Hipster You Want? Hipster I’ll Give You!

14 Comments

1. Jim Tubman says:

   May 11, 2012 at 8:50 PM

   I’ll see your striped pants and raise you a powder-blue suit.

   Reply
   1. Jeff Duntemann says:

      May 11, 2012 at 9:58 PM

      I’ll meet that–at least when I find the picture. I wore a powder-blue tuxedo to my high school prom. (The other prom picture I’ve shown here, with me in electric blue, double-breasted weirdness, was Carol’s prom.)

      Reply
2. Michael Brian Bentley says:

   May 11, 2012 at 11:19 PM

   Any Siskel and Ebert show from that time. They dressed to the 9s for that show. I’m not sure any flat-panel display can do them justice.

   Reply
3. Eric Brombaugh says:

   May 11, 2012 at 11:59 PM

   Oh – I remember having pants like that back in the early 70’s. I was a tween at the time though so the memory is fading fast.

   Reply
4. Keith Rowland says:

   May 12, 2012 at 1:28 AM

   Ahhh! Carol hasn’t changed a bit! You on the other hand……

   Reply
5. Tom Dison says:

   May 12, 2012 at 10:26 AM

   I was the first one to wear “bells” in my school, and they were striped – plus I had a turtle-neck shirt. I also wore platform shoes when they came out – what was I thinking?!! Now jeans are just fine. It must be a phase we all go through – the peacock phase.

   Reply
   1. Jeff Duntemann says:

      May 12, 2012 at 12:52 PM

      Gaudy clothes were discouraged at our high school, which was all-male at the time (1966-1970) and had some of the toughest rules in the entire Chicago school system. You could get (and many got) detention for not wearing a belt. I hate to think what Lane Tech would have thought of that outfit. The photo was taken in May or June 1971, and I was already a year out of high school. I do remember that I had purple bell-bottoms by 1968, and considered them “everyday pants.” So although we may consider those megastriped pants ungodly forty years later, back then I’d say they were only a little bit to one side of the envelope.

      Then, of course, there’s the overall color scheme. My sister stopped me more than once for attempting to go out the front door looking like a completely clueless nerd attempting to “fit in.” That I got out this time makes me wonder what I was wearing all those other times.

      Reply
      1. Ernie Marek says:

         May 16, 2012 at 4:59 PM

         They did something even worse than assign detention for those who forgot their belts.
         The punishment was to be required to wear a rope in place of the forgotten belt. That would not serve as much of a deterrent now – or probably even since about 1980 or so. Instead you would probably receive detention for wearing a rope.

         Reply
6. Alan Popiel says:

   May 12, 2012 at 1:11 PM

   Well, there were bell bottoms and there were BELL BOTTOMS. in the late 1960s, I had a pair of houndstooth check flairs that were pretty mild, and a pair of blue-on-blue pinstripe bells that were a bit bigger. I never really had to huge stuff.

   On the other hand, I bought a couple of Nehru jackets that I never really had the courage to wear in public.

   Reply
   1. Jeff Duntemann says:

      May 12, 2012 at 4:04 PM

      As Lileks reminded me some time back, on the bell bottoms front girls had it way worse than we did. See:

      http://www.lileks.com/institute/sears1973/9.html

      Reply
7. Jim Strickland says:

   May 12, 2012 at 3:51 PM

   Heh. Style for nerds is always iffy. Fortunately I was a decade and a half behind you, so jeans and a t-shirt /did/ fit in. The downfill in warm weather? Not so much.

   -JRS

   Reply
8. Bob Fegert says:

   May 12, 2012 at 4:54 PM

   OMG!? Those pants…lol
   You look like a big barcode 🙂

   Reply
9. Jim Tubman says:

   May 12, 2012 at 6:38 PM

   Jim Strickland, what is this “style for nerds” of which you speak?

   Reply
10. David Stafford says:

    May 15, 2012 at 9:20 AM

    Can’t resist tossing out a hipster joke:

    Q: Why did the hipster burn his mouth on the pizza?

    A: He ate it before it was cool.

    Reply