Just for Fun: Fashion Memo from 1967 - YouLookFab Forum

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Just for Fun: Fashion Memo from 1967

rae

(website)

Veteran

"Mod fashions are NOT appropriate business attire."

I just came back from my last staff meeting, where the big bosses shared some fun tidbits they found in the archives. Among them was the above quote from a memo reminding employees to be mindful of their personal grooming. Standing about in our Friday jeans, we all had a good laugh!

We were also read a letter from 1983 in which a client questioned an employee's pedal pushers. This client was so upset that he took his deposit eslewhere. So remember, ladies: you never know who is out there recording your fashio foibles for posterity.

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20 replies

Latest reply was from velvetychocolate

Gaylene

Veteran

Rae, I remember in the late 60's when my very fashionable mother wore a PANT SUIT for the first time to her job as loans officer in the bank. It was considered extremely daring. The bank manager called her into his office to discuss, as one of the few women who had risen above an entry-level position, if she was setting an appropriate example for the rest of the female staff!

I guess he was right to worry that the sight of women in pants would eventually infiltrate even the sacred halls of the banking world.

Anonymous

Wearing a pantsuit to work. What nerve! LOL! I'm old enough to remember those rules.

Mochi

Veteran

I'm 48. I remember as a little kid having a babysitter/mother's helper, a neighborhood girl who described how the girls had not been allowed to wear pants to her public school. One day the entire female class showed up wearing jeans, and the school officials had to back down and allow trousers, rather than send them all home or punish them en masse.

MsMary

Veteran

I used to work for our state Court of Appeal, and one of the justices, a lady who was then in her 80s and was the longest-serving bench officer in the state, did not permit the women on her staff to wear pants until the Legislature passed a law prohibiting "no pants for women" dress codes!

And I didn't wear pants to court for the first time until 2000, and felt rather daring at the time!

Anonymous

Those were the good old days, weren't they? Especially in the cold winter!

rae

(website)

Veteran

Ooh, I love the additional stories everyone is sharing. Maybe this is one reason why dress pants are so hard to find - designers haven't been *making* them for women all that long... they are behind on their studies!

catgirl

Veteran

Not really on topic, but I remember a teacher telling me back in first grade "correcting" me that my mother (who is a physician) was a nurse, not a doctor. My mom was so mad when I came home and told her that.

We have photos of my mom wearing the most mod little shift dresses when she first came to the US in the 60s, along with cat-eye sunglasses and a groovy flippy bob.

Mochi

Veteran

Well, let us time-travel ahead a few decades to where I had my first job, at an ultra-, ultra-, ultra-conservative financial company in Tokyo in the late '80s.

One of the main responsibilities of female employees was to make and serve tea.

We also (women) had to wear uniforms. Sure, in a sense the guys were wearing a uniform, but ours were literal. They were some polyster getup with a matching vest and skirt and some innocuous white blouse. Sorry I don't have a pic! (ETA: similar to attached pic below, though)

The thing with uniforms was that you were now a representative of the company, easily identifiable when out in public. Actually, we would wear street clothes to the company and then change for work and reverse the procedure before going home.

One day I just didn't have any clean, decent clothes to wear so I wore the uniform on the way to work. Later I was criticized for that.

The women, every couple of months, were subjected to "Manners Meetings" (literally called Mah-nah, the word adopted from English). Our "leader" was a slightly senior woman who would run through some stuff with us like keep those fingernails clean, don't wear bright tights, etc. I do remember one time she actually started in on the men. Like, Mr. Suzuki has pretty bad dandruff--what should we do about it? How to handle it, the most discreet way to break it to him. I was secretly gobsmacked that even the guys' poor hygiene was somehow OUR problem now????

Ah, the good old days back in 1952! I lasted about a year there.

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Gaylene

Veteran

Since we are walking down memory lane, I remember hating my "home economics" option that I was required to take in Grades 8 & 9 in the mid-sixties. We were not allowed to wear pants because we were supposed to learn how to become "ladies" and "good wives" who knew how to cook, do laundry, sew our own clothes, mend socks, and embroider in our spare time!

I remember telling my teacher that I had no intention of spending my life looking after a husband and, in fact, I doubted that I would ever be interested in getting married or having children. I was forced to iron aprons for the rest of the afternoon! Seems hilarious now, but that's why I've always worn my feminist badge proudly.

Laura

(website)

Veteran

Why do I wish we had a little bit more of this attention to dress today, minus the sexism?

My first job in NYC was at a big PR firm, and the president of the company (a woman) was very firm in her view that we women should wear skirts and dresses. It wasn't a rule. But she would look you up and down and give you an approving nod if you wore something that pleased her. If not ... evil eye for you!!

rae

(website)

Veteran

This is great!

Mochi, that is so interesting about the uniforms... though I am not surprised it was frowned on to wear them out in public. It was the same with our cheerleading uniforms. We got a very long lecture about it once after a few girls wore them to parties. Orgs like to control the power of their uniforms!

