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.
