she doesn't fit into the traditional stick figure model category that modeling agencies have tended to use for years. She's big.
Of course, all this brought out the political clowns. Robot from Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz (why hasn't ICE deported this foreign born interloper yet?) felt compelled to state that due to the Democrats “beautiful women are no longer acceptable in our society.” That's really absurd. One of the things that Sen. Krysten Sinema, now an independent but up until recently a Democrat, basically took criticism for was being hot while in office. Sinema, whose politics are eclectic, is clearly highly intelligent. She's also a fallen away Mormon who is "unaffiliated" in terms of religion, and a lesbian, all of which puts her in the infamia category for Republicans.
Republicans, it might be noted, really lashed on to Sweeney when they found out she's a registered Republican, which means almost nothing. Most of the MAGA politicos would have been regarded as fringe Republicans at best up until King Donny. Real Republicans, as Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray likes to point out, are now regarded as Democratic infiltrators by the current GOP, which is lead by a lifelong former Democrat, Trump. We really don't know about her actual political views at all.
She registers in Florida, and of course she might register Republican for the same reason that horrifies Chuck Gray in Wyoming, it might for the most part be the only place to register. The Unconstitutional Primary Election in Wyoming tends to be the real election, so that's where people register. Maybe that's why Sweeney registers that way in Florida. Who knows?
Republicans, starting with Trump, have really latched on to her already, which is a metaphor that should make Sweeney uncomfortable. Some real boofador from Fox News even went so far as to suggest that seeing Sweeney in jeans might remind American men of their demographic obligation to procreate, whic his extremely weird, and referenced Dylan Mulvaney as an example of what might be deterring them. While Mulvaney is genuinely bizarre, and transgenderism not a real thing, that's probably not what's keeping the WASPs home alone in their basements rather than going out and meeting someone.
Somebody in this category, who is going out, as in out of the state, is Artemis Langford, who, having graduated from university, is packing up and leaving, claiming the state doesn't want people like him here. Langford, who deserves real pity, demonstrated self pity in the interview, as he had to have known that being a big overweight man in a sorority would draw attention, although he no doubt didn't expect all the litigation that ensued. The basic gist of his complaint is that he doesn't like it that there have been laws passed to protect actual women from being displaced in women's sports and the like, and he doesn't like it that society has moved towards recognizing "transgenderism" for what it is, a mental illness, so he's leaving. At least as of two years ago, his intended career path was law school. Being a man presenting as a woman wouldn' t stop a person from practicing law here, although it probably would be limiting, so pursuing that career elsewhere probably would be a good idea, if that's his actual intent.
All of this gets into the topic of conservatism, cultural conservatism, culture, and populism, but we'll try to take that up somewhere else. Maybe in our 100th Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist edition.
Anyhow, one denim glad guy saw an opportunity here, and took it:
He does like the Sweeney ad. I'll bet he likes the Knowles one too.
And all this comes up, sort of, due to denim, something that women didn't often appear in, and for that matter decently dressed men, until after World War Two. While women wearing jeans had taken off well before that, Levis didn't introduce 501s for women until 1981.
Related threads:
Levis
Labels: 1870s, 1873, 1890, 1890s, 1940s, 1947, 1950s, 1960s, Agriculture, Clothing, Growing up in the 1970s, It was because of World War Two, Standards, technology, trends, World War Two
Last edition:
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 99th edition. Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, and genes.
Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle denim, part of the ad campaign causing all the furor. The outfit itself is very 1970s retro, which is more than a little ironic in context. Given the commentary, this is posted with the fair use exception.
Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.
Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle ad.
Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle ad shows a cultural shift toward whiteness.
CNBC headline.
Q: Your administration has been very open about the fact that American women are not having enough babies. There was an ad this week. Sydney Sweeney, an actress, was in an ad for Blue Jeans. Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?
Rob Finnerty in an interview of Donald Trump.
First, let us state something plainly.
Sydney Sweeney is hot.
Way hot.
And she looks good in the American Eagle Jeans, which are sort of retro 1970s denim really.
Really good.
So why are people having a fit?
Well, it's a really interesting tour through the culture, really.
Using attractive women to sell clothing is nothing new. Shoot, using attractive women to sell anything, is in fact not new.
So what's the big deal.
Basically, when you get right down to it, the big deal is two things. First of all, Sweeney is white. Secondly, this is a return to an obvious sex sells approach to selling that we haven't seen since the early 1990s.
