High School Fashion in 1969

Absolutely. I could have been the dopey kid in the middle in the kilt, knee socks and yellow shirt. Looks just about right.

Girls couldn't wear pants to my school (this was in the deep south) until 1971 or '72. And there was all the drama about how short dresses could be, how long boys' hair could be, etc.

I wasn't around back then, but I still loved the photos. Those clothes, god! Very stylish for the time period. This was clearly an upper-middle class community.

I love the harlequin tights on the girls in the second pic.

1969-70 was my senior year in HS. While the fashions shown look similar to what girls were wearing, many of these look like posed catalog shots.

Stylish and not a fattie among them.

We broke the dress code in my HS in 1970. Girls could wear pants, and boys could wear their hair down to the shoulders (looking fucking ridiculous).

Those pictures weren't real, were they?

Were bare midriffs OK in high school in '69 (as worn provocatively by the one stylish Asian-American girl)?

BTW, I went to school in the liberal NYC burbs.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

Even if the girls wore pants, they couldn't wear jeans. They wore awfully short skirts but no shorts to school, that was not allowed.

Bitch stole my look!

Tights were in style but bare legs (no nylons) that was not in style. You wore nylons (pantyhose) if you weren't wearing tights.

This was in Woodside, CA which is just south of San Francisco and one of the wealthiest communities in the US.

The girls wearing pants rule also fell in 1970 in our school district.

Miss black teacher was FIERCE !

This bitch is stylin'!

Everyone was not a hippy and did not wear long straight wigs. Teased hair was still in style with the greasers.

There are different high schools represented. Another was Beverly High School (in Beverly Hills) and one school in Denver, Colorado.

I still don't believe those are real pictures from 1969.

They look strangely old though, like in their late 20s or 30s. Are kids today just very immature looking?

It's funny to see how many more people had little choice but to wear glasses in those days. Contact lenses were hard, uncomfortable, and expensive and corrective eye surgery didn't exist.

Do the pictures seem very different and unlikely from your experience, R21? Did you go to high school back then, possibly in a different state or region?

Just watch the Brady Bunch

As far as I remember, guys were wearing flared pants.

Those short jeans with socks and loafers were no longer worn. As I remember it.

So different from the sea of jeans/t-shirt uniformity in today's HS population.

And NO FUCKING BACKPACKS!

We went to our lockers between classes and didn't turtle every frigging book.

That Nina Nellhaus chick is a complete nut these days.

I was younger then high school but I had older sisters. It seems like a lot of the girls photographed had on wigs, am I wrong?

Most of those photos were taken in upper middle class schools in Southern California. It would be interesting to see what the kids all across America and at different socio-economic levels were wearing.

"Stylish and not a fattie among them."

I would be real money that all the plump, homely, and unstylish kids were quietly shooed out of camera range.

Look, these weren't hidden camera photos, these are photos of kids who wore their coolest outfits because they knew a photographer was coming. And who definitely are posing for the camera in some cases, like the girls in the patterned tights and the girl at R18, the one who's so overdressed that I thought she was a teacher.

[quote]And NO FUCKING BACKPACKS!

NOBODY wore backpacks.

Even girls carried books under their arms.

And a different Pee Chee Folder for every class.

Every white girl in any HS in 1968

These kids would all be old people now, I'm sure some of them have even died.

Huge change between 1968 and 1969.

Another big change to 1970.

Fashion was on steroids back then.

"We went to our lockers between classes and didn't turtle every frigging book."

My school was near one of the schools in the picture, and there were no lockers on campus. Everyone hauled their books around in backpacks.

As I was a sci-fi-and-fantasy loving nerd, I painted a big red dragon on mine! I'm just grateful it wasn't something from Star Trek.

[quote]there were no lockers on campus

That was anomalous.

Love Red Dragon.

I graduated high school in '72, Main Line Philly. We were allowed to wear jeans by 10th grade. Skirts could not be shorter than your fingertips when your arms were at your side. No bare midriffs.

I do remember that hideous bare midriff blouse thing when I was about 14. A friend used to wear that on the boardwalk, but then her mom always picked out her clothes and they were god-awful.

Most of the buckskin/fringe look was California and it wasn't particularly cool. Mostly dorks wore that crap.

In 7th grade my hair was shoulder length and in a flip like Patty Duke. By 12th grade it was straight and below my waist. Whoever said that there was change at warp speed between 69 and 72 was right. Think of going from kilts, knee socks and Weejun loafers to halter tops, low waist jeans and tye dye.

My age group for the most part never got into teasing and updos. That was considered either old fashioned or trashy depending on who was wearing it.

I love the black teacher!

The funny thing is that it would have been unusual to see that many fat girls in a crowd. 4 of them would have been considered absolutely tubby. Fat people were a rarity in 69-72.

Well done, R33! You nailed it.

[quote]My age group for the most part never got into teasing and updos. That was considered either old fashioned or trashy depending on who was wearing it.

The bouffant always had its biggest following in Baltimore, which John Waters calls "The Hairdo Capital of the World."

Love, love the natural hair. If my memory serves me correctly, blow-dryers were not readily available until early seventies. We had to sit under portable plastic hooded dryers, or towel dry, or air dry, or sun dry w/ a little peroxide or lemon juice, or set hair slightly wet with rollers and gel, or iron hair while leaning over ironing board, or in my case air dry until still damp, pile hair on top with covered rubber band and roll w/ large roller or juice can. I think hair looked better and more shiny.

The girls were wearing Ladybug and Villager and Etienne Aigner in 1968. They (and the boys) gave it up for Landlubber bell bottoms and Truth & Soul tops in 1969.

People forget that high school boys still wore their hair short into the '70s. It was the college kids and twentysomethings who began growing out their hair and beards/mustaches in the mid/late '60s.

Yet everyone assumes that high school boys in the late '60s were looking like DAZED & CONFUSED, but hat movie takes place in 1976, and by then anything went.

Wow, R27 sure must not have much else going on in his life if he's that worked up about high school students carrying backpacks.

Who the fuck cares?

IIRC, 1972 to 1975 were the years when most young men just grew their hair out and did nothing else with it. Sideburns were big then too. It was the Fuck Nixon look.

1976 was a big year for styled hair, starting with Dorothy Hamil. My friend had her eight-year-old heart broken that year when a hairdresser refused to give her a Dorothy Hamil cut, telling her point-blank that her face was too fat and that the style would make her look funny.

Fringe at it's peak.

Roger Daltry. Isle of Wright. 1969

I wish I could have been that Asian girl Rosemary Shoong or at least her friend! You just know that she got all the hot guy cock and went to the wildest parties!

something about these pics looks staged.

Kids looked cleaner back then, one would never had put on a pair of jeans torn at the knees.

That was the next year, r51

R43 handheld hair dryers have been available on the mass market since the 1920s.

By 1970 torn jeans were stylish. Usually the knees went out and it was fine.

You'd also see jeans patched with different fabrics and patterns.

That may be so, R53, but most home hair dryers in the 1960s looked like little vacuum cleaners that had a hose attached to an adjustable oversize shower cap that you wore over your wet hair, and you sat relatively still as it dried.

[quote]They look strangely old though, like in their late 20s or 30s. Are kids today just very immature looking?

Kids just looked older back then. Just look at Grease or Beverly Hills 90210.

Notice not a fatty in sight! Something would happen in the subsequent decades to produce generations of lard asses.

R58, when rats are exposed to DDT their rat grand-children are born with a propensity to obesity. The grandparents of the last quarter century of fatties were exposed to the heavy use of DDT in the USA from the 1940s to the early 70s.

Also the teeth don't look as severely straightened then as they do now.

& the pretty girls look prettier and more natural.

There's a sort of harshness to the way even young pretty people look in America today. Like it's a career move.

Women started looking severe in the '80s with the shoulder pads and the power dressing and it never swung back, just took a different turn.

[quote]Notice not a fatty in sight! Something would happen in the subsequent decades to produce generations of lard asses.

It's called the Microwave Oven (late 70s)

Freezer Asiles (and fatties) grew to gigantic proportions very quickly afterwards..

I remember my mother bought me clothes from Ladybug and The Villager in 1967-1968. I may have started high school in those clothes, but in 1969 (at least in Chicago), the dress codes had been relaxed and we could wear jeans to school. Landlubbers were very popular. I bought my first pair at a store called Sir Real in Lincoln Park.

There were straight kids (in the drug sense) who dressed preppy. But there was a sizeable group of wannabe hippies, mostly starting with members of the drama club.

Those photos look very staged to me.

I'd like to see what those students look like now. I wonder how good or bad they aged.

Some haven't aged at all. This was done 2 years ago and they were all wearing period costumes.

The IN crowd.

I've got a woody, for the woody at r18.

I wish my hair looked as healthy and shiny as those girls'.

I was in high school in Massachusetts in the mid-late '90s (1994-1998) and our dress codes were so lax. I remember, the cool thing in 1995 was for girls (even the popular ones) to wear boys's boxers or pajama bottoms (depending on the weather) topped with a girls' tank top. Fuzzy slippers completed the look. The girls wore their hair up in a messy bun held by a scrunchie. They literally looked like they just rolled out of bed and yet their makeup was fresh and impeccable.

