Fun experiment: Do the people you see fit fashion-wise in 1977?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have been playing this at the mall and other places where there are a bunch of people. Look at someone and imagine whether he or she would be noticed for his or her ostensibly modern 2015 fashion in the year 1977. Fashion includes all clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, glasses, anything visual about the person.

Oddly, most people fit.

Here’s why, I think. 1977 was eclectic in terms of fashion. 2015 is pretty neutral, as fashion has been since the early 90s. Most 2015 looks are pretty viable in 1977. If anything, they will seem a little boring in some cases, nicely advanced in others. For example, the rimless, high refraction index thin-lens glasses of today would not really seem weird in 1977, but you might get compliments on how nice they look.

So why 1977? I think that’s where the question starts to get interesting. If you took the fashions of 2015 and stuck them in just about any year thereafter, you would have very little chance of getting noticed.

By the way, the thought experiment works best if you were actually alive in 1977. I was 6 but I do remember it. Polyester was a thing.

So where would you definitely get called out? That’s tricky. Let’s see… Our look today is neutral and subtly eclectic but casual. So any era in which people were not dressed casually on a daily basis. I think that puts us in the 1960s sometime. The thing is, the 60s were not all that eclectic. Yes, you had hippies, but they had their own look. If you walked around in 2015 clothes, you would likely be noticed, although it would depend on your particular outfit.

The thought experiment relies on a particular truth: people typically try to see their environment as normal. So, for example, you went back to 1977 with those hideous women’s jeans they have today with the big fugly snap pockets on them. Awful. But those could be, and probably would be, seen as some type of “new fashion jeans” by anyone who saw them and would not draw much notice. If, however, you went back to 1948 in them, well, women didn’t wear jeans. Those were working men’s clothes. But sometime in the 70s, women wearing jeans wasn’t odd, and they wouldn’t be noticed.

That’s my thought. What’s yours?

2

And no, cell phones, phablets, tablets, Tesla Roadsters, etc., do not count as part of the look.

3

In 1977, bell bottoms ruled. Most teens here in the US wouldn’t be caught dead wearing straight-legged jeans, other than for a retro 50’s dance, unless they were cutting-edge punks or a nerd who didn’t know any better. Also, most males under age 30 wore their hair long enough to at least cover their ears.

4

A 2015 schoolkid might be called out as a nerd in 1977 for two-strapping his backpack.

5

I got married in 1977. Looking back at my wedding photos, I don’t think anyone would have looked particularly odd if transported to a wedding in 2015.

6

I think I remember wearing my pants much higher in the late seventies, at my natural waist. Now they are cut about two or three inches lower.

I also think my nice blouses had shoulder pads, but maybe I’m thinking of the eighties. Otherwise, my shoes, shirts, sweaters, jackets, could all work in 1977.

7

I wasn’t an adult at that time buy my impression is if you’ve got tattoos in 1977, what are you? A jailbird or some sort of creep? If you’re a rebellious youth getting a tattoo about the only place you get it is on the upper arm.
A girl with a tattoo? Forget about it.

And then there are piercings. That’s for girls and only the ears lobes.
The rebellious boy may get one ear pierced. Doing both would be girlish.

8

I think you zeroed in on things that would get you noticed in 1977. Tattoos were rare and piercings nonexistent except for women’s pierced ears, of course.

I think that either would get you noticed.

9

Most people today would not fit in 1977 because they are too fat.

In 1977 you rarely saw overweight people and at 5’3" and 110 pounds I was told constantly (by family, friends, and the occasional total stranger) that I needed to lose weight and I would be so pretty if I would lose 10 pounds.

Unless you were very thin, you would not be wearing shirts that showed your belly, nobody wanted to see your fat rolls. Tight jeans were in (so tight we used to laugh that we could never be raped because nobody could pull them off of us) and nobody wanted to see your muffin top. Layers wouldn’t work as they add inches.
The only guys with short hair were the ones that were in and out of court because their lawyers would tell them to get a hair cut. A shaved head would certainly cause stares. Men who shaved their arms and chests??? Dyeing your hair bright red or blue???
Would not have fit in so well.

10

The hair would be a dead giveaway - male haircuts are either much shorter than they were in 1977, or much longer. I mean, when was the last time you saw someone with thishaircut?

11

So which was it, skinny jeans or bell bottoms?

Also, a lot of what Sahirnee is saying seems to hold for today–at least in terms of the skinny jeans and weight obsession. (Thigh gap craze, anyone?) Although I don’t think we’re at the point of “I can’t wear layers, I’ll look fat.”

Though who’s shaving their chests/arms (how would you even notice, anyway) or dyeing hair bright red or shaving their heads? I’m sure a few people are, but then there were eccentrics back then, too.

12

Odd colored “kicks” would get you noticed, as would the ballet-flat style women’s dress shoes. Narrow collars, ditto. Shirts have changed a lot in 38 years. Standard dress shirts are much more conservative now. Flannel shirts weren’t popular then unless you were a hunter or worked outdoors.