The peak of the sex sells approach was really the 1970s. Coincident with the rise of feminism was the absolute exploitation of women in advertising. Calvin Klein really went to town with Brooke Shields, who was sexualized so young in her career that her image, in the movie industry, was basically a near example of child pornography. But in advertising, he wasn't the only one. There were in fact advertisements that would outright shock most Americans now as they used young teenage girls in sexualized poses. It was repulsive.
That seemed to have run its course by the mid 1980s, but even then, in the 1990s, Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith modeled jeans, in her case Guess jeans.
The 90s, however, also saw the really fruity elements of the American come into cultural power, and a lot of that gave us, unfortunately, what we have today in terms of a massive right wing populist reaction. In modeling, left wing media masters insisted that models not be, if possible, smoking hot young women and that instead they should be culturally diverse, and in some cases, fat.
Now comes this, in the midst of a real swing to cultural conservatism, but not culturalism of the Patrick Dineen type, but of the Dukes of Hazzard fan type.
What Sweeney said, quite frankly, is actually completely true. Genes are passed down from parents to offspring. Genes in fact determine external traits like hair color and eye color. That is a fact.
And, more than we like to admit, they determine a massive amount of our personality traits. If you hang around a family gathering and don't find people who have the same deep interests as you do, the same sense of humor, etc., you might wish to check to see if you are in the right place. Sure, some of that might be due to environment, you are all from the same family, but some not. It's well known that many of the traits that impact our personalities are in fact genetic.
So what's up with the upset.
Well she's white, as are 60.5% of the American population. That is who you are trying to sell to much of the time. The liberal left just can't have that.
If the same clothing promotion was being done by Anok Yai, the left wouldn't be having a fit, the right would be, and for the exact same reason.
Which is exactly why, if I ran American Eagle, I'd have Anok Yai join in the campaign.
Of course, that isn't the only reason people are enjoying being upset. They're also upset as the ads openly focus on Sweeney's assets, including having the camera in the jean jacket ad focus on her boobs until she intervenes to instruct the viewer to look at her face.
Well, gentle reader, that portrays reality. All the feminist reactions in the world are never going to stop men from observing cleavage when its right there. We're wired that way, and for a reason.
Which brings us to the next point. In the right wing defense, Trump, in a friendly Fox interview, was asked the bizarre question "Does America need to see more ads like that? And maybe fewer ads with people like Dylan Mulvaney on the cover?" after the pronatalist views of the far right were referenced.
That was weird.
The US, and for that matter the entire Western World, does not have a demographic crisis like the far right pronatalist like to imagine. But the suggestion that men are going to look at Sydney Sweeney and suddenly feel aroused and go out and procreate is truly odd.
But even this does give us a glimpse into how modern Western society has really gone off the rails No man who wants to "transition" is ever going to look like Sydney Sweeney. Nor will any of them suffer from the Girl Flu every month. That's reality.
Anyhow. Givc the woman a break.
Last edition:
The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Third Edition and Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 98th edition. The Perverts and Fellow Travelers Issue.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Sunday, June 17, 1945. Taking Kuishi Ridge.
The last Japanese defensive line was broken on Kuishi Ridge, Okinawa. The US 7th Division completed the capture of Hills 153 and 115.
"Tec Sgt. Hiroshi Mukaye, Los Angeles, Cal., Japanese Interpreter for the 32nd Infantry Regiment, and S/Sgt. Ralph M. Saito, Ewa, Hawaii, interpreter for the 24th Corps, question this Japanese sailor brought in by the 32nd Infantry Regiment. 17 June. 1945. 32nd Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. Photo Source: U.S. National Archives. Digitized by Signal Corps Archive." This photograph is remarkable in that S.Sgt Santo has his rank drawn onto his fatigue cap in the same approximate size that later black subdued rank insignia would have it. He also has his rank printed on the lapels of his fatigue shirt, which would anticipate the practice of the 1960s, although not in that location.
The 37th Infantry Division captured Naguilian on Luzon.
Last edition:
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling thread.
Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.
How some lawyers apparently want the public to imagine them.
A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.
Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense. I don't know him well, but I do know him.
When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual. I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it. Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.
And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.
Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century. It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period. I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray. Maybe none of is, which is why the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.
Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.
Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time. Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time. I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time. I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.
Affecting the image, however, miffs me. It's fake. If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing. Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.
Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:
Come As You Are
I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:
A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .
If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.
And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about. He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.
Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here. I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out. Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course. Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.
Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:
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On this, it's interesting that the cowboy image can be coopted this way, whereas other "manly" professions genuinely cannot. Fighters (boxers) have been a little bit, and I suppose that was an obviously one, but nobody, for example, talks about "whaling for justice".
Anyhow, dressing up like a cowboy for affect if you are not punching makes you a Rexall Ranger, not a cowboy.
While I'm at it, a Wyoming lawyer has affected the cowboy appearance for her columns on one of the local electronic journals. In this case, she's gone for the a way too big hat big pushed way up on the forehead so you can see the face look, which to a working stockman looks absolutely absurd. The same journal actually as a working rancher who wears his hat correctly as a columnist, and up until recently had another who did the same.
As a total side, if you notice in old cowboy portraits they often have their hats pushed to the back of their head, something moderns have wondered about, and for which they've even assumed that must be how they wore them.
No, the cameras were bad.
Isom Dart at Brown’s Hole Wyoming.
If they hadn't pushed them up some, their faces would have been in shadow
On identifies, I had a couple of odd encounters recently, one of which involves mental decline, and the other which involves gender attraction.
I'll start with the latter one first. There's an older profession that I don't know well, but who've I've been familiar with for a very long time. Somebody much more familiar with him than me dropped that he's a homosexual. I was shocked. Not because homosexuality in general shocks me, but because it was very well closeted for decades. Indeed, he's married with children.
I suppose that might be the rule for people north of 70, the closteting, that is.
In retrospect, it pretty quickly made sense for some reason. It just explained some personality quirks that I'd long noticed. The point of posting it here, however, is that if it's true, he's lived a lifetime with sort of an interesting strained identity.
He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category. Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well. In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.
Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality. I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was. My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.
I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many. Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it. People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.
Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders. I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch. It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.
I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment. But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so. I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s. For one thing, it's just sad. Surely there was something else that interested them once.
Back to occupational identities.
One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page. Minor.
I like M65 field jackets. When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more. The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.
I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued. But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.
Well, time, etc.
A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones. I just really like them. I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself. The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.
Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting. Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one. Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered. Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.
Some of these have the US Army tape on them. One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape. I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings. I'm not a paratrooper. The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches. I took everything off but the US Army tape.
For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes. I can now sew those on.
Why? I'm not sure. I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason. Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now. Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.
Odd
Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it. It won't have any patches.
I need to stop buying them.
As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer. My old one is pretty much blown out now. It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to. Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.
Back to occupational identities for a moment. It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today
People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young. But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves. I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.
Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests. Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen. Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't. Some were dramatically so. Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life. I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew. More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.
It isn't good.
Last Sunday I ran this item:
Pack Animals - the 🇩🇪 German Mountain Infantry Brigade
I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.
I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit. Outdoors. . . animals, etc. By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.
Hmmm. . .
Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.
Have a nice day at work.
Mehr Mensch sein,
Friday, May 16, 2025
The Cost Meter. A Trade War Index.
Petroleum: $61.78/bbl (Wyoming crude become unecomic at $59.00/bbl).
Coal: Coal 99.40/ton
Coffee (USd/Lbs) 372.60.
Levis at Penny's: $55.65.
April 7, 2025
Petroleum: 60.80/bbl.
One of Trump's minions cited this, fwiw, as evidence that inflation isn't kicking in and things are fine. On the contrary, the price of petroleum is dropping on fears of a recession. A recession reduces oil consumption.
Indeed, because of the bizarre nature of tariffs, trading prices on some things in general may go down, while the price rises for Americans.
April 8, 2025
From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:
It's about $61/bbl this mooring.
cont:
$58.10. Below marketability in Wyoming.
April 9, 2025
Oil opening this morning:
56.03
April 10, 2025
Despite the strong relief rally on Wednesday, following President Trump’s 90-day pause of tariff hikes on most countries except China, the U.S. benchmark oil price is now lower than the breakeven for the shale industry to profitably drill a new well.
OilPrice.com
West Texas is $59.16/bbl.
April 11, 2025
U.S. reached a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen.
Oil is opening at 60.10/bbl.
May 2, 2025
Oil and Natural Gas.
WTI Crude 58.57 -0.67 -1.13%
Brent Crude 61.49 -0.64 -1.03%
Murban Crude 61.41 -0.93 -1.49%
Natural Gas 3.502 +0.023 +0.66%
A note, below $59.00, US crude doesn't move.