60+ replies and nobody's mentioned the guy's ass in the upper left of this pic?

You bitches are slipping!

[quote]60+ replies and nobody's mentioned the guy's ass in the upper left of this pic?

Didn't mention it, but I DID notice it.

1969 - 1970 was my senior year in high school, in an upscale suburb on the east coast. Yes, that's exactly what girls wore there, too. I can't say those patterned tights ever really caught on where I was, but they were they kind of thing you'd see in teen magazine fashion layout. For me, the real dead giveaway that these pics are authentic are the girls wearing loafers with colored knee socks that coordinate with their outfits. No, handheld blow dryers were NOT common in 1969. If they were, my long-straight-haired sisters would have had one. I don't recall blow dryers being available at all until at least 1972 or 1973.

[quote]No, handheld blow dryers were NOT common in 1969.

I think they were. Here in England, anyway.

We had one for us kids even as far back as '67...& I was only five.

Heavy bastards they were too.

R71, Girls ironed their hair, as with an actual clothes iron. That's what my mom always said. And washing your hair was an "all night" thing because of no driers. So you stayed in on nights when you washed your hair.

BTW: The long straight hair trend was started by 19-year-old Cher in 1965.

Before Sonny and Cher, everyone had a high maintenance 'do.

Girls started growing their hair out immediately.

Even a gun can't help Sonny Bono look tough in that ridiculous get-up, R74.

[quote]Before Sonny and Cher, everyone had a high maintenance 'do.

I didn't.

From 1974:

r77 is correct.

Earlier hair styles didn't lend themselves to a handheld blow drier.

It would mess up your hair.

Hence the long hose and bonnet

Boys looked dressed pretty much the same as now.. a variation of a t-shirt or button-up shirt and jeans.

Cher didn't start the long straight hair trend. That was started by the Beatles' girlfriends and the wave of London/Carnaby Street fashion in about 1966.

By that time the preppy Villager/Ladybug look was out, and Mod/Young Edwardian look was in. I wore very short skirts, patterned and textured tights, very black eye makeup and white lipstick.

By 1969 I was wearing jeans, black turtlenecks and an old Army jacket. For dressing up I had a pair of wool Navy pants from (where else) the Army-Navy store.

They all have the same weird orgasmic expression going on. Drugs?

That's not the kind of blow dryer I meant, r72. The type of dryer you depict simply wasn't in common use, not in the U.S., in 1969. My sisters actually had a dryer like the one in r78's picture, but they didn't use it very often because it took forever to dry their long hair. They usually just wound their wet hair around their heads and pinned it in place and slept on it.

And no, Cher did not invent the long straight-haired look.

"So different from the sea of jeans/t-shirt uniformity in today's HS population."

Are you kidding? They all look alike with the hippie hair

for a time my mother had a hand held dryer with detachable combs and bushes. She claimed my sister burned it out on her long hair, which is possible. It smelled of burnt hair long before it went kaput.

Maybe that was the advantage of the bonnet style dryers, that the heat source wasn't so dangerously close to the hair.

I still believe those pictures were staged photos and not taken in 1969.

They probably *were* staged photos, but that doesn't mean they're not vintage 1969.

[quote]I remember my mother bought me clothes from Ladybug and The Villager in 1967-1968.

You were quite brave to cross-dress in high school!

Well, the second Aquarian Age began this year. Although I don't want retro. I want brand new creativity, new looks. And no more war!

Speaking of hairdryers of that era-- does anyone remember the Remington Hot Comb? I actually had one!

They may be staged, but the fashions are definitely what I used to see in school at that time.

I was in grade school at that time and girls were raising a fuss about not being able to wear pants as been said before. All the boys wore bell bottoms.

The big deal in my school was having teachers under 30. We had 3, two women who always wore micro mini skirts (IT WAS SHOCKING!!!) And the young guy teacher had sideburns, a double breasted jacket and bell bottoms! Groovy Baby!

Those photos were a tonic to look at in January, you can almost feel the sunshine.

Clip at the link from Frederick Wiseman's 1968 documentary "High School." The clothes the students have on are more typical of the times--well, at least they're more like what I remember. (The full documentary is worth seeing--Wiseman is a master filmmaker.)

The first teacher to wear a mini skirt at our school was, of course, the French teacher. She was very young, maybe 23.

[quote]I was in grade school at that time and girls were raising a fuss about not being able to wear pants as been said before. All the boys wore bell bottoms.

A lot of Americans wore str8 legged jeans thru the 60s & 70s. You know, the guys who wore little round glasses and looked like John Sebastian.

[quote]I still believe those pictures were staged photos and not taken in 1969.

These photos were published in LIFE magazine in 1969.

R92 that was fascinating. Did kids really talk back to adults then?

BTW: The cute kid at the beginning who got suspended and sent out in the hall had a bubbly butt as they showed him from behind exiting.

I guess TIME would know if LIFE published those photos in 1969...

All those kids are in their mid 60s now.

Wow.

Grandma and Grandpa were hip

I always thought the hippie movement/look/fashion was primarily a college-age/young-adult thing, not really hitting high schools? True or false?

This was staged like the moon landing. There were no Asians in the 60s.

Wow, those photos take me back to my childhood!

there are no headphones or smartphones glued to their ears!

The look hit high school in the 70s r99.

Amazing. Shame what happened to America. Compared to those images, kids today look like something from Road Warrior. The girls are just so much prettier than todays's.

California really has gone into the crapper.

The teens in those pics would never be caught going to see a movie called "American Sniper". That would be like going to see "The Green Berets" with Gramps. Mass murder WASN'T cool and wouldn't get you laid.

Lots of teen girls today look like whores, thanks to the dominance of whorish pop singers and reality tv. And the guys look like absolute trash in their oversized sports jerseys and sweatpants. Of course it's not just teens today, but many adults too.

I'm not saying people should go back to dressing formally, but just dressing decently in clothes that fit and are not trashy would be nice to see.

For those of you convinced that these photos aren't really from 1969, but are from a recently staged shoot, they're from the Oct 10, 1969 issue of Life magazine. You can find a digitized copy of it in the Life magazine archive on Google. The article that included these photos starts on page 40.

Of course, I'm sure someone will claim that these photos were recently staged and inserted into the archive. Because, you know, that makes all kinds of sense.

Middle class back then was more affluent than now. Those high school kids just seemed happier. No Columbine fears, Ritalin, "16 And Pregnant"... all the things we've come to expect. It really looks like a golden, endless summer.

If you look closely, quite a few of those girls appear to be wearing handmade clothing. All girls took a sewing class in those days. They had to make at least one article of clothing. It was also common for their mothers to sew their school clothes too.

My sister graduated in 1968. She wore falls ( a hairpiece for the top of the head, to make it look thicker), and dyed her hair. She couldn't have been more than 16-17. I know some of her other friends more wigs. Not cheap fake looking ones either. At least some were real hair wigs or wiglets.

She also wore sheaths and shoes in colors to match her dresses. Most of her friends had long straight hair. It was the default hairstyle for all young girls and teens then. None of them were fat. Some took heroin and LSD though. She had to quit going to parties because drugging people's drinks became a fad. We lived in a nice suburb in Southern California. A couple of her childhood friends became heavy drug users. They grew apart. Her best friend's bf ended up with some type of nerve damage, supposedly, from being a very heavy drug user, heroin I think. He was a mess and eventually the girl dumped him.

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

A bit more fashionable here, too.

They look so happy, R110. Are they on a field trip? Why are they all dressed in navy?

I went to a private school, we had "uniforms". I think it's a great idea, there's no competition to be the best dressed. You can concentrate on more important things, like studying.

[quote]If you look closely, quite a few of those girls appear to be wearing handmade clothing.

The Asian girl made her own clothes, according to the article.

r110 those fashionista murderesses thought the forehead scribe would be a classic. They should have carved it in their necks.

R114...and she made them in a sweatshop!

Ooo-eee! I'm seeing trails, Debbie! Button, button, who's got the button?

I don't know, R110. I think those girls might have been just a little too [italic] cutting-edge [/italic] for 1969...

Love the sun-kissed, hippie, natural look. Only in California...

It's too bad California still isn't like this, if you know what I mean.

Despite this sunny imagery, California was a pretty turbulent place in 1969, though. Race riots, Bobby Kennedy assasination and of course the girl-next-door beauties in R110's link, the Manson girls had completed an awful set of murders..

Don't get me wrong, 1969 was perhaps the most fascinating year in 20th century America, but there was a dark, dark underside.

"I always thought the hippie movement/look/fashion was primarily a college-age/young-adult thing, not really hitting high schools? "

High-school age kids were dropping out of society and becoming druggies and hippies back then, and others were becoming politically active before they could vote and taking themselves VERY seriously. (It must have been a scary time to be a parent.)

IMHO the Vietnam war and the draft had a lot to do with that. Normally thoughtless high school boys felt the draft boards breathing down their necks, and while the sensible ones sought college deferments, others opted for drugs or protests or Canada. For a few years the middle classes lost their complacency, even the teenagers. Well, some of them.

