Over the years, I have watched a lot of old TV shows from the late 50s and early 60s, such as Leave it to Beaver, Mr. Ed, Hazel, Father Knows Best, etc. In many of those, men at home are dressed in suits and ties, including jackets. On Mr. Ed, Wilbur is often wearing a tie and jacket, even though he works at home, in a barn, no less. And it’s been a common joke that June Cleaver cooked and cleaned in a dress wearing pearls.
My question is did people really dress like that in their own homes back then? I used to wear a tie for work, and sometimes even a suit or sport coat. But I can tell you the very first thing I did when I got home was change into comfortable clothes. Many times, I’d even take off my tie when I started my commute home.
I can understand that t-shirts, jeans and sweats were unknown 50 years ago, and the button-down shirt without a tie makes sense. But wearing a tie and jacket in your own home in the evenings and weekends? Did that really happen?
In the 60s, my dad wore a suit to work every day, and NEVER took off his jacket while at work. But as soon as he got home he would take off the jacket and tie before dinner.
His “work” clothes for around the house were his old suits, dress shirts, and even wingtips. He had casual clothes, for golf, or vacations or such. Tho many of them were button up “sport shirts”. Others were just long or short sleeved knit shirts. But I think all of his pants were essentially wool “suit” pants. I can remember when he bought his first pair of jeans - had to be well into the 70s.
I NEVER remember him wearing a tie just around the house, and never saw any of my friends’ dads do that either.
My mom almost always wore dresses, but they were usually loose fitting shifts or housedresses - certainly not June Cleaver with the fitted waist and pearls.
My grandmothers were from an earlier generation but I never, never saw either one of them wear pants. My mother would often wear a shift or house dress, but she did a lot of gadening, so if she worked outside, the unfirom of the day was pants.
My father would take off his jacket and tie when he got home, and just like** Dinsdale**, his around the house clothes were pretty much his old, worn out suits.
But, whenever either of them went out in public, even when the public was the neighbors coming over for a backyard cookout, they’d dress up.
My father didn’t. He would come home at 530, change out of his suit, white shirt and tie to an old, frayed white shirt. I don’t remember any friend’s fathers wearing suit and ties at home.
I have read that baseball pitcher Hal Newhouser (1921-1998) would always wear a suit and tie at dinner at home. I believe that is in Joel Sherman's book on the 1996 Yankees "Birth of a Dynasty" although I can't find the book. Newhouser's wife says she never saw him with an untucked shirttail.
The story is Mary Tyler Moore had to push to be able to wear pants at home for “Dick van Dyke Show” like she did in real life.
When my dad wore suits to work, well into the 1980s, he wouldn’t change at all when he got home until it was time for him to cook dinner. Even then, what he changed into would simply be older clothing: put the jacket back on, and he was back to being in a suit. If dinner was already cooked, he removed the jacket when he sat down to eat but didn’t change otherwise.
In 1984 his company was sold to the Japanese company that had been their main client. The Japanese decreed that suit jackets were inappropriate for office workers as they “formed a mental barrier” between them and the people in blue overalls (uhm…). After some adjustment, all this meant was that Dad wore slacks, white shirts and V-neck knits instead of suits and white shirts.
I understand he owned one pair of jeans in his whole life, and it was before I was born.
Fun Fact: The reason Barbara Billingsley always wore pearls as June Cleaver was that she was very thin, and the studio lights cast a deep shadow around the recess where her throat met her chest. In the words of Jerry Mathers (“The Beav”), it looked as though she had had a tracheotomy. The necklace was there to prevent the shadow.
My father, exactly. I also never saw him in shorts or T-shirt.
Like many men of his generation, he loved to work on his car. His bow to that was to wear kikis for minor automotive stuff, washing, waxing, etc. To do major jobs he had a pair of coveralls hanging in the garage and rolled up and in the trunk of the car. On several occasions he would still have a white shirt, slacks, tie on under the coveralls.
My father would often remove his tie when he got home, however, if we were expecting guests, the tie stayed on.
Mother always wore dresses unless she was going bowling with my father. Then she wore a skirt and bowling shirt. My father also wore a bowling team shirt but always looked uncomfortable in it.
I’m sure some of the variance has to do with location. I grew up in a rural area, and my dad was a skilled worker in a factory, and he didn’t wear a suit, or even a tie, to work. Most of my friends’ parents were blue collar workers, tradesmen, business owners, etc. Relatively few wore a tie to work, and if they did, they all changed into casual clothing to tinker around the house. If anyone dressed up with a tie or a jacket (with or without a tie), that meant they were going somewhere that required dressing up.
Very interesting. I can’t stand to wear a suit jacket or sport coat. Drives me nuts, as I don’t like how it feels, and I tend to overheat and feel miserable. I would HATE to wear one during the workday.
I think the mid-60s saw a real shift in the way people dressed both at work and at home in the US. My father was a college professor. He had to wear a tie every day in his first years on the job (early 1960s), and he hated it. (This was before my time. I think I saw him wear a tie three times in my life.) Some time around the mid-60s, ties were no longer deemed mandatory, and he happily dispensed with them. His casual clothes were essentially the same as his work clothes: sports shirts, slacks, loafers.