The inflation rate right now is 2.39% with the tariffs about to hit.
May 6, 2025
WTI Crude • 58.28 +1.15 +2.01%
Brent Crude • 61.39 +1.16 +1.93%
Murban Crude • 62.20 +2.24 +3.74%
Natural Gas • 3.594 +0.044 +1.24%
Coal: 98.50/ton
Coffee: 388.45
Levis: $55.65.
May 16, 2025
WTI Crude 61.95 +0.33 +0.54%
Brent Crude 64.88 +0.35 +0.54%
Natural Gas 3.345 -0.017 -0.51%
Coal: 99.00/ton
Coffee (USd/Lbs) 373.79
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .The Thomas Crown Affair.
Eh?
Allow me to explain.
I posted this yesterday:
Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .: Cary Grant and Myrna Loy from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. O.W. Root @NecktieSalvage · 1h People think I am exaggerating when I ...
Last night, I tried to watch the Thomas Crown Affair.
I'm generally a fan of older movies, and often watch ones older than this. But I couldn't make my way through it. The appearance of the characters and the urban settings were just too much for me. The thing is, I"m pretty sure it was accurate.
All the office workers and businessmen are dressed in contempoary suits, some of which were quite nice and still would be today. The hats really stood out, with every man wearing a Trilby, something really identifiable with teh 1960s, but which when we look back on the 60s, is easy to forget.
The 1960s may have been the era of Haight Ashbury and hippies, but it was also the era of men still wearing suits and ties in the office. It isn't really into the 1970s that this began to change. The wide lapel loud color suit came out of the 60s, but it didn't show up until the early 1970s, which is really, culturally, part of the 1960s. Even so, men were wearing coat and tie in the office.
The other thing I encountered leading to this thread was a link from something on Pininterest, which lead to a set of photos that a high school teacher/photographer, took of high school students in his school in the 1970s. I'm not going to linke them in, as some of the photos he took were, in my view, a bit lacking in modesty (not anything illegal, but just something I wouldn't really think a person should photograph), but maybe that was his point.
It wasn't that I didn't recogize the photographs. I really did. That's the thing. All the boys and girls in tight fitting t-shirts.
I have my father's high school annual from 1947, and I've written on the appearance of the studends that appear in it before:
Standards of Dress. Attending school
This is a 9th Grade (Freshman) Class in high school, 1946. Specifically, is the Freshman class at NCHS in 1946 (the Class of 1949).Now, some will know NCHS who might read this, others will not. But in 1946 this class attended school in a city that had under 30,000 residents. It was a city, but it was a city vastly surrounded by the country, as it still somewhat is. This class of boys (there were more in it than those just in this photograph) were from the town and the country. None of them were big city kids. Some were ranch kids. I recognize one of them who was.. Some came from families that were doing okay, some from families that were poor.So how do we see them dressed? One is wearing a striped t-shirt. Exactly one. Every other boy here is wearing a button up long sleeved shirt. Of those, all but one are wearing ties.One of the ones wearing a tie is one of my uncles.Did they turn out with ties just for their photographs that day? Probably they did. I suspect so, but even at that, they all actually could come up with ties. And somebody knew hot to tie them. None of these boys appears to be enormously uncomfortable wearing a tie.
NCHS Juniors in 1946, this is therefore the Class of 1947.Here's a few of the boys in the Junior class that year. Here too, this is probably a bit different depiction of high school aged boys than we'd see today. For one thing, a lot of them are in uniform. As already mentioned in the thread on JrROTC, it was mandatory at the school. Based upon the appearances of the boys at the time the photograph was taken, this probably reflects relatively common daily male dress at NC. Most of the boys are in uniform. Of those who are not, most are wearing button up shirts, but no ties. A couple have t-shirts. Nobody's appearance is outlandish in any fashion, and nobody is seeking to make a statement with their appearance.NCHS girls, Class of 1947, as Juniors in 1946.Here are the Junior girls that year. As can be seen, NCHS had a uniform for girls at that time, which appears to have been some sort of wool skirt and a white button up shirt. They appear to have worn their uniform everyday, as opposed to the boys who must not have.Uniforms at schools are a popular thing to debate in some circles, and I'm not intending to do that. Rather, this simply points out the huge evolution in the standards of youth dress over the years. This is s cross section of students from a Western town. The people depicted in it had fathers who were lawyers, doctors, packing house employees, ranchers and refinery workers. They're all dress in a pretty similar fashion, and the dress is relatively plan really. No t-shirts declaring anything, as t-shirts of that type weren't really around. And no effort to really make a personal statement through dress, or even to really stand out by appearance.