The Golden State went into the shitter with Prop. 13 in 1978. It never recovered from starving the government.

A healthy government leads to a healthy society.

Tax payer revolts have always lead to the deterioration of the middle class.

Reagan took up nationally where California left off and the middle class has been circling the drain ever since.

California's 2011 tax burden of 11.35% ranks 4th highest out of 50 states, and is above the national average of 9.8%. California's taxpayers pay $5136 per capita in state and local taxes.

But keep beating that dead horse, r123.

[quote]For those of you convinced that these photos aren't really from 1969, but are from a recently staged shoot, they're from the Oct 10, 1969 issue of Life magazine.

There are too many little details that costume designers would never get right. cars, hair, footwear. The new trends mixed in with the older styles.

This entire thread and the photos bring to mind the song below. Huge, huge hit with the young in California that year.

[quote]If you look closely, quite a few of those girls appear to be wearing handmade clothing.

Customizing your clothes was considered very cool.

The #1 item was your Levi jeans.

Where are the zits? There were always zits.

I'm really struck by the difference between early and late 60's.

[quote]I always thought the hippie movement/look/fashion was primarily a college-age/young-adult thing, not really hitting high schools? True or false?

1969-1971 or 1972

I remember a lot of leather fringe purses and hats around then. Even in the middle schools.

Smoking was very cool, though it would fade through the 70s.

That was the #2 song, r126.

This was the #1 song of 1969

Yeah, I remember my mom made a lot of my clothes (or we got hand-me-downs from my older cousins). Everybody had patches on their jeans.

Recently, I got a small hole in a pair of my jeans so, true to my childhood 60's roots, I put a ladybug patch over it. By the reaction of my young co-workers, you would have thought I discovered the moon.

Apparently, NOBODY EVER puts a cute patch to cover a hole in one's pants! They all look at me like I'm some sort of fashion goddess.

Even kids clothing took on hippie overtones in the early seventies. I think the hippie look was fading by 1973. Boys continued to grow their hair wilder than ever, but fashions had morphed into unabashed 70s by 1974. My high school didn't ban its student smoking area until the fall of 1981.

[quote]I'm really struck by the difference between early and late 60's.

The early 60's were essentially still the 50's.

Until the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan show live in Feb 1964 to 73 million viewers.

By 1965 iit was a different planet.

1967 was the Summer of Love and Sgt. Pepper

1969 was Woodstock

The culture changed FAST!

No underwear?

This looks very SoCal. Fashions such as these didn't take off in the part of New England I lived. Some influences, sure, such as bell bottoms, floppy hats but not the rest of it! No beaded fringe, but I do remember the ponchos. I remember well into the '70s males still had to wear a coat and tie to the dining hall of our state university.

The students in the photos look so spoiled and foolish. It was a real fashion show, apparently. I suspect some of those gals were told about the photo shoots and maybe were encouraged to dress accordingly.

Marilyn's death in 1962 signaled the end of the blonde bombshell. Bad news for Jayne Mansfield et al. but good news for sex kittens like Raquel Welch et al.

A year later, in 1963, JFK's assassination further eroded the "innocence" of the 1950s.

By the time of the Beatles in 1964, it was the last nail in the coffin.

1967 also changed cinema forever with the release of BONNIE AND CLYDE and THE GRADUATE.

I remember seeing the Archies perform "Sugar Sugar" and "Jingle Jangle" at Shea Stadium. The massive crowds rioted when the cardboard cut outs left the stage after only two songs.

R134, except for the few times I wore dress pants, I hardly wore underwear from 1969-1972.

Bewitched marathons -- Samantha goes from a severe flip to long, straight flowing locks.

Before

After

It's funny to see the kids talking to each other in groups, and not heads down fingering their phones.

I graduated in 1970, and sadly point out that everyone in these pictures is either deceased, or aged and unrecognizable. I'm a lot of fun at funerals.

That said, I still prefer 501's and a (pocket or printed) T shirt.

Yes, R141, people actually used to be social.

I hated the clothing, R142, and stopped wearing it in 1972, when it morphed into elephant bells and platform shoes. 501s were a lifesaver.

You can tell that some feel like they are in costume and they have on wigs. That's why I felt like the pictures were staged.

R144, no, I actually *can't* tell, because they don't have wigs on and aren't in costume. Are you in your 20's?

[quote]You can tell that some feel like they are in costume and they have on wigs. That's why I felt like the pictures were staged.

Who 'feels' that?

If they don't think they are in costume, why are so many of the girls wearing wigs? And yes, they are.

[quote]why are so many of the girls wearing wigs?

Which ones are wearing wigs? Please tell.

Some girls wore what was called a "fall" to make their hair look longer in back, but those are not wigs. Extreme bouffiness to get pictures taken, maybe, but not wigs.

I think R144/R147 is young and is used to young women, even high school girls, wearing extensions and the like.

This wasn't common back then. At least not in the grade school level or even college, just Hollywood productions.

Even as far back as 1988, high school girls kept their regular hair, they just styled it. I recently watched an episode of ROSEANNE and I was thinking, "Today, Becky and Darlene would be made up with hair extensions and designer clothes despite the fact that they're supposed to be working poor."

Check out those Disney/Nickelodeon shitocms and that's how it is.

If you scroll, the sixth picture down with two girls in it - the one on the left looks like she might be wearing a wig on top of her long hair to fill it out some.

Further down, The girl in the black and white checked top and yellow bell-bottoms, identified in the caption as Erica Farber, looks like she might be wearing a fall too.

The groovy black school teacher is wearing a wig.

I am a woman who graduated from high school on the San Francisco Peninsula (where some of the photos were taken) and they are an authentic representation of what girls wore in those days.

I loved fashion and bought my clothes mostly at the Emporium, Joseph Magnin, I. Magnin, and Sax. I was rail thin, did some modeling, and wore skirts that barely cleared my underwear. I did not go for the granny glasses and flowered-print granny dresses, although they were popular in my high school. Also popular were Courrege boots, mini skirts, madras plaid, empire waistlines. I had long blonde frosted hair and one of my favorite dresses was a light cotton empire waist with light blue a-line skirt and madras top with white collar. Soon I got a Twiggy haircut and wore false eyelashes. I had a cute pair of red low waist bell-bottomed pants that I wore with a midriff barring white eyelet flouncy top, baring my flat tummy and cute bellybutton.

I loved my ribbed knit tops, a-line mini skirts, and knee high socks like those in the photos. There used to be a great shop called the Very Very Terry Jerry shop at Ghirardelli Square, I got some cute corduroy culottes there with matching shirt. Alan Duskin used to have a shop there, too, they had great rib knit mini dresses.

I LOVED my clothes in those days and remember so many outfits. Gradually they were replaced with torn and embroidered jeans but I always had a colorful array of tops. I trolloped around Europe in 1973 wearing platform cork backless clogs. I had a fabulous Edwardian style maxi coat, oh, I do go on! It was wonderful. I still love fashion.

[quote]If you scroll, the sixth picture down with two girls in it - the one on the left looks like she might be wearing a wig on top of her long hair to fill it out some.

Wigs don't have breakage; that girl does.

#152 again. Regarding hairstyles in the mid to late 60s, we wore postiches to enhance updos, falls (usually with headbands) to create thicker hair, and in spite of my own blonde hair I had a short, curly brunette wig I wore on occasion. I went from the Twiggy look to long blonde again in a few years but he wig was a fun change. I never wore a fall, but did wear a postiche to the senior ball and for senior pictures. Prior to my long blonde hair, starting in 8th grade, I wore bouffants with teased hair and clouds of Aqua Net.

Teenaged Cybill Shepherd in 1968. This hairstyle was very common.

[quote]I loved fashion and bought my clothes mostly at the Emporium, Joseph Magnin, I. Magnin, and Sax. I was rail thin, did some modeling, and wore skirts that barely cleared my underwear.

I guess lesbians were very different in those days.

It's interesting how girls who wore mini skirts back them looked cute and pretty. Mini skirts on girls of today look whorish.

Young women were so pretty then. Now (in LA at least) they either look like drag queens or are overweight (or both!) The young women I work with wear so much makeup, it's disturbing. And they can barely walk in the ridiculous hooker heels they wear.

I took a trip to the PNW last year and it was so refreshing to see women who looked fit, fresh faced and natural.

Look at the clogs this guy is wearing!

I was in middle-school that year. Those fashions were fucking sexy. I loved that era. I'm a flaming queen but I think women looked hot then. The guys? They looked pretty much the same as now.

Exactly, R31. These are definitely photos from 1969, but they're not just casual pictures.

My dad was a teacher in the 1960s, I have an older sister who was in high school during the late 1960s, and between their photos and yearbooks I don't see any large group of kids dressed this way. Maybe students would dress like this for a dance or on picture day, but not for day-to-day wear.

The kids in the foreground and background of the "hippies" picture are how most kids were dressed.

Now that I think about it, these pictures remind me of the finale of "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," where Babs comes out in one of those over-tailored getups and all the actual students walking around her are in regular casual clothes. She looks like a fish out of water.

Little Miss "Hippie" in these photos looks just like that.

r141, I read that as "heads down fingering their holes".

