I know my family did. When I was a kid, it was sort of a ritual for my siblings and me to get them out of storage at the beginning of summer and then wear them for the next three months. I still do this as an adult, mainly for comfort (I wear an untucked polo shirt and sandals with them); in fact I usually end up wearing my shorts longer and longer, right into October.
By the way, I don't remember my father wearing shorts too often, except maybe when I was a kid. He usually wore the Bermuda type. Mom wore shorts in the summer right into her nineties.
Anyway, the wearing of shorts was the focus of the article above which appeared in the Journal back on July 26, 1963. The writer was making the observation that Downtown Lorain shoppers seemed to be wearing shorts in violation of generally accepted dress code norms.
As the article notes, "Fall and winter fashions may be drawing attention of Florence, Paris and New York City...but..on Lorain's Broadway it's the shorts that are catching the eyes.
"Amy Vanderbilt, who tells everyone what to wear, would be horrified! She says that the properly dressed female shopper should appear on the streets in a neat costume complete with hose, shoes, hat and gloves.
"Here we do it differently. Perhaps it is because Lorain is sort of a vacationland city. At least that may be our excuse.
"When the sun beats down on the pavement, the city's feminine gender adopts its own rules for proper shopping attire. The shorts come out in full force."
The writer wraps up her article by pointing out that if you really wanted to stop traffic while shopping on Broadway in Downtown Lorain, dress like Amy Vanderbilt recommended.
I found it interesting that in the Lorain is described as 'sort of a vacationland city.' I've noted many times on this blog how Lorain was always trying to muscle its way in Vacationland, marketing-wise, in the 1950s. (The traditional eastern edge of the Lake Erie Vacationland has long been Vermilion.)
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Elsewhere on the page above, we see ads reflecting the kind of dress code formality that Amy Vanderbilt championed. There's an ad for a Fall-Winter Pattern Catalog (illustrated with a smart "Casual Shift" outfit) that you could get from the Journal for fifty cents (in coins, please).
We also see an ad promoting 'beautiful fur-trimmed coats' for Dunlap's at the O'Neil-Sheffield Shopping Center.
And let's not overlook the ad for McKee's Shoes, a Hopewell family favorite place to shop.
9 comments:
The photographer would be hard pressed to find a bunch of women walking down Broadway in the morning wearing shorts in todays world.I know these photos had to be taken on different days but Broadway is a no mans land now.Plus,it's not even safe to own a dog in the city now the way the police killed a golden retriever of all things, a few weeks back.
We would be wearing shorts and tennies in the summer as kids, although the shoes probably came from Ontario or W.T. Grant rather than McKee's.
Around fourteen or so, I stopped wearing shorts, and I haven't since, not even here; all my pants are black drawstring sweats, worn either with a colorful Hawaiian shirt or a dark, short sleeve pocket shirt, and (for outdoor wear) my black multi-pocket vest(because I'm too fat to rock a utility belt). The outfit is completed by a black, wide brim fedora, complete with pins, buttons, and three feathers, two necklaces, and black house shoes.
I forgot to mention the watch on my left wrist, and generally two bracelets on my right.
Basketball shorts and t-shirts all summer long. Will wear cargo shorts if going somewhere (ballgame, festival, etc..).
Well, at least those people weren't wearing their pajamas to the store, as some folks do nowadays.
I wonder what it's like to get up in the morning and see your butt prominently displayed in the local scandal sheet.
And I wonder how many petticoats are worn, nowadays.
I wore shorts all the time as a kid, but don't like them, now, unless I'm in swimming. It's just that much less skin to get sunburnt.
Dad, who was in them all the time as a youngster and younger man, stopped wearing them when he was sent to "Persia" in WW 2 - he said it was the hottest place he'd ever been to in his life and the natives wore light-colored, light-weight long sleeves and trousers. He figured they were the experts and so adopted that philosophy. "The sun's only hot when it hits your skin."
I agree with Buster. At least those folks in the photos weren't wearing their pajamas to the store as they do today . . . PJs, and those awful flip flops. :(
I thought that was just a Texas thing.
It seems to have spread, along with the male fashion of wearing shorts and t-shirts in the dead of winter.
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