I just watched it through again; and I think there are a number of people in that video who would meet modern definitions of “overweight”. The clothes are cut to hide details of body shape rather than to show them off, and most of the women are corseted, producing the appearance of a relatively narrow waist, so it doesn’t show up as much.
ETA: note the pedestrians routinely all over the middle of the streets. Car traffic hadn’t yet driven foot traffic into restricted areas.
I was in Catholic high school 1967 - 1971. We wore uniforms. The girls wore the school jumper with a blue cardigan. The boys wore grey flannel slacks, a solid colored shirt with a necktie and the blue cardigan.
Once a month or so, one could pay fifty cents to the mission fund and get a pass for “Casual Day.” One casual day, I wore a tie dyed tee shirt, cut off jeans and sandals. Sister Mary Corona sent me home saying that the idea behind casual day was to wear your nicest clothes.
I told her that our definitions of “casual” were different. I ended up in more trouble when I came back wearing the uniform and stopped at her office to ask for my fifty cents back…
I came here to say what GreenWyvern said.
That must be the ferry to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. “Gimme five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we…
I went to a college prep high school that had a dress code for the guys of blazer, dress shirt and tie, no “uniform” per se, you could wear any B/DS/T, but you WERE FORCED to wear that crap, and punished with detention if you broke “dress code”
coincidentally, that’s where my deep-seated loathing of “dress clothes/businesswear” came from
once I graduated from high school, I also took all my hangmans nooses, err, ties, and bagged them up, went down to the outdoor fireplace with a can of lighter fluid and a lighter, saturated the accursed nooses, and set them ablaze!
DIE, you horrible strangulation devices, DIE!!!
The streets should be for people, not cars.
I’m thankful for the yoga pants, daily showers, and indoor plumbing.
I believe the important thing was that you were wearing an onion on your belt, as was the style at the time.
Can you get white onions yet?
Times change. I remember as a child, taking a train trip across Canada with my parents. This would have been the early 1960s.
In our compartment, anything went; but if we were venturing outside it, to the dining car, for example, then my Dad was in a suit and tie, Mom was in a suitable dress (or top-and-skirt combo), and I was in a blazer, tie, and short pants with kneesocks and Oxford shoes. Why? Because every other man, woman, and child on the train was dressed the same. That was normal for 1964.
A few years later, in 1967, our family went from Toronto to Montreal on the train. For me, it was again a sport coat, tie, long pants this time, and Oxford shoes. Dad was in a suit and tie, Mom wore a pretty dress and heels. That was normal for 1967.
But like I said, times change. I took another cross-Canada train trip in 2003. I did not bring along any jackets, ties, or dress pants or shoes. Neither did anybody else. We still got great food and service in the dining car and in the bar car. Like I said, times changed, and they changed a lot, dress-wise, in forty years.
“Devolve” is a pretty good description of where we are now. In the last 10-15 years, large portions of society have blown right through “casual and comfortable” into “sloppy.”
I’m not old, but I can remember a time when wearing jeans with rips or holes meant that you were extremely poor – so poor that you couldn’t even afford second-hand clothes.
you know what rebellion is, right? ripped jeans were in style for a bit precisely because of your attitude.
it’s funny watching Boomers complain about this stuff. Your parents were horrified that you wore frilly clothes and had long hair instead of keeping it in a manly high-and-tight, regular cut, or pompadour.
An interesting theory, but what we’d now consider formal wear was standard practice long after WWI and the Depression.
I remember seeing an old home movie showing my parents on a driving tour of parts of the South down to New Orleans (a real expedition in the days before Interstate highways). In spite of long warm days in the car, my father wore a coat and tie while my mother was attired in formal-looking dresses. No jeans or short sleeves.
Times have changed. We’re a lot more informal/casual/sloppy in our dress, and I’m as ‘‘guilty’’ as most. I’ve long been basically living in jeans when off work.
(bolding mine)
You aren’t just whistling “Dixie.” 
We used to drive from Baltimore to Northern Alabama to visit my mother’s kin. As recently as 1969, it took 22 hours to make the trip; Tennessee was the worst.
Now it takes my folks roughly 12 hours with pit stops.
In the early 1950’s my father was an auto mechanic, he came home from work everyday showered and put on a suit and tie. The men in the neighborhood would congregate in the front yards and talk for a while and then he would come in and strip down to his boxer shorts for the rest of the evening. By the middle 1950’s he no longer did that. He was born in 1916 and all of his photos show him in a suit and tie.
The past truly is a different world. Or take your choice of different pasts and worlds, still normal in places. But for most, it was worse then than now. I wonder how informal dress correlates with improved plumbing and sanitation.
You cad and/or bounder! After I adjust my monocle, I will give you the thrashing with my walking stick you have earned!
To be clear, it is the thrashing, not the walking stick, you have earned. The obtuse construction was the result of my having to adjust my spats while composing
Why the neat clothing?
and
3) Cellphones.
No seriously, listen to me.
Why do you feel safe to go out today wearing clothing that is disrespectful to those around you? Why do they not just kick the shit out of you?
Because you have an instant means to summon help, including police help.
The ease and speed of access to outside help has made our culture immensely safer, so there is much less incentive to conform with the public image, because you don’t have to conform to survive any more.
Myth about the past #876
Gee, I wondered why that guy in the formal suit didn’t kick the shit out of me yesterday for walking along the street wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Now I know. It was because I had a cellphone!