Clogs were a fad, I think in the early 70's. At one point pretty much everybody had some version of them. Many women had them in several colors and never wore anything else. People said, "they're so comfortable!" although I didn't think they were more comfortable than other shoes.

Wigs and wiglets were very common. My older sister and her friends wore them all the time, sometimes to change hair color, but mostly to add volume. That wasn't a "costume" in those days. People were really into fashion and a lot of effort was put into dress and makeup. That was still the days where shoes and purse had to match, women changed their handbags every few days, had shoes to match their dress, etc.

People were much better off financially than they are now. It wasn't a struggle to clothe your children, men had stable jobs, many women were housewives that sewed clothes, or bought clothes and shoes by the pile whenever they were on sale. My middle class sister had orange, pink, orange and yellow, baby blue, etc shoes to match every outfit. And mom was a housewife and dad was blue collar. Women and girls had both money and time to be fashion plates. Union wages uplifted America.

Most of all, people had time. Dinner was at six, and everybody was at home to eat it. People did not sit on the phone all night, unless they were a teenager. People interacted with others. It was much more common for people to invite others to their homes, because they were home. Much more in person interaction, so appearance mattered more.

Today, everybody is poor, overworked and exhausted. People are too burnt out to care what they look like after work in many cases. And people with kids either both work, or are single parents. Nobody sews their own clothes. You can hardly find fashionable clothing fabric at a store any more. A lot of fun and creative individuality has been taken out of people's lives, because they're too damn tired and broke.

I think a lot of obesity today, aside from the chemical and corn syrup laden food, is overeating from stress and isolation. A doctor told my dad once, you're fat because it's the only thing in your life that makes you happy. I think that's the reason for most American obesity right there.

[quote]I think a lot of obesity today, aside from the chemical and corn syrup laden food, is overeating from stress and isolation. A doctor told my dad once, you're fat because it's the only thing in your life that makes you happy. I think that's the reason for most American obesity right there.

How true.

I was a child then (4 years old) but those clothes take me back. My older brothers and sisters dressed like that.

" It was a real fashion show, apparently. I suspect some of those gals were told about the photo shoots and maybe were encouraged to dress accordingly"

Oh absolutely, some of them are dressed to kill and are conscious of the camera (like the dark-haired girl with the headband and strappy sandals).

You know what's funny? I betcha the girls who dressed the most like free-spirited hippies are the Mean Girls of that school! Because even in the better-off most kids didn't have the disposable income to spend on high-fashion flower children clothes (or permission from their mothers), just the spoiled girls who would simply die if they weren't bought the latest look.

R166 = Cunt of the Day

Go home and wash your vagina before you use it to utter one more word, R166.

After a second look at the photos, I suspect they maybe brought in some teen models just for the photo shoot. Either that, or maybe they confronted some students and told some of the students who may have been models or at least photogenic to dress up. It is all too perfect. Or is that just the way southern California is/was?

In the first photo at Woodside High School the students look average, which is what I expect. The rest feature females who are just too well dressed.

And what is this thing with the scarf tied around one leg?

[quote]It is all too perfect. Or is that just the way southern California is/was?

That's the way Southern California WAS. As in past tense. Trust me.

Pissing off people like R167 makes me proud, deeply and earnestly proud.

I'm SURE they knew Life Magazine was coming to their school and dressed accordingly and the best ones were picked out.

r166 at 171, I hope you had the decency to talk out of freshly washed vagina, dear.

I believe you, r170.

Look, every long haired girl did not have thick beautiful hair. They just didn't. Yet every one of those girls with long hair, their hair looks perfect. Most are wigs. And even if they are rich, they were not all gorgeous. I'm sure they would have had their nose jobs already but there was no shortage of homely girls, in 1969.

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s-70's, R168. Kids really did look like that. I don't see anything unusual there.

Yes, a couple of girls are very pretty and dressed very well. There were a lot of REALLY pretty girls at my high school. Less makeup than now. Everybody had a suntan, that was a big deal. Some girls were very tan, especially in the 1970s. Kids used the "Beach Bus" to go to the beach on their own in the summer, or their parents took big groups of kids and their friends to the beach for the day. We used to dig for clams, and my neighbors would make clam chowder. They were very very very broke, seven kids. All the girls were tan, barefoot all summer, long straight hair, and cute. Their light brown hair would turn dirty blonde, with streaks from the sun, every summer. Pretty much everybody I knew had much lighter hair in the summer from going outside.

Being outside makes you look healthier. We exercised all day, although we thought we were roller skating or riding our bikes. People probably don't look as good now because they never get any fresh air or exercise, they're online all day and half the night.

They probably did print pictures with the cutest girls, but were they unusually pretty looking for high school girls? No. Really. The Beach Boys weren't kidding. California girls in those days had sun-bleached, long straight hair, tans, and bikini bodies.

R171, you deserve death. Not necessarily painful, but there is no reason for your continued existence.

How about the boys in late '60s California? Did they look significantly different than boys today?

"Look, every long haired girl did not have thick beautiful hair. They just didn't. Yet every one of those girls with long hair, their hair looks perfect."

Those aren't wigs, that's what natural, youthful, unprocessed hair looks like.

Especially if you push all the kids with frizzy or drab hair out of camera range, along with all the pudgy or homely kids.

[quote]you deserve death. Not necessarily painful, but there is no reason for your continued existence

OMG! You two STILL at it?

ALL of us pretty girls had thick long hair back in '69.

I don't know where the hell some of you grew up, where teens wore wigs and wiglets to school. I attended art high school in NYC in the 1970s, none of the females wore supplemental hair, at least not to school. I never saw one wiglet or wig.

The African-American females wore their hair natural while some straightened their hair, no female of any race or nationality was wearing supplemental hair. It must have been a Midwestern thing, it wasn't happening on the East Coast.

Both the boys and girls seemed to have healthy hair, people weren't eating so garbage processed food back them and yes, teens were more active, there were no personal computers and cells. The entertainment wasn't as passive as it is today. After I got home and did my homework, I'd ride my bike around my neighborhood for about an hour or so.

Because it was an art school, there was no peer pressure to conform to a certain look. I also don't remember much bullying. The gay kids were out, there no bullying there either. Some of the effeminate gay boys did get some jokes from the jocks, but nothing near the kind of hate gay teens get today.

The students dressed in diverse styles, there was the Glitter Rock English velvet jacket boho style (Bowie hasd just released Ziggy Stardust during the time I was in school), there were the T-shirt/work shirt, jeans and work boot crowd, the break dancing kids wore Kangol hats and sweatpants, the nerds dressed like well nerds and the rest of the kids wore whatever was considered mainstream clothing for teens at the time.

Very good point made by the poster who said kids looked better and healthier back then because they were outside more and active. Today's kids are online or playing video games half the day and night and of course that has an effect on appearance and weight.

I drive past the local high school on my way to work in the morning and I cannot BELIEVE how many of the kids are fat, especially the girls. And I don't mean "a few extra pounds," I mean fucking FAT! When I was in high school in the early/mid-90s we only had a handful of truly fat kids in the entire school, maybe 5 or 6.

[quote]It must have been a Midwestern thing, it wasn't happening on the East Coast.

It was [italic]definitely[/italic] a Southern thing.

I'm surprised none of them were wearing afghan jackets yet.

The girls are all very pretty. They look so much more natural than women today.

R185's link has malware.

That's not my experience.

I clicked on it and my NOrton 360 immediately blocked it and sent me a message. Just warning others in case.

Well, R184, wherever these teen females wore wigs and wiglets, it definitely was NOT during the 1960s and 1970s in NYC.

I'm so glad I was able to attend a diverse fun school in Manhattan, a vocational school dedicated to something I was interested in since I was a small child, art. Not to mention, that I never experienced any of the horrific bullying both gay and str8 kids today experience.

My school was such fun, it should have been credited with being one of the first schools in NYC where students were allowed to dress for Halloween.

I'd say less slick, less polished. A lot of surfer dudes. In those days I never saw a boy wear sandals to school. Jeans and sandals at school happened in the 1970s. Look at the pictures; no jeans or flip flops, a few dress sandals for girls only. Flip flops were considered at home shoes. In those days they were "Zories," and considered too cheap for school shoes, even for poor people. They were cheap rubber.

A lot of short sleeved, button front cotton plaid, white or solid colored shirts, with white undershirts showing underneath, or pullover crew neck striped shirts, or polyester pullover shirts. In high school in the 60s, parents, schools and employers of teens absolutely forbade long hair for boys. Schools had very strict clothing and hair length codes. In the early to mid-Sixties, girls had to kneel on the ground and have their skirt length measured by a teacher, to make sure it wasn't too short. Boys' hair couldn't fall over their collar. The whole thing changed over about three years. Boys with long hair were called "girls" by adults who pretended they couldn't tell if they were boys or girls. Some adults were very enraged by long hair in boys. Parents in those days were all WWII vets and very into military style haircuts, the boys didn't agree.

I knew a bunch of surfer dudes with frizzy, bleached hair from surfing in the ocean. Sometimes their hair was nearly platinum in the summer. And lots of girls put lemon juice in their hair to bleach it even more, maybe the guys did too, I don't know. Fat was very unusual.

