Fashion and the Sixties

My actual favorite part of HS and Junior HS was clothes and hair.  Not my clothes and not my hair but everyone else's.  Girls in particular were hotter than hot.  Beehive hairdo's, white boots, over use of mascara and eye shadow.  Guys got to wear skinny pants and skinny ties and sharp shoes.  My erotic ideals were all formed in the mid-sixties.  In fact when the punk era reigned supreme I was happy as a pig in shit.  All the women looked like really fierce versions of my high school crushes.  It was like heaven because this time I could do something about it.

Of course in 1965 I could do nothing about it.  It was the first year my mother let me choose my own clothing.  We drove to Pitman and went to Jack Lang's the premier men's and boy's clothing outlet in our little corner of the world.  This made our little corner of the world very small.  We could have driven to Philadelphia and I could have gone to Brook's Brothers or Wanamakers but we didn't.  We went to Pitman.  I picked out my spring school clothes.  An chartreuse Izod LaCoste polo shirt and a pair of vaguely lime green, glen plaid pants.  Also a zip up spring jacket.

We drove from there to Ernie's Shoe Post in Mantua.  At Ernie's I picked out a pair of desert boots.  Plus a pair of PF Flyers.

I was ready to go.  I was going to be one snappy dresser.  What a dope I was.  I would make these mistakes with clothing dozens of times over the years but this stands out as one of my worst.  I walked through the school like a green lollipop.  At least my desert boots were cool.  But I turned no heads.  Instead I retreated further into the world of books and history and all the attendant bullshit of my tiny world.

Next up...Ocean City.