We lived in other countries as well when I was growing up, and I don’t recall him making any adjustments to the local dress habits. He always wore what he always wore. It was rather endearing.
Jeans and T-shirts were definitely available in the 1950s and 1960s (and before). As far as I can determine, they were more limited in who wore them and when, but they have been around for a long time.
That’s what I came in to say. Specifically capris. I don’t know if she got it in her contract or not, but I remember hearing her say that after a few seasons she got it so that she could wear them in at least one scene per episode because she thought it was silly to wear a dress when she was at home.
Now, it may be that people wore nice clothes all the time (on TV) because it made them look nice and you’ll watch the show that have nice looking people instead of the show that have casual looking people…at least that was probably the theory. Or some combination of that and ‘you’re on TV, you have to look nice’.
Just the other day my daughter asked why everyone’s hair on the show she was watching was perfect. I explained to her that it looks so good because every single actor (even the boys) probably spent a half an hour having their hair done. She suggested that it would make more sense if it actually looked like they did it their self, but told her if every 10 year old (she’s 10) on TV had hair that was ratty and had a pony tail that was half falling out…you might switch to the show that had kids that looked nice…all else being equal.
Don’t forget, even if people don’t still dress nice, we still hire the best looking actors because people will watch that show rather than the show with a bunch of people that look like average people that you go to school with. Again, all else being equal.
ETA, IIRC Rob often times had on a sweater or cardigan when he was at home. Not exactly sweat pants, but at least he wasn’t wearing a suit jacket.
In the 1990s HBO had a series of films known as “When it was a Game”. It consisted of films taken by players and clubs of baseball games in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. One thing they commented on was how many fans were dressed in suit and ties. I know for a while games would start at 300PM to get “professionals” to leave work early to catch a game. But it also reflected society’s feelings that if you went out, you put on “good clothes”.
Yeah, I realize that. I was going to correct my original post, but it timed out. Jeans were worn by cowboys and ranchers, but not many other people, correct? And T-shirts were worn by bad boys who rode motorcycles or drove hot rods, right? I’m being a bit facetious, but probably not by much.
My grandpa was a suburban dad in the 50s and 60s. He was a blue collar worker - he delivered bread. I have a lot of photos of him (I did a big project when he passed) and when he wasn’t in his bread delivery uniform (shirt w/patch, tie, slacks) he was wearing slacks and a white tee, polo, plaid flannel or long sleeve collared shirt.
There’s plenty of pics of him in a suit and/or tie but they are all posed pics like on his way to a doing of some sort.
I would venture to guess my grandpa never owned a pair of jeans. But plenty of gas station pants.
My grandmother wore a dress or skirt and blouse, with nylons,(never bare legs) for most of her life both at home and when she went out. She was 90 something when she discovered the comfort and warmth of sweat pants, but those were only for at home wear, not for going out or guests.
I’m no expert, but I think jeans were pretty popular as casual attire for young people of both sexes in the 1950s and before. College students of that era definitely wore jeans. Nabokov describes Lolita wearing jeans as a 12-year-old in 1947 (the first reference that popped into my head).
My grandfather was a chicken farmer. Pictures of him playing cards with his brothers and brothers-in-law, at home in the '50s and '60s, show him wearing button-down camp shirts, sort of. Collared, but short sleeved. No tie.
My grandfather was a roofer, but around the house he wore dress slacks and sport shirts/short-sleeved dress shirts with a cardigan if he was chilly. As far as I know, he never owned a pair of jeans; closest he had was corduroys. He passed away in the 90s.
Myself, I’m much the same. I wear slacks and casual shirts around the house with leather oxfords (and yeah, I’ll sometimes wear a tie just for the heck of it). My only jeans are motorcycle jeans (Kevlar reinforced with pockets for armor), though I grew up wearing Levis constantly, like everyone. I do have two pairs of shorts, though, which my grandfather never wore. This bypasses all the fitness gear his generation saw little use for.
My mom didn’t wear pants until after I’d moved out. I remember her on her hands and knees in a dress scrubbing the kitchen floor. She’d reach thru her legs and draw the back of the skirt thru and tuck it into the belt in front. She would wear shorts if we were going swimming or if she was futzing in her garden in warm weather. Otherwise, it was always dresses or skirts.
She didn’t allow me to own blue jeans at all. I was in my 20s before I owned a pair!
My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, was partial to pants once she figured out how comfortable they were. But I don’t think my dad’s mom ever donned pants of any description.
Dad always wore a suit and tie to work, but I’m pretty sure the coat and tie disappeared as soon as he got home. He had grubby clothes for working around the house, and he liked to lounge around in PJs and a robe in the evening. But I don’t recall him wearing a tie just to hang around at home.
Heck, if you look at photos of the earliest science fiction fan gatherings, all the men (and they were almost all men except for Judith Merrill) wore jackets and ties (photo is of the Futurians from 1938).
The people in the group were in their teens; it was expected that they wear suits to school. Indeed, the purchase of a boy’s first suit was a major rite of passage, especially among city dwellers.
Men wore suits and women wore dresses routinely when going out of the house.
This was reflected in early TV.
Also, there’s the glamour effect. People on TV were supposed to be glamorous, so they dressed them the way they are. “Realism” didn’t enter the equation. It still exists today in soap operas, where everyone wears expensive clothes and fashions.