In those days people had "school shoes," usually closed toe black or brown leather shoes, and "school clothes," no jeans or T shirts with tacky logos. No holes allowed in your clothes. Patched was ok though. When the person went home, they changed everything they were wearing to "play clothes," jeans, sandals or sneakers, T shirts. That was so you didn't ruin your school clothes getting them dirty and torn. School was like a job.

Falls were more a pre-hippie thing, i.e., before 1967.

"Well, [R184], wherever these teen females wore wigs and wiglets, it definitely was NOT during the 1960s and 1970s in NYC."

And it wasn't happening in California, where the "natural look" was SO in that some girls had hairy legs! No, really, hippie girls and seriously outdoorsy girls didn't shave their legs, their legs were extremely tan and the hairs were bleached blonde by the sun (if they were lucky). And some of them were even straight!

This was a few miles away from some of those pictures. Big processed hair was for squares and sophisticates, not high school kids, at least in prosperous suburban California.

I don't get the idea that so many of you believe it was unusual for girls to have healthy long hair. Why? Most of them weren't allowed to dye it, they were teens, and their idea of "hair treatments" was washing it with mayonnaise, bleaching with lemon juice, and in the Seventies, "dyeing" it with henna. They weren't dyeing it a different color every day or using product. Hairspray went out in the mid-Sixties for many people. Why wouldn't their hair be healthy? Is it normal now for a sixteen year old to have thinning, sparse hair? Where?

A lot of kids dressed as their parents preferred, so a lot of girls were not allowed to cut their hair. Some were, but having long straight hair with no layers or styling was very common. Mom or a friend would trim off the split ends and that was it. It had to do with not letting them look too sophisticated and mature, long hair was thought to be proper for innocent, natural young girls. Some parents gave more leeway of course.

I knew a blonde girl who didn't shave her legs. You didn't notice it until you were up close, but it was a blonde pelt on each calf.

Quite impressive. Many of the boys were annoyed.

Love those photos linked in the OP. I was a small child during that period. They all look so very... Room 222. LOL

There was a period between maybe 1965-1967, and 1968-69, when the whole fashion thing just flipped on its head. You can probably pin it down by Beatles album covers. Kids followed their fashion cues.

See how that worked? It was very quick. The parents gradually allowed the kids to catch up, a bit at a time. The kids who wore really hippie clothes were either in college or runaways. It's not like in the Seventies when extreme styles were more accepted.

Bad link, R197.

Like this r196?

Lloyd Haines was hot!

[quote]In those days I never saw a boy wear sandals to school.

Neither did I. I wasn’t even allowed to wear loafers without socks in 1967-1969. If I wanted to cut school, all I had to do was stuff my socks in my locker and walk past this one particular teacher’s classroom. She’d send me to my class advisor and I’d have two free periods while I “walked home to put socks on.”

[quote]A lot of short sleeved, button front cotton plaid, white or solid colored shirts, with white undershirts showing underneath, or pullover crew neck striped shirts, or polyester pullover shirts.

I never wore undershirts (still don’t). But I wore a sweater every day the weather was cool or cold. I had to wear a dress shirt (what you call “button-front”) every day. No pullovers.

[quote]In high school in the 60s, parents, schools and employers of teens absolutely forbade long hair for boys. Schools had very strict clothing and hair length codes.

I had “long” hair starting in 1965, what was called a Beatle haircut. By 1967, my hair grew longer still, and it pretty much stayed that way until the 1973, when I went to a place called “Rape of the Lock” and got it all cut off.

Can't find a good link with photos of Beatles' album covers in order. This is Sgt Pepper, 1967:

Help! 1965. The Beatles had "long hair," but were still considered clean cut, wholesome boys. With Sgt Pepper, parents were beginning to think they were too outrageous for their kids.

That's two years. And then there was Woodstock. Most parents didn't approve of a lot of that music at all, mostly because the musicians were obviously drug users, and drugs were everywhere. They didn't want their kids' idols to be junkies.

If you live near waiter your hair is nicer. I grew up by the ocean and had long hair when I was younger. My hair was beautiful and strangers would stop me on the street to compliment it. Then I moved to a dry landlocked climate and my hair got parched and disgusting. I ended up cutting it all off because it looked like shit.

Very Manson Family-ish

I always wonder what it would have been like to be an openly-gay (male) student back in those late sixties years? Inconceivable?

[QUOTE]I always wonder what it would have been like to be an openly-gay (male) student back in those late sixties years? Inconceivable?

I saw a British documentary recently. Someone said "OUT? The only person who was out was Quentin Crisp".

I know of at least 2 people out in high school back in the late 1960s.

I knew a guy who was out in 1970. He accosted me at a party and told me I was gay, because he saw me looking at all the guys' "baskets." I told him he was right, but I wasn't ready to come out myself just yet. He respected that, though he would frequently ask me when we ran into each other if I was ready yet.

Someone asked what he was talking about, "ready," and I said, "Oh, he's going to give me skiing lessons." My other friend said "Oh, yeah...show you how to work those poles."

I think everyone knew.

[quote]I think everyone knew.

Yes, we knew.

r166, you nail it. They probably were the meanest ones in school, whatever school they attended. Isn't that always the way it is with the good-looking, "in" group in high school?

Were they treated well, R207?

[quote]Beverly Hills high school student Erica Farber wears a checker and tiered outfit as she walks with a young man

Erica Farber was a flirtatious cocktease who finally bit off more than she could chew when the handsome substitute English teacher, Mr. Bundy, offered to walk her home.

Cool style.

Notice, there is not one fat kid among them.

What the fuck went wrong with our diet?!?!

Yes, R211 they were very well treated by the very best psychiatrists their parents money could buy.

Finally both were cured of their mental disorders as the American Psychiatric Association certified after their instensive program of electroshock and aversion therapy.. Which lasted till 1973 when homosexuality was declassified as a mental disease.

R212 Erica Farber was one of Bundy's victims? Are you sure? I once read a long article about Ted Bundy and that name doesn't ring a bell.

Yep, growing up in Ohio I could have been any of those girls. Good times

[quote]People were really into fashion and a lot of effort was put into dress and makeup.

Yeah, but we have a thread going on right now where guys are calling women "whores" for putting effort into fashion and makeup. More than once, we've had threads where guys crab about women dressing like sluts nowadays, not like when they were kids... when women wore miniskirts so short they came with matching panties because their clothing didn't cover their underwear.

This idea that things were better back then relies very, VERY heavily on the dubious notion that people nowadays are trash, while people back then were class personified. There's nothing inherently classy about bellbottoms or micro-minis.

The men had CLASS back then, baby! CLASS!

Those caftans are fucking badass.

In the mid to late 60's, students didn't come out, and effeminate guys were ridiculed. Stonewall was just about to happen. Also, the culture leaned more in the direction of appearing older, or "sophisticated." Look at baby boomer year book pictures. My class was a few years previous, R34, and I can't say we are particularly dead! Politicians: the Clintons, Elizabeth Warren, are part of the demographic. Performers in the age group: Elton John, Cher, Kathy Bates, Meryl Streep.

Please! There are actually people on this board who were in HS in the 60s? WTF?

R221, the average age on this board seems to be about 67. I'm surprised nobody on this board was a principal at any of those schools.

Unless that's where our Grammar Nazis come from...

In 1969, SoCal guys wore:

Hang 10 T-Shirts

Levis straight leg cords (light blue or tan), or Levis 501s

Vans (custom) or Keds for shoes.

For those saying these are "staged" photos and that there is NO WAY these photos were taken in 1969, I beg to differ. I can absolutely vouch for the authenticity of the band photo. I was there. I am not in that particular photo (though I was a cute little dude), but I remember the photographer being at practice that day.

An alternate photo appeared in Life Magazine in 1970. I remember all of those kids in the photo. Two were very good friends of mine.

R221, start a thread asking dataloungers about their memories of the 1970's and see the replies pour in. It's an older crowd, and it's great, they are a mine of wonderful information.

My sister now has her eye on an Etienne Aigner vintage bag on etsy as a result of me telling her about this thread.

R224, seriously? Wonderful!!

Please spill. Who were the girls with the harlequin pantyhose? Were they the mean girls or were they mellow hippie chicks?

R224, tell us, was the hippie in brown fringe and headband really from your school, or a ringer brought in by the photographer?

R215, I believe this is Erica Farber today. She looks similar to the young woman in the photo and appears to have had a successful career in radio broadcasting. You can find other pics of the adult Erica online, where she looks even more like her younger self.

I think r212 is alluding to the young man in the picture with Erica, who doesn't really look like Ted Bundy.

More modern-day Erica Farber.

Names of other students and a teacher are given in the captions - Rosemary Shoong, Nina Nalhaus, Pam Pepin, Pat Auvenshine, Kim Robertson, Sandy Brockman, Lenore Reday. Perhaps someone with more energy and skill than me could check out what they're doing today.

Tell her to get this one, R225:

Tisha, Pam annd Deb just scored this 45 down at Groovy Grooves!

R230, oh wow, thank you , you will have made her day. It's a gem!

I was friends with a guy who was a little too sweet, his father sent him to military school to toughen him up. None of the guys had a problem with him but I knew he was gay, possibly before he did.