I don't know that things had changed enormously by the mid 1950s.
Kids still new how to dress fairly formally, by contemporary standards, and girls are always shown wearing relatively long skirts and blouses. Boy nearly are always wearing button up shirts, not t-shirts. For something more formal boys still appear quite often in jacket and tie, or suit and tie. Consider the school dance here from the 1950s:
Not ties in a quick review, but still pretty cleanly dressed for the boys and very well dressed for the girls.
By the 60s, things were evolving.
And by the 1970s, they had really changed.
And not really for the good.
In the 70s, men still wore coat and tie to the office, but the trend line is pretty obvious.
If anything, youth dress hit rock bottom in the 1970s. It's intersting that office dress has hit rock bottom, right now.
And, like Atticus Finch noted, dress does matter.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .
Cary Grant and Myrna Loy from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.
People think I am exaggerating when I say 50% of people's problems, strife and anger would go away if they just started dressing well, but I'm not. Dressing in a way that makes you feel good about yourself will make you feel better about others and the world too.
This is both a revived thread, and a new one. It's one of many topics that shows up here in one way or another, including in stored drafts that I start off on, and then fail to finish.
This one started: I wrote my first entry here and put it up for posting to be run yesterday.
Then I read this on Twitter:
I had an attorney I had never met show up at my office to take a deposition one day in blue jeans - blue jeans! I was insulted and lost respect for that attorney. How we dress does matter. It is a form of manners.
I agree with that comment in that how we dress, matters.
But it does show the regional nature of things, but still we should consider this carefully.
I've posted on this before, but I used to wear dark black Levi's or Lees to court on occasion, combined with a sports coat and a tie. When I did that, I'd wear cowboy boots as well. Wearing cowboy boots to court is isn't unusual here. I've seen it done a lot.
In retrospect, I haven't seen the jeans, such as I noted, with sports coat and tie all that often, but I have seen it. I very rarely do that anymore, however. Part of the reason I do not, however, is that I don't travel nearly as much as I used to, thanks to COVID 19 and its impact on travel and the law. Travel was routine, COVID came in, and hard behind COVID were Zoom and Teams.
Indeed, I've appeared in a few Teams hearing recently in which the Judge was in the same town as me. Prior to Teams and Zoom, we had a few telephonic hearings we'd do, but if we were in town, we were expected to show up.
Not anymore.
Anyhow, I've seen a lawyer wear blue jeans in court exactly once. That particular lawyer was a working stockman and was appearing in the court in the county in which he lived. Nobody said anything. He was otherwise in jacket and tie. I have seen lawyers in blue jeans in depositions plenty of times, however. Most of the time prior to COVID it was in combination with jacket and tie, but even in the couple of years before COVID this was changing.
I still wear a tie.
I had some lawyers from Texas show up a while back and they were in jeans and new cowboy boots. There's working cowboy boots (all of mine are of that type), "ropers", which aren't cowboy boots, dress boots that locals wear, and then the weird dress boots that locals don't wear, but Texans do.
I don't get that kind.
Anyhow, in order to wear cowboy boots as dress shoes, you have to know how to wear cowboy boots. Some people affect a high water appearance with their dress shoes, and frankly do so on purpose. Men's trousers are supposed to "break" over the shoes. I.e., you aren't supposed to see the socks. But for some odd reason, some Ivy League educated people wear their trousers "high water" so you can always see their socks.
Stockmen, Sheridan Wyoming, 1944. This is an interesting photograph and it must have been taken as something was going on in the town where the photo was taken, Sheridan Wyoming. The clean white shirts are a pretty typical semi formal dress for ranchers. All the hats are good (clean). Only he older rancher with the beat up Montana Peak hat is wearing a suit. The stockman on the left is wearing baggy jeans that drape over his heels, still a very common way to wear them amongst working stockmen. All of the visible heels are "doggin' heels" which are common only amongst working stockmen.
Cowboy boots, properly worn, are never ever worn high water.