There were a lot of strange jean styles in the late 70s: I doubt that anything in that line, except the extremely skinny jeans, would stand out. Skirts were seldom worn, at least where I attended college. If you saw someone in a skirt then, you’d think she was a Mormon or JW, unless she was over 60.

I don’t remember anyone wearing baseball caps then, but women would wear a bandana on a bad hair day. Otherwise, coat and jacket styles now are the same as then, except for the old Windbreakers.

13

1977 was the year of Saturday Night Fever and Annie Hall. If you followed fashion at all, your shirt collars were bigger and spread wider. Your pants were slim at the hips and wide at the bottoms. Suit lapels were wide. Ties were very wide. You wore platform shoes. Polyester was big. Women either dressed like they were going to Studio 54 or buttoned down, vested up and hatted over like Annie Hall.

It was also the year that Punk Rock broke out big and while you didn’t see punk rockers as much as the coke fueled disco craze they were certainly out there in their skinny ripped jeans and heroin chic.

Those who did not subscribe to fashion trends probably dressed like Mary, Lou, Rhoda and Ted. And probably still do.

14

I don’t agree. I look at my pics from the 70s and my hair was not absurdly long. Mostly the lines would be different, which are changing all the time. Yes, a man’s haircut today might get a second look but I don’t think it would be called out like a tattoo, since there were guys with shorter hair even in the midst of the longer hair trend. As for women’s hair, I think virtually nothing would be noticed. Sure, green hair would get noticed, but the punk scene surely existed in 1977, and it would be categorized as punk quite readily.

15

But Disco (the dance craze with the distinctive fashion, not necessarily the music on the radio) was in a slump when SNF came out. The movie brought it back bigger than ever. But that movie came out on December 14, 1977. I also think the Disco look had a strong regional basis; plus, you had to go to clubs that featured that. In Indianapolis, I don’t recall ever seeing someone look like John Travolta at the time. I was a kid, however.

True on the whole, but not everyone liked bell bottoms. My mom didn’t and never wore them or bought them for us. A lot of people wore pretty damn uncool polyester straight-leg pants too.

Check out the JC Penny 1977 Christmas catalog here. Most of the pants are not actual bells but more somewhat flared wide leg (there are some bell-like pants for women). I associate bells more with 73-76:

http://www.wishbookweb.com/

One thing looking at this catalog reminded me of (and taught me, to the degree I didn’t remember in the first place–I was a kid, after all) is that fashion was changing very rapidly in the 70s. I saw this one Tom Snyder interview on YouTube in which he interviews someone in a leisure suit cuts back to the “present” (still in the 70s), and makes fun of himself for having worn a leisure suit a couple years earlier. It’s hard to imagine anything like that happen fashionwise these days, as nothing much changes. Also, fashion got a lot sleeker in 78-79. The 77 and 79 catalogs are vastly different, especially for women.

Oh yeah.

Those were never normal fashion for anyone except a certain style of women’s shoe that was still not worn by most people.

This is true! Although most 2015 would fit into 1977 (IMHO), a lot of 1977 would not fit into 2015. You’d see women in god-awful “separates” with polyester pants and the exact same shade of shirt or vest or something. Men wore these terrible polyester plaid pants and whatnot. There is still a LOT of polyester in the 1977 catalog in quite offensive colors (oh, the powder-blues of that time, ACK).

I think that would be stylish people, certainly not most.

And that would be most! People who threw on a T-shirt and jeans would not look all that different than people today. Photos of summer scenes tend to show crowds of people who look pretty familiar.

But a lot of “normal” adult wear was just awful.

16

Skinny jeans like these are extremely popular, as are leggings worn with normal length tops. Both of those would be very weird in 1977. Nose/lip/upper ear piercings, one strand of hair dyed a bright color, and giant neon skateboard sneakers would all be out of place, too. Also, anti-fashion/normcore - dressing in conspicuously out-of-style, messy things - would be seen as odd. Lots of people wear “vintage” clothing, a trend I don’t think existed in '77 (although, if the vintage in question is from the 70s, they’d fit in fine). Lastly, almost everyone nowadays wears Buddy Holly glasses. People would think you looked like a reporter from the 1950s.

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Hey, are those crop tops? So much for no one wanting to bare their muffin tops.

18

The preponderance of adult males in nerdy t-shirts, shaggy hair, and beards, is not unlike 1977. Jeans are a bit more fitted, though.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of women in sundresses of a 50s kind of style, which I am surprised and delighted by.

19

Flipping the thread’s premise around, I imagine a 1977 transplant to 2015 would be amazed that we finally elected a short-haired president.

20

It would be cool to go back in time to see how people then would react to that outfit. It might draw compliments for being some type of new fashion. But if you took that same outfit back to 1937, it would just seem impossible. People would have a very difficult time just processing what it was about. That chick is smokin’, by the way…

Tattoos and piercings are the best example I’ve seen so far of something that people in 1977 would have a hard time processing (unless the person were an obvious “punk”). Chicks wearing “nice” clothes but having a sleeve of ink and a tongue stud would indeed by hard for people to process.

I don’t get the Buddy Holly glasses thing myself. I think they were ugly then but the technology of eyewear was pretty poor. Why trade in nice, light frames for big clunkers?!