I was a young kid then but I love that era. The clothes, TV Shows, cars, movies, especially the music: Beatles, The Stones, CCR, Led Zeppelin, Elvis Presley, Cream, Hendrix, Joplin, Grand Funk Railroad, Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf, Jeff Beck Group, The Kinks, Vanilla Fudge, Temptations, Three Dog Night, Marvin Gaye, etc.

For those questioning, those photos are dead-on authentic 1969, not re-staged in the modern day.

The second Aquarian Age began this year. The Age of Pisces has ended. Let's all rejoice and feel the cleansing vibrations. The powers of darkness, despite appearances, are withering and dying. Let the sun shine in.

A friend of mine was sent to military school because his father thought it would beat the gay out of him. My friend told me that military school was nothing but four years of sex between the boys.

At the end of the Mayles' Gimme Shelter documentary form '69, you see a parade of hippies leaving Altamont and they look like creatures from another world. Maybe some of the kids in the life photos were there.

Slideshow of 74 Life photographer images of Woodstock

In 1972, my bf's sister was suspended from school (public school in upscale NY suburb) for wearing blue jeans.

I was sent home from school for wearing this t-shirt with a pot leaf on it. My mom bought it for me, had no idea what it was.

Here's another from the '60s, R232. Practically every girl I knew had this one. It is definitely pre-hippie, however. Both are, actually. Etienne went out of fashion for a while.

For years, I thought the name was ATN.

I grew up in an fairly affluent suburb in the Bay Area and graduated in '70. I remember that it was a big deal when female teachers were finally allowed to wear pants (tasteful pantsuits, of course) when I was a senior.

I wonder if anybody who went to Woodstock is still alive.

Why would they not still be alive? Some of the people that PERFORMED there are still alive.

r242 is too stupid to be alive.

The kids in photos should be ages 61-64 today.

Well, you guys should know by now, on this site nobody over 50 exists. They just fall of the edge of the earth.

Are R242's grandparents still alive?

1969 music:

The main song I remember from the fall of '69 was "Sugar Sugar" by The fucking Archies. I hated that song.

Peace Of Mind - Blue Cheer (Psychedelic Masterpiece 1969)

More from 1969:

1969:

So much LSD music in 1969.

Original cover:

[quote]The main song I remember from the fall of '69 was "Sugar Sugar" by The fucking Archies. I hated that song.

Flash forward three years to the fall of '72 and my friend Patty is finally old enough to make the scene at the local teen hangout. She drops a coin in the jukebox and selects some groovy tune sure to get the party started. But she hits the wrong button and up come the Archies singing the bubblegum praises of their Candy Girl. Everyone backs away from Patty who feels every inch the freshman fool she was trying so hard not to be.

r254, you raise an excellent point. Are there even such things as teen hangouts anymore? Or are they too overscheduled and helicoptered to hang out and have unstructured activity.

Jesus Christ, I was just trying to be funny. Literal cunts.

[quote] Are there even such things as teen hangouts anymore?

certain subway stations maybe

And all that happened is you got sprayed with your own cuntfart, R256.

^

Teen hangout, R255:

One thing from 1969 I don't see in those pictures is raging acne.

It's been years since I've seen a truly pizza-faced teenager, but at that time there was no effective treatment for it and some kids that age looked horrific. But it's not like anyone was going to put their pictures in a magazine.

True, you never see kids with acne anymore due to advances in dermatology.

I doubt poor kids have access to accutane, retinoids and light treatment which all effectively treat even severe acne. Spotty teens are surely to be found in low income areas.

They all look great!

You don't even see acne on poor kids anymore. I think Medicaid covers acne treatments.

Yes kids still have acne.

There are some real fashion historians on DL. A post unthread explains that most guys in '69 wore straight leg tan or pale blue cord Levis and I saw that all over the Life photos of Woodstock (link upthread). I guess only a very few West Coast hippies were into bell bottoms, and then those became a thing in the early to mid seventies, though many associate the fbell bottom or flared jeans with sixties hippies.

Also what's interesting about the Woodstock festival goers is how ordinarily the majority are dressed - straight legged jeans and a t shirt or denim shirt for the most part and the majority of the men have fairly short hair. I guess they were on vacation from real life rather than full time 'freaks'

Whenever I see those crowd photos from Woodstock I always think how nasty everyone must have smelled and where in the hell they went to piss and shit. It must have been filthy!

R267, I started wearing bell bottoms in, or before, 1968. I remember talking about them the week The White Album came out. This was in North Jersey.

r267, sometime in the early 70s, Levis discontinued their straight leg cords and only made flairs.

I never forgave them.

Levis is making some straight leg cords again, but alas, not those iconic light blue ones.

"Flares," R270.

Best pants ever!.

R261, the students were selected to appear in the photographs - which is why there is an overwhelming majority of svelte, pretty young women with luscious long hair and good skin.

Look at the very first pic, captioned "Woodside High, California". There is a much greater diversity of body shapes, dress and hair quality.

Close-ups might even show pimples. Also, I think these students are slightly older than the average teen pimple cohort (early teens).

R249, My much older brother used to play that song over and over when I was 4 years old. He died in a motorcycle accident in Feb. 1970 (at age 19) and my parents gave away all of his hundreds of albums soon after (he was high on LSD and pot when he crashed and my parents blamed the music for his "drug issues").

I never knew who did the song and it's been driving me bonkers for decades trying to find out who did it. I knew of Blue Cheer, but was only aware of "Sumemrtime Blues." Who knew a lifetime search would come to and end at DL? Thank you bunches.

Where were the fatties? Tattoos? Obscene hair and piercings?

God Americans got ugly in the last 4 decades.

Cheers, R274

[quote]Where were the fatties? Tattoos? Obscene hair and piercings?

The hair and piercings started with the Punk movement. The tats have been on steady rise since the 1980s.

People should stick to the weird hair. It grows out when they grow up.

"the handsome substitute English teacher, Mr. Bundy"

'Mr. Bundy' actually looks like Roman Polanski! Same hairstyle too.

The same Asian girl is wearing three different outfits. Yeah, the photos are definitely posed.

I wonder if there were any poor kids in that school? And if they were sitting on the bleachers so they wouldn't get in the photographer's way.

Groovy. Like the Brady Bunch.

I loved and still love Jefferson Airplane's Embryonic Journey

I heard it in a supermarket a few months ago and just stopped in the produce section and listened. I hadn't heard it in 40 years. It's just one of those things that immediately brings back a feeling for a certain time.

I was just thinking the other day about things you never see anymore. Crossed eyes. Pronounced overbites (Bucky beaver) or pronounced receding chins. Really big ears. Port wine birthmarks. Clubbed foot. Harelip.

If you were born with something like crossed eyes, your fate was sealed. You would never have a good job and you would always be laughed at and made fun of by small children. It was sad.

I remember older people with skin tags hanging off their faces and eyelids. No choice. There were no dermatologists in my area and derms didn't really remove things from people's eyes anyway.

My dad got a cyst on his face. It got bigger and bigger. He finally went to a plastic surgeon who just lanced it and left him with a scar that looked as bad as the cyst.

The hippie look eventually became mainstream fashion.

I grew up in NYC. Every few months my family and I went to see our relatives, who moved to Long Guyland, I'll never forget when one of the extreme Right Wing types, an uncle who was a city worker, asked my sister and I if we were "hippies". We just looked at him as if he was nuts.

My sister and I were young teens in the early 1970s. I asked our jerky uncle, "Why would you think that?" He looked disgustedly at our clothes, which were hardly 'out there' on any level.

We wore bell bottom jeans, turtlenecks and my sister had some beads around her neck and I had on a corduroy vest over the turtleneck, which my sister had embroidered. We were both art school students, we looked a bit more arty than most kids our age. We sure didn't look disheveled, we looked stylish and fashion forward.

My sister had long straight hair and wore round John Lennon eyeglasses because she needed them! My hair was longish.

My dumb uncle really had no answer as to why he thought we were hippies, other than mumbling something about our "weird hippie clothing." This man was a creep, he never held his opinions back.

He was a fairly young guy at the time, but always came across as an uptight Conservative jerk, he seemed to see popular fashion and pop music as extremely subversive! He was related through marriage, he was not at all like my aunt.

I remember him being a very angry man and a very strict father, no wonder two of his daughters wound up getting knocked up as teens!

His kids were much younger than my sister and I, years down the when I heard how they turned out, my mom and I had a huge laugh. My sister said she was not at all surprised that his daughters and sons wound up rebelling in the most extreme ways possible.

If only he would have allowed his kids to dress like 'hippies'! Ha-haaa!

[quote]If you were born with something like crossed eyes, your fate was sealed. You would never have a good job and you would always be laughed at and made fun of by small children. It was sad.

Demi Moore was cross-eyed as a child and that didn't prevent her from becoming the #1 female movie star in the world and the highest-paid actress at one time.

[quote]You don't even see acne on poor kids anymore. I think Medicaid covers acne treatments.

Yes, they do. I had cystic acne and that's how I was able to afford Accutane.

