What did you wear then, that you would not be seen dead in today?


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There was a Boutique on StJames St, where in 1971, I bought a Bright Ble and Red Lurex (I think)

sleeveless tank top, with dancing ladies all round.

What on earth was I thinking, apart from the fact that it would go with my platform shoes. !laughing!

Now heres the sad part, I've still got it.

Photo if I find it? :tongue:

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Mick, how you made me laugh with your lurex top. I thought for a minute it was a female posting! I suppose I dressed pretty conservatively in the 70's being married and having my kids in that decade, but I did wear some weird colors if I remember rightly. Long dresses were in. and empire lines in dresses and coats. My husband was the manager for the British canoe team, and they all were issued with some weird and wonderful track suits. Always red, white and blue, but huge white plastic zips everywhere, and you could unzip the bottom bit of the bottoms and a flare came out in a different color. Fab!

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used to shop at "Jeffs"...there was also a "Jeffs junior".....wouldnt wear me old Prince of wales cheque trousers with crombie,,,,tank tops Nooooooo!....i can also remember a lad at our school making a pair of trousers with a waist band that came up to his armpits double set of buttons 100 in total....would have hated to get them off in "caught out emergency"..lol

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Dave, an old mate of mine and I used to have a loud shirt contest, this was the eventual winner, cirrca 1990

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  • 2 months later...
used to shop at "Jeffs"...there was also a "Jeffs junior".....wouldnt wear me old Prince of wales cheque trousers with crombie,,,,tank tops Nooooooo!....i can also remember a lad at our school making a pair of trousers with a waist band that came up to his armpits double set of buttons 100 in total....would have hated to get them off in "caught out emergency"..lol

I recall they had a branch on Alfreton Road and also along Hockley somewhere. I think they might have had another one but can't remember where.

As to clothes I wore then but wouldn't be seen dead in today:-

I saw an article somewhere that said that in the 70's and 80's, men wore clothes which, these days, would be more suited to teenage girls. I can relate to that.

In the 70's it was flared jeans - I had Levi's and Wranglers that were skin tight from the waist down to the top of the thighs, and flared out, some to 25" and some to 28" hems. We moved in 1985, by which time jeans looked as if they were painted on, and my wife found the flares. Apart from those that still fitted and were cut down for shorts, they all went in the dustbin. Had I kept them, I reckon I could have sold them for good money.

I wouldn't be seen dead in any of the stuff from the 70's or 80's now, even if I had kept them. In any event, I have put on some weight and would need a shoehorn to get those flares on. (My recollection is that the 80's, my jeans looked as if they needed a shoehorn to get them on even then, but that is another story.)

Flared trousers with three inch wide waist bands and two or three buttons.

Also, C&A's did coloured and patterned shirts for about 80p or 90p each. I remember dark green and brown, a brown and cream one with leaves on it, and one with newspaper cuttings.

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Re flared jeans, nearly was seen dead in such, used to wear m/c boots under flares and did not feel right hand one of the latter had gone over folding kickstart, not till I pulled up at first set of lights and toppled over!!!!! as per photo honda4.jpg

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Ashley, I can actually remember you wearing a mod parka despite riding a big Beezer or whatever it was!

Sorry, that was in the 60's! Anyway, I had a cream coloured short jacket, (similar to a jean jacket) with a sodding great "tulip" collar, and matching flares, or were they loons? Anyway, today only someone that was really camp would wear such stuff!

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Ashley, you don't need me to tell you how much that 750-4 would be worth today.... lovely!

Sorry to go off-topic, but do you remember some of the old biker haunts.... White Hart, Lenton, Gedling Miners' Welfare?

As for my personal clothing embarassments; anyone remember "Oxford bag" trousers? :blush::blush:

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I used to go to the "Mucky Duck" (Grey Goose) on my Honda 90 I used to get laughed at sommat rotten (Until I climbed off and was about 2 foot taller than them !!!)......LOL

To tell the truth I used to park over the road in Kwick save ........................ !yada!

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yea, remember those places, and Beeston Sheds (youth club) Jack's cafe Beeston etc, Actually that Honda ended my biker days (till much later, reliving my youth etc). It took the "fun" out of riding, ok so it was great speed wise and didn't fall apart whilst you were riding it but there was no "acheivement" getting to rallies etc, you got on it, pressed a button, and got there, no more riding one handed, the other one holding the carb on, and got unfit as no more pushing it! but still got soaked, so I bought a car. As regards wearing things etc recall some plastic leather look jeans that made me sweat like mad!