Anyhow, it's interesting to note, note that Atticus does, that years ago I went to a Federal Trial in Cheyenne in which I was making a very limited appearance. After the day I had dinner with the defendant, who had been a Supreme Court Justice in Montana (where they are elected). The main lawyer in the matter wore a suit every day, but he wore dress cowboy boots with them. The retired S.Ct justice, when that lawyer got up to do something, turned to me with real anger and noted, as I was wearing a suit with wingtips, that "I'm glad to see somebody dresses like a lawyer around here".
Given that at that time I often wore cowboy boots at work and even at court it was quite ironic.
The last time I wore cowboy boots in a trial was over a decade ago, I'm sure.* It was a relatively long trial and I'd basically cycled through my dress clothes so I wore a sports coat, black Levi's and my cowboy boots. Nobody said anything, but later the plaintiff's lawyer grieved the judge over something in another case and claimed, referring to this one, that he had favored me as he hadn't said anything about it while he had, she claimed, about her shoes. I don't recall anything ever being said about her shoes.
That was the last time. I didn't want to be seen to be inappropriate in any fashion, again.
That does bring up suits, however.
My legal assistant dresses professionally every day. I really should. I do a lot, as there are things I go to constantly in which I appear as a lawyer, and I feel that I should dress as a lawyer is expected to, when I do, which involves at least wearing a button down shirt (usually white) and a tie
I do the same for depositions, but I"m almost the only one anymore. I'll go to a deposition and everyone is dressed down in blue jeans and the like. People actually comment as I'm not dressed in that fashion.
Indeed, I went to the eye doctor's the other day and was dressed for work, which on that occasion was khaki trousers, button down shirt, and a tie. The person who checked me in joked that "I was too fancy to be there".
Times have really changed. I recall a time when you went to the doctor's office and the doctors where wearing ties, or alternatively a smock that buttoned to the neck.
Physicians in the 1940s
Dentist into the 1980s, which I know due to my household, wore a dress shirt and sports coat to work, then a dental smock at work. My father preferred clip on ties, probably has he had to change back and forth.
When I was growing up, I didn't know how to tie a tie.
Probably a lot of kids in my generational cohort didn't. I didn't wear ties growing up. I never went to a school that had uniforms, and the dress code, to the extent there was one, seems to have largely pertained to junior high, where (boys) were not allowed to wear t-shirs advertising beer, and girls were not allowed to wear halter tops. I can recall a boy being sent to the office once for wearing a beer t-shirt, although he'd worn it before, and a girl being sent for wearing a halter top that was quite a bit too less, so to speak.
Junior high and high school here were like the Wild West when I attended and by high school the authorities had simply given up on dress codes, I think. We were largely self policing however, as by that time self appearance standards start to awkwardly kick in. Kid from ranches dressed lake cowboys of the era and they were the real deal. Otherwise we wore typical clothing of the era, which often involved t-shirts, which is odd to look back on now as I'm always cold and I never just wear a t-shirt anymore (I've had people comment on that). Girls had generally become quite self conscious and therefore wore nicer clothes than boys as a rule, although the code, to the extent there was one, had clearly been suspended to the extent that I recall being confronted in a crowded hall by an amply endowed girl I did not know who had chosen to come to school in a very thing t-shirt and no brassier, which would have gotten a person sent home in any other era.** It was shocking enough that I recall it even now, over 40 years later.
Events, I'd note, largely didn't require a tie. I.e., school events. We didn't dress up for nearly anything. More significant social events, however were different, such as weddings or funerals, which is tough if you don't actually own any dress clothes and you've never had to wear them, particularly in the 1970s. The 70s were a black hole for dress clothes with awful suits and loud or pastel colors. I recall my father and I having to go out to get some dress trousers for me for a wedding and ending up with pastel light blue polyester dress pants, a true horror. I hated them then, and I still do.
Anyhow, a self declared position of mine in my late teens was that I was never going to have a job in which I had to wear a tie every day. It was arrogant and naive, but it did express my career goals quite well. I thought at the time I'd work outdoors in one of the sciences.
Be that as it may, soon after high school I attended basic training, and learned how to tie a tie there. The Army still issues ties. I still tie a tie the way I learned at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.