[quote]Close-ups might even show pimples. Also, I think these students are slightly older than the average teen pimple cohort (early teens).

Uh, people can get acne into their twenties and beyond. It's not just something that strikes 14-13 years old and then dissipates juni/senior year. I got my first breakout at 13 and by 16 I had major pizza face. I didn't seek treatment because people kept telling me that it would go away on its own and just continue to wash my face and use Clearasil. But it never cleared up.

Finally, at 24 I'd had enough and went to see a dermatologist. We tried all sorts of antibiotics, but as soon as he tried to wean me off them, the acne returned. Finally, he put me on Accutane and after 5 months of treatment, I've never had a breakout since.

Yes, fashion changed like lightning back then.

I saw a rerun of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" from 1968 or 1969. Rowan and Martin were wearing their rat-pack tuxes, the show's women were wearing their bright "mod" clothes and huge bouffants... and the musical guests were some hippie band who were wearing grubby denim and army surplus jackets, and masses of wild hair.

That show was only on the air for a few years, but during its run it's look went from cutting-edge hip to totally square.

Medicaid basically covers all generic versions of brand name medications and that includes the generic version of Retin-A.

A female friend was on Medicaid for two years, she was actually able to get the brand name version of the acne rosacea medication Finecea.

Depending on what other type of insurance is tied to a Medicaid plan, for example Emblem/Medicaid, some of the prescription coverage plans do cover brand name medications.

IIRC, usually with straight Medicaid, when means Medicaid which is not connected to another health insurance plan, it's difficult to get brand name medications. This is the info I remember from my friend. She had all sorts of ailments, including a heart condition. No, she was not fat, she didn't even smoke, she simply wasn't very lucky re her gene pool.

The photos are from LIFE magazine.

Seeing as how they were from several different schools, the original photos must have numbered well into the hundreds.

These were the best ones.

When you find a school with fashionable hot chicks, you stick around for a couple days.

The ugly zit-faced fatties didn't make the cut.

Not exactly rocket science.

[quote]I wonder if there were any poor kids in that school? And if they were sitting on the bleachers so they wouldn't get in the photographer's way.

Not at Woodside High. Woodside, CA has always been a wealthy enclave.

[quote] I wonder if there were any poor kids in that school?

Not at Beverly Hills High School, either. Beverly Hills is and was wealthy 1% rich kids (unless they had some sort of busing program going on at the time).

I love that it took 279 replies before someone noticed that it was one Asian girl in three different outfits, and not three different Asian girls.

It's "Rosemary Shoong," bitches, and don't be jealous that I got all the straight white boy's tongues wagging and partied with the grooviest crowd!

[quote] Demi Moore was cross-eyed as a child and that didn't prevent her from becoming the #1 female movie star in the world and the highest-paid actress at one time.

The poster was obviously talking about the days before there were surgical corrections for all of the maladies he listed. We saw people in the 1950s and 1960s who had gone through life with crossed eyes or a club foot.

Demi Mooire had surgery.

Were girl-fights common in those days or ever break out (i.e. girls fighting over boys)?

Not in Woodside or other posh schools, R295.

Wealthy and sophisticated kids have better ways of making their enemies miserable, or had.

We used to call those fights, "N*gger Piles", in school. Did anyone else go to a KKK school in the south?

[quote]I love that it took 279 replies before someone noticed that it was one Asian girl in three different outfits, and not three different Asian girls.

That's because they all look alike. Hippie fashions, that is.

[quote]We wore bell bottom jeans, turtlenecks and my sister had some beads around her neck and I had on a corduroy vest over the turtleneck, which my sister had embroidered.

R283, did you and your sister also have a black friend with an afro?

The Mod Squad: an establishment show making heroes out of three undercover hippie FINKS, man

They all look 100% better than the high school kids today, that's for sure.

I was in HS in California from 66-70. One thing I definitely remember was that if a girl got pregnant, she had to "go away" for a while. Can you imagine if they did that today? They'd have to start closing schools.

[quote] One thing I definitely remember was that if a girl got pregnant, she had to "go away" for a while. Can you imagine if they did that today? They'd have to start closing schools.

No, they wouldn't. Teen pregnancy in 2015 is at lower levels than 1969. Juvenile delinquency was also higher in 1969 than it is now, too.

Some of you just assert the absolute worst about today's youth (fat, lazy, violent, pregnant), when your generation (in certain respects) was worst.

[quote]Juvenile delinquency was also higher in 1969 than it is now, too.

That's because helicopter parents won't let their kids out of the house without an armed escort these days.

Today they're all fat and play violent video games.

In 1969, I was a Jet.

Isn't the girl in the thumbnail Winnie Pooper? I think these are just stills from The Wonder Years.

R283 makes a good point. There were a large amount of older people who were very belligerent and disrespectful to anyone who wore the new hairstyles or the new fashions. To them, long haired boys were "girls," anyone stylish or liberal (in some cases) was a "dirty hippie," people who would now be called "hipsters" were judged by their clothing to be "dirty Commies" (Communists). To these people. a boy with long hair was a "draft dodger" or "Communist," a girl with a mass of long straggly hair, barefoot, wearing some hippie attire was a junkie or slut. All kinds of moral judgments were made on clothing alone.

They were the 1960s version of Fox News watchers. There were a huge number of middle aged, pro-militarist, Vietam war supporters. They thought anyone who was against the war was a Communist and hated America. There were bumper stickers that said: "America, Love it or Leave It." They meant if you weren't a pro-Vietnam war, crew cut wearing, anti-Communist, Republican Nixon supporter, wearing a suit and tie, you had no right to live in America and you should get out. Nobody had a right to criticize the American society or government, or they were a Communist. This was the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh's fan base.

They were very similar to the extremist belligerence of Fox News viewers today.

This is a great thread.

Were any dataloungers at Altamont for the Stones festival?

Ah, 1968 & 1969. I was a teenager, lying on my bed, smoking a fat joint while my parents were at work, and playing Iron Butterfly's 17+ minute classic jam, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" at maximum volume on my monster headphones.

"Were any dataloungers at Altamont for the Stones festival? "

Two older friends of mine were at Altamont. They had a great time, and had absolutely no idea that anything was wrong until they read the papers the next day.

They were pretty far back in the crowd, and I have no idea how sober they were, but they've never been much for mind-altering substances.

[quote] That's because helicopter parents won't let their kids out of the house without an armed escort these days.

What are you talking about? The local malls, bowling alley, movie theaters, etc. are as packed with immature teens as they've always been. There are teens bicycling and skateboarding everywhere. (This is in Southern California). You sound out of touch, or live in a very strange part of the country.

If you guys can't figure that most of those kids pictured were models, you aren't very bright. There is something incredibly fake about the pictures.

"The same Asian girl is wearing three different outfits. Yeah, the photos are definitely posed. "

Of course the pictures are posed to some degree, but that doesn't mean that the Asian girl is a model.

Every high school has at least one girl who, if they heard a magazine photographer was coming, would load up her momma's minivan with every cool outfit she owned! She'd change her clothes between every class, and three times during lunch.

I was only seven years old in '69 but I can remember how people looked from 1965 onward. My favorite look on girls and young women in 1969 was the brown leather (or maybe faux leather) skirt with matching vest. Remember those? It was a popular look for a short while. The vests were worn opened, normal sized (ie, somewhat short) with maybe gold chain embellishments and the skirts were short but not too micro-mini. Paired with a chiffon blouse or a clingy turtleneck knit and dark suntan hose or a pair of tights. A pair of just below the knee zip-up boots or a chunky pump and some jewelry completed the look.

Many girls wore long hair several inches past their shoulders with a headband or a barrette. Ponytails with thick yarn ribbons too. Teen boys mostly looked very "My Three Sons"-ish except for some of the tough guys who went for long peek-a-boo bangs. Occasionally I'd see a mod dressed guy wearing something like bright colored polka dotted puffy sleeved shirt or turtleneck with a sport coat and medallion necklace along with stylish ankle boots.

Sweatshirts were popular casual wear. Often plain without logos or sayings in various colors. My upstairs neighbors friend's older 19 y.o. sister had a large stack of small triangle headscarves (even though she had short hair) stashed in her dresser. White flat sandals with a thong or toe loop were common. Slightly or full-on butterfly sleeved mini-dresses were very in. Loud print cotton pants and culottes that zipped up the front plus dresses with oversized yokes and long scarves and ribbon bows were an everyday sight. Very Judy Stangis.

One of my mom's friends was with a hot twenty-something guy at the time named Pete. He dressed like a desert hippie, tan suede fringed coat, jeans, and brown biker boots. Gorgeous guy with sandy, slightly wavy hair long enough to wear in a ponytail.

Of course there were plenty of middle-aged people who looked like Edith and Archie Bunker or Edna Turnblad in curlers and muumuus. Or, if they were better looking and styled more or less emulated June Lockhart or Andy Williams.

Lenore Reday's giant Janis Joplin glasses are amazing. And they really compliment her very mod purple pantsuit. Lenore is the grooviest!

[quote] What are you talking about? The local malls, bowling alley, movie theaters, etc. are as packed with immature teens as they've always been.

Not where I live. I haven't seen teens in malls since the late 1990s, when the security guards started chasing them out of the food court. They never went back.

