# Clothes question for guy and gal dopers who were American teens during the 1970s **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 13, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429 "2020-03-13T18:43:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Periwinkle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Periwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Periwinkle)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2020, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/21 "2020-03-13T22:42:05Z")
I graduated from high school in 1976. The striped jeans and plaid pants are items I remember more for girls than boys, but otherwise the pics look ok to me. ---
**Author:** ![Kennedy1960](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ccd318/32.png) [@Kennedy1960](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kennedy1960)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2020, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/22 "2020-03-13T23:42:20Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > What are you considering wilder? > > In the first photo, everything is spot on except for the pants. Would have just been jeans in my neck of the woods. > > In the second photo, the guy on the left is stuck in the 60s. There were some guys like that, but the 70s were more about being casual. He looks too formal, and his 60s haircut is too clean-cut. Definitely possible for the 70s, but not the most common look. I did have a leather jacket that looked a lot like that one, but I usually wore it with jeans. > > In the third photo, the only thing that seems off to me is that it all looks too new. Should have been well-worn. You were supposed to look casual and comfy, not new and stiff. Could have recently bought the outfit though, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility for back then. > > 4th photo is spot on. I had a similar shirt back then. > > 5th photo also spot on. > > 6th photo the guy is wearing blue with brown. The shirt looks off to me too. Nobody I knew wore a shirt like that. The girl’s shirt looks off to me, too. Shouldn’t be so square at the waist, should hang down more and maybe have some frills at the bottom and on the sleeves. > > 7th photo if you were just wearing a plain T-shirt back then you were usually just being casual, and it was usually an old T-shirt. A nice new T-shirt seems a bit off. Again, not completely unrealistic since he could have just bought some new T-shirts, but not the most common look. > > 8th photo the guy in the middle looks out of the 60s. The guy in the right is also definitely out of style. If the guy works for some very conservative company (or the FBI or something) then sure, as those guys were typically still wearing 60s style suits. More fashionable guys were wearing more earth-toned suits. > > Overall, hairstyles are spot on. > > My take on it is that while some of them weren’t the most common looks back then, and everything needs to look a lot more worn and abused, but otherwise nothing is really out of place for the time period. The striped pants in the first pic. I’ve only seen late 1960s era musicians wearing that. Also, for the early-mid 70s I feel like Tony’s hair is too short. It doesn’t even touch his chin…It should be at least shin or just at shoulder length. The weird mid length is…weird to me. And no sideburns…Everyone in the 70s had some length of sideburns. ---
**Author:** ![Kennedy1960](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ccd318/32.png) [@Kennedy1960](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kennedy1960)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2020, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/23 "2020-03-13T23:44:35Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > In fall of '69 one of my friends returned to the dorm with his denim jacket in a plastic dry-cleaning bag. Word quickly got around and he was an object of derision. (Good-natured derision.) “Ha-ha, you dry-cleaned your JEAN JACKET? You ironed it?” “It was my mom–my mom did it…I couldn’t stop her…” > > Because at that place, in that time (Oklahoma) the idea was that your jean jacket looked as beat-up and worn as possible. Like you had it since forever and you’d never washed it. Also you didn’t want your bell-bottom jeans to look too blue. Holes were okay, so were patches. If you got a new pair you might hang them out in the sun for a week or two to get them a little seasoned. (But you did not purposely make holes in them. The holes had to be organic or you looked like a plastic phony.) > > There were still preppy-looking people on campus, but mostly not. If anyone wore a polo shirt–and I don’t remember–it would have been these preppy people and it would not have been worn with a jean jacket. All the jeans and jean jackets my dad wore in the 70s looked like he’d been wearing them for YEARS when they were probably just worn for months. And a big thing for guys in his neck of the woods (NY) seems to have been overalls for a brief time in the early-mid 70s. My dad had sideburns that were either at the end of his ear, or went all the way to his jawline under his hair (which was usually chin to shoulder length or just beyond shoulders). He had a mustache as well. One thing I never saw in any old 70s pix was REALLY long hair - like, say, chest length hair on a guy like in the 80s/90s. ---
**Author:** ![Kennedy1960](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ccd318/32.png) [@Kennedy1960](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kennedy1960)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2020, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/24 "2020-03-13T23:45:36Z")
> [@seal\_cleaner](#): > > I was a teenager in the 70’s in the same neighborhood as the Sopranos was based in. I don’t remember guys dressing like that. What did guys in 70s era Newark era? ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2020, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/25 "2020-03-14T00:10:23Z")
Yes, but more limp. Also, tee shirts. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2020, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/26 "2020-03-14T06:55:37Z")
The pants in the photos are simply wrong. People wore bell bottomed jeans as a default. Denim jackets were definitely a thing. Padded ones with either fake or real sheepskin. Prolly the fake was more common. Everyone I knew had at least a Levi’s denim jacket in their closet. It was required in the 70’s Maybe on the east coast polo shirts were a thing, or possibly LA. But that was totally yuppie shit and probably only picked up in the late 70’s. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2020, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429/27 "2020-03-14T08:41:46Z")
I was in elementary school in the mid 1970s and I wore button-down shirts with very pointy collars with matching cords. My favorites was a powder blue paisley with powder blue cords. Dresses also had pointy collars. When I got a bit older I got hand-me-down jeans from the neighbor - bell bottom jeans that just about hid my feet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clothes-question-for-guy-and-gal-dopers-who-were-american-teens-during-the-1970s/849429.md?page=1)