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How about Loon pants, with ridiculous oversized flairs and the awful matching tops with low necks and flaired sleeves, coupled with dangerously high platform heels.

Wearing this terrible green stuff because Mr Bowie et al promoted it as cool, I once got slaughtered on a campsite bar in Croyde in 71 and woke up in the morning lying outside the tent, fully dressed, halfway down the slope and covered in vomit. The whole lot went in the bin, and I reverted to normal Wranglers and tee shirts.

My next act of stupidity was to go for a hike up Saddleworth Moor in a leather jacket I bought on Melton Sunday market which had collars like Vulcan wings, and wearing my latest stupidly high heeled leather shoes. I subsequently sprained my ankle and had to be helped down the mountainside by my young nieces and taken to hospital for an X-Ray.

Did I learn from that, no, being the 'height of cool' before my sprain had properly healed, I wore the same shoes and went over while running for a train at Peterborough. After being assisted to the 'General' for another X-Ray, they went in the bin as well in the end, they were lovely shoes as well, I can't for the life of me think where I bought them from, some normal shoe shop in Nottingham, Freeman Hardy Willis? They'll no doubt be rotting away at the bottom of some landfill site and be worth a fortune now.

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yea, remember those places, and Beeston Sheds (youth club) Jack's cafe Beeston etc, Actually that Honda ended my biker days (till much later, reliving my youth etc). It took the "fun" out of riding, ok so it was great speed wise and didn't fall apart whilst you were riding it but there was no "acheivement" getting to rallies etc, you got on it, pressed a button, and got there, no more riding one handed, the other one holding the carb on, and got unfit as no more pushing it! but still got soaked, so I bought a car. As regards wearing things etc recall some plastic leather look jeans that made me sweat like mad!

As regards bikes, they used to say that you didn't need a map to get to Brands Hatch in those days, even if you'd never been there before. You followed the trail of oil and the broken down bikes on the roadside. And the effort of pushing them did keep you fit. Years later, I did some work in a m/c repair place and needed a Jap 750 race replica moving to position a ladder, and was told to move it myself. Anticipating it to be far heavier than it actually was, I almost dropped it by applying far too much force to move it.

Some of these remarks are bringing back other clothing memories. The leather look jeans were matt pvc from the end of the 70's. I had some of those, but they ended up reserved for fancy dress parties. As to loons, I had some green canvas ones from C&A's. They fitted like tights from the waist (which was ultra low) down to the knees, flared out to wide bottoms from there downwards, had no waist band but rather a seam like a jeans leg hem, and no pockets. I have some photos somewhere, but the last time I got them out, my children (by then adults) fell about laughing.

The comment about such clothing now being worn only by someone that is really camp shows how attitudes to style change over the years. Then it was the norm, even though, years before, such clothing would have been regarded as outrageous. In the 1975 section of the TV film of "The Naked Civil Servant" by the openly gay author Quentin Crisp, he comments as an old man how, by that time, "the symbols I adopted forty years ago to express my sexual type have become the uniform of all young people."

Whilst on the subject of clothing from that era that you wouldn't wear now, would anyone go swimming recreationally these days in the same sort of trunks that were the norm then?

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I bought some Purple & Black squared trousers from Jeff's. The squares were about 2". I s'pose about 65/66.

We had a shop & when I went to the Wholesale market with my old dad, he wouldn't walk around with me, cos of the wolf whistles & comments - mind you t'were a bit loud for 5:00a.m.

baz

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Whilst on the subject of clothing from that era that you wouldn't wear now, would anyone go swimming recreationally these days in the same sort of trunks that were the norm then?

Quentin Crisp probably, I'm sure he used to hang around Highfields Lido, if you like.

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My biggest mistake was buying a shiny brown glam rock mac from god knows where in the town.

I wore it once, I was walking back home from my girlfriends in the rain and was pestered by a kerb crawler, I had very long hair and I couldn't decide whether he was a shirt lifter or thought I was a gal, I suspect the latter, it was a very dark night after all. When I attempted to open the passenger door and punch his lights out he obviously realised his mistake and roared off into the night. the mac remained in the wardrobe after that.

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