Then came Nintendo DS and Guitar Hero and Xbox and they all retreated into their homes to play games with each other over the cable lines. My teen son wouldn't ge caught dead in a mall. He and his friends all shop online.

The surfer look was big with guys. Straight leg pants, loafers without socks, madras shirts or short sleeved henleys which had a strip of different colored material around the neck and down the buttons. Some surgery wore an iron cross. I was in grade school and I remember hearing that one if the boys in high school had his iron cross ripped off his neck by a jewish teacher who screamed that it was a nazi symbol. The kids had no idea it was associated with nazis.

Oxford type shirts had an outer loop on the neck that girls called "fairy loops." The girls would snip them off the boys who sat in front of them in class and make a necklace out of the fairy loops. Girls also made long necklaces out of gum wrappers and presented them to each other on their birthdays.

This is what we called a surfer shirt, except I never saw a plaid one. They were usually solid color and the piece of material around the neck and buttons was often white. In this photo, it looks like a shadow around the neck and down the buttons but it's not. It's a solid color piping.

[quote] Teen pregnancy in 2015 is at lower levels than 1969.

Link, please.

Btw, most teen pregnancies today are to unmarried women. In the 50s and 60s, most pregnant teenagers were married. My mother married at 17 and gave birth at 19. Fewer women went to college; most got married straight out of high school. So the majority of teen pregnancies at 17, 18 and 19 were to married women back then.

Made in 1969 & released in 1970

take a look at this clip from

THE ADVENTURERS featuring a very young

Jaclyn Smith towards the end of the clip.

BUMP for bringing to mind my Hang Ten shirt, and Levi cords. That America was a better place to live than the present.

White peglegged Levi cords (100% cotton) and brown suede desert boots!

I think we need to find Rosemary Shoong.

The "collegiate" look was still strong in 1969.

Love R314 and R317's contributions. Thank you, gentlemen.

What about that barefoot girl in the white? Could students really go to suburban high schools without shoes back then?

[quote]Btw, most teen pregnancies today are to unmarried women. In the 50s and 60s, most pregnant teenagers were married. My mother married at 17 and gave birth at 19. Fewer women went to college; most got married straight out of high school. So the majority of teen pregnancies at 17, 18 and 19 were to married women back then.

[quote]In 2013, there were 26.6 births for every 1,000 adolescent females ages 15-19, or 274,641 babies born to females in this age group. Nearly eighty-nine percent of these births occurred outside of marriage. The 2013 teen birth rate indicates a decline of ten percent from 2012 when the birth rate was 29.4 per 1,000. The teen birth rate has declined almost continuously over the past 20 years. In 1991, the U.S. teen birth rate was 61.8 births for every 1,000 adolescent females, compared with 26.6 births for every 1,000 adolescent females in 2013.

[quote]The birth rate for U.S. teenagers in 2000 was 48.7 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19 years, the lowest level ever reported for the Nation (figure 1 and table 1). Comparable data have been available since 1940 and the rate for that year (54.1) was about 11 percent higher than in 2000. The rate has fluctuated somewhat but has generally trended downward since it reached a peak in 1957 at 96.3 per 1,000, about double its current level (except for an upward spurt 1986–91).There have also been dramatic variations in the number of births to teenage women. The number reached a high point in 1970, with 644,708 babies born to women aged 15–19 years, 37 percent more than the preliminary number reported for 2000 (470,506). Over the six decades since 1940, the major shift in teenage childbearing patterns has been the general decline since the late 1950's in the birth rate concurrent with a steep rise in the proportion of teenage births that were to unmarried women

The lack of logos is also something I notice. No pathetic walking billboards.

The sweatshirts back then were of a totally different quality. Sort of "crusty". Very comfortable, 100% cotton I assume. Can't stand the melting, spongy, puffy sweatshirts of today. Or the too thin American Apparel-style hoodies.

If anyone knows of a modern company that makes authentic old school sweatshirts, please post links. NO hipster sloganeering, however. Plain.

Bump

[quote]The lack of logos is also something I notice. No pathetic walking billboards.

Wow, I didn't even think of that but you're right. No logo clothes at all, not only here but in most other pics I've seen from this era.

I agree, R322. It'd be crazy to see what Rosemary Shoong looks like now.

Bumping Rosemary and the fabulous hippie kids

To whomever said that the black lady pictured in the OP's link is wearing a wig:

Chances are LOW that that is a wig or false hair. For one thing - too much of her actual hairline is exposed. Wigs back then tended to completely conceal the natural hairline. You didn't see the Supremes' hairlines, did you? Nor did you see them with this type of hairstyle. If that look was achievable with false hair in 1969 - you would have seen the Supremes or someone similarly successful (i.e. Dionne Warwick) sporting it.

I think that is the black lady's natural hair. Contrary to what some may think, there are lots of black women who naturally have long, full hair like this.

"If anyone knows of a modern company that makes authentic old school sweatshirts, please post links. NO hipster sloganeering, however. Plain."

Levi's Vintage Clothing.

But you'll pay for it.

My aunt was a high school freshman during the 1968/1969 school year (she's 61 now). I was thumbing through her freshman yearbook online recently and was impressed with how fashionable and sophisticated many of the students looked. And this was far from the San Fran Bay area or someplace "major" like that - this was small-town/rural North Carolina. They were considerably more conservative in dress than some of the kids we see in OP's link - but posh all the same. I loved how these small town kids all looked poised to slay someone from "My Three Sons" or "Family Affair".

From a fashion standpoint, at least - it was a great time to be young in 1969.

R163, your post is one of the truest, smartest things I have EVER read on Datalounge.

[quote]Are there even such things as teen hangouts anymore? Or are they too overscheduled and helicoptered to hang out and have unstructured activity.

Not to mention....it seems that as time has gone on, malls and other businesses have become much more uptight about packs of teens hanging out on their property. So let's not place all of the blame on the helicopter parents - it's the profit-obsessed businesses, too.

I would also love to know what happened to Rosemary Shoong, as well as Lenore in the hot purple pantsuit, and what they look like now if they're still alive. They'd both be old ladies today.

Why couldn't you wear jeans? And why couldn't girls wear pants?

[quote]Why couldn't you wear jeans? And why couldn't girls wear pants?

Dress codes.

[quote]Why couldn't you wear jeans?

"I can't wear my blue jeans on the subway." --Ethel Mertz

The poorest, fattest, scruffiest kid in the entire school in 1969 would be Prom King compared with the slobs of 2015.

Looking at these photos, it makes you realize how unbelievably trashy so many people look today. Modern high school girls look like hookers, and guys look like low-class thugs in their sports jerseys and sweatpants.

[quote]The lack of logos is also something I notice. No pathetic walking billboards.

Message T-Shirts started in the 70s.

Big ass logos started in the late 80s-early 90s.

Underwear is the worst offender these days.

Logo wear should all be burned.

Fave thread EVER

After the Soft Butch Sous Chef Whodunnit that DL solved threads.

Did anybody find the Asian girl in these pics?

So I see what the girls wore, but what did the boys typically wear in 1969?

What ever happened to the Age of Aquarius? You know, all that peace, love and understanding, up, up, and away in the beautiful balloon?

We had a little something to say about all of that "peace" bullshit in 1969, R347!

[quote]and not a fattie among them.

Weird isn't it? Seeing so many normal sized high schoolers. Now some of the girls look like they've already popped out a few kids with figures of a 45 year old matron.

Love the the chick in OP's pic. Definitely a Native American theme going on.

R163 - If you were straight, white, middle class and from a two parent family - and a TV show - your description of the 70s is right on.

Did you swim naked in gym class? Did guys walk around unselfconsciously naked in the locker room?

1970

[quote]what did the boys typically wear in 1969?

I started out the 1968-69 school year in preppy sweaters, khakis, penny loafers, and by winter, was wearing bell bottom jeans from Landlubber. If you didn't wear a shirt, people could see the top your pubic hair. I bought my first bells the day the White Album came out, but I wasn't allowed to wear jeans to school. So I bought some dress pants with bell bottoms, and was my usual perfectly color-coordinated self, only with bell bottoms.

When I started college the next year, I didn't wear dress pants ever. Just bell bottom jeans, all from Landlubber.

In Landlubbers, you looked like this:

Or this.

Whoa, cool pants!

Plaid, plaid, and more plaid. God, all I remember is a sea of plaid in every shade you can imagine.

I'd want to be rosemary shoon. She's in her 70s now. If alive probably still styling and wealthy.

Whoa, I think I found Rosemary Shoong today. :-D

bump!

That hair was not natural it was straightened. And a lot of it was bleached also.

I mean this was a community with a fair number of Jews, but try to pick them out.

I like there threads, they're groovy

The only plaid I remember from 1969 were the girls' Ladybug and Villager skirts.

groovy

I assume this has already been posted .

Just think, these stylish kids raised the sloppy generation.

Room 222 was supposed to be set in a kind of "rough" high school. Laughable now.

By the way, Karen Valentine aged quite well.

Karen Valentine face of this thread and new DL icon!

Landlubbers

OMFG. Was Bill Cable gorgeous or what.