Even as a geology student I started to learn how to dress more formally, and thankfully the horrific polyester era was over. For the most part I dressed every day as geologist in the field do. I wore L. L. Bean chamois shirts in the winter and t-shirts in the summer. By that time, however, I was gravitating strongly back to the rural dress patter, reinforced by basic training, where we the original patter heavy BDU shirt every day, unless it was the surface temperature of the sun, at which point we could go down to t-shirts. Cowboys, you'll note, almost always ear long sleeve shirts and frankly anymore, I do too. Just recently, in fact, somebody asked me "do you ever wear a t-shirt". I truthfully answered, "yes, underneath a long sleeve shirt".
My parents taught me well, but it took some time for me to learn.
In law school our professors dressed professionally every day. Men wore jacket and tie every day, and one professor, our business law professor, wore a suit every day., Oddly, it didn't make an impression on me at the time, but it sunk enough, I guess, that by the time I was getting ready to graduate I knew how to dress like a lawyer. By the summer before I graduated I owned two Brooks Brothers suits, one bought for a wedding, and two Brooks Brothers ties. I still have one of the ties.
I don't have either suit. Suits, I've found cause an odd waist line expansion on me such that all I have to do in order to gain weight is buy a suit. In fairness, at the time I bought the first two I was incredibly, probably dangerously, think. There's a long story behind that, but I'm not naturally really thin. My father and grandfather were stout. Not fat, but stout. My mother was think, and seemingly everyone in her entire family is. I seem to fit in somewhere in between, but having been a bit stout when I was in junior high and the first two years of high school (and then having rocketed to thin), I've always been a bit conscious of it and I do tend to watch my weight. I'm as heavy now as I've ever been, but I'm still not approaching stout.
When I was first practicing law, the rules of dressing were made plain to me on day one. In the winter we wore shirt and tie every day. In the summer, we could wear polo shirts in the office. Court rules had at one time provided that during the summer lawyers could wear short sleeved dress shirts and ties, and dispense with jackets, and the "Summer Rules" were still cited, even though they were no longer published as they had been. I've never owned a short sleeved dress shirt and I've never appeared in court without a jacket. About fifteen years after that a new district court judge imposed new rules, which included no khaki trousers in court.
Still, even before COVID, things were really changing. You'd see lawyers wearing ties in their offices less and less. Levi's began to appear. And COVID just put things in the basement. Lawyers will now appear in Zoom meetings with the Court without jacket and tie (not me). I had one senior Court lawyer hold a meeting in which he didn't have one. It's been odd.
And I dress way down in the office if I don't have to meet anyone.
I presently have two suits, only one of which I really like. I wish I had a double breasted suit like two Brooks Brothers suits I've owned in the past. They seem really hard to get now. The good one I have is a heavy wool suit. I have a grey wool suit that's just too thin. I need to have, really, at least two more suits but I haven't had a long trial since COVID and I keep thinking, at age 61, that I only have a few more years of practice and I don't want to invest in work clothing that will likely outlast me.
The other one now has some very tiny holes, which would likely indicate some moths got to it at some time. It's hard to notice, but there there. It's embarrassing.
So I need to get some new suits, I guess.
And not just that
Ties I've had from the first years of my practice have really lasted, but I'm starting to throw them out as worn. I can't really ignore that any longer. And having waited to long, the bill for suiting back up is going to be monstrous, and at age 62, sort of a bad, if necessary, investment. I'll have to practice until I"m 80, or start wearing ties to Mass or something, to make that pay off.
Footnotes
*I've never had a pair of "dress cowboy boots", like many people do. I've had cowboy boots for a long time, of course, but never a fancy pair. Every pair I've ever owned was a working pair, even if they were reserved for office and town wear at first.
My regular cowboy boots. The ones I wear to work, when I wear cowboy boots to work.
I wear cowboy boots in the office less than I used to for a couple of reasons. One is that I often wear a pair of "ropers" that were bought for my son. They're Ariats and really comfortable, and look Western. The other is that I have arthritis in my right foot from an accident years ago, and my old cowboy boots sometimes get uncomfortable, and sometimes they don't, at the office.
**
"Mr. Bernstein: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl."
Citizen Kane.
I have found this observation from this movie to be really true. The fact that I can recall the incident clearly is something I find curious. That was the one and only time I ever encountered the girl noted, and I'm not pining for her, nor even proud of the recollection, but it's really clear. I stepped around a student and she was right there. She was short and Hispanic and looked up at me, but she was really showing, and probably conscious of it and embarrassed. I was too. It was only a very brief encounter, but for whatever reason, I can still recall it pretty readily, but I don't think about it every month.
Memory is interesting.
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