Gaylene, I planned a big protest for years - I wanted to take metal shop in place of home ec. But by the time I got to high school, they got rid of both programs.

LOL @ the all-powerful Stink Eye!

Julie

Veteran

Mochi, I'm surprised no one picked up on your story about all the girls in your school wearing pants or jeans the same day. A classic example of "civil disobedience" getting an archaic or stupid law/ rule/regulation changed. I guess the shock value worked in that case, but in later years the response wasn't to send everyone home, but rather a note in your student record, or an extra 5 or 10 percent taken off your marks which for many meant the difference when it came to acceptance to the university or college of their choosing.

L'Abeille

Veteran

Haha these are too funny.

What I remember is when I was interning (in the early '80's), the women's OR get-up was above-the-knee fitted scrub dresses, that had to be worn with pantyhose (which I have always despised) rather than bare legs. I always sneaked into the men's change-room to get proper scrub pants and tops, and was the only woman to do so. Though mind you, I was told after a code that I should let someone else do the chest compressions if I was going to wear those tops (I guess they had a rather low, wide V-neck)

Suz

(website)

Veteran

Loving all these stories! And Rae, congratulations. Today is the first day of the rest of your life!!

Echo

Veteran

While this is only slightly fashion related, my mother - a teacher - was forced to resign when she was pregnant both time (1966 and 1970) because it was "indecent" to have a pregnant public school teacher. She was hired back immediately afterwards, but still... Additionally, the men - even the unmarried ones - received a "head of household" premium in their pay.

And the special ed teacher in my mom's building had to obby the principal and superintendent in order to be able to wear pants in the mid-80's. She was always on the floor in a circle with her students and doing many physical sorts of activitie with them, and skirts simply weren't practical. I remember my mom wearing a skirt or dress, hose and pointed-toe heels every single day to school as a middle-school teacher.

However, I also have some of the same feelings as Laura. Minus the sexism, I do wish I could go to a nice restaurant and not expect to see people wearing jeans. And I wish there were more than a handful of places that still required a tie for men.

rae

(website)

Veteran

L'Abeille, that is some catch-22 uniform!

Suz, thank you. I still have Mon-Wed, ending the 15th, but no more full work weeks - woohoo! I also got a really good lead today. *knocks on wood*

Anonymous

I am loving the additional stories.

Mo

(website)

Veteran

Rae, I got to take metal shop and cooking at my school lol. I made a bracelet in metal shop - true story ha ha. Got sent to the principal's office by my cooking teacher. Guess what I don't do a lot of even today - cook!
Can't wait for Wed. for you!

rae

(website)

Veteran

Heh heh, Mo, that is awesome!

velvetychocolate

Veteran

My first real job (1990's) was with a very large financial institution - I'd applied for an entry level position, figuring I might be able to get a position as junior teller (if I was lucky) or maybe I could get something in the mailroom to start off with. During my interview, I was shoved off into this room, where they gave me a whole bunch of tests. Somehow it ended up that I was placed in the so-called computer network control center.

Thing was? I was given a handbook...and in that handbook, there were guidelines for "deportment" and dress. That handbook was geared to customer-facing bankers...(I didn't clue into this fact, of course).

I spent quite a bit of money buying some nice dresses and suits before I started. My first day at work, I wore a dark forest green 'cool wool' wrap dress with a wide, cognac leather belt, low-ish cognac heels and really nice gold hoops in my ears.

Thing was? I was in a computer control room - a data center. Raised floors, where there was cooling air coming up from the floorboards to cool the mainframes and tape libraries. To make matters worse, I was the only female in the entire department, and I was younger than anyone else by at least ten years.

Long story short? The stupid floors were shooting cold air up my dress, and I had to keep holding my skirt in place. I was totally mortified.

I hate to say it, but this experience meant that I didn't wear a skirt or a dress for almost a decade, except for just two occasions - a work friend's wedding, and then being maid of honour at my best friend's wedding. Aside from that, I did not wear a skirt or a dress for the better part of a decade. In fact, the next time I wore a "dress" was at my own wedding!

I show up in a somewhat expensive (to me), conservative-looking dress. Low heels, gold hoops. Even the dreaded nude nylons. The guys made fun of me (laughing and snickering about the dress/floor issue) and really went to town with the teasing. They wore jeans, white running shoes and casual shirts, looking like they walked off the set of the TV show, 'Seinfeld.'

...

I also remember growing up and how Mom wore a suit with a bow-tie blouse and those same Seinfeld-like white sneakers on the way to work! She'd get all dressed up in her suit and her bow-tie/pussy-bow blouse and put on her clunky white sneakers. Does anyone else remember that fad? She also had a bob hairstyle, with a slight perm, and it looked kind of like those "Cathy" cartoons in the newspapers. A triangular hairstyle, the navy blue skirt suit, the bow blouse, "beige" nylons and the giant white sneakers. Oh...and she also drove a burgundy *Pacer*. Oh, and there was also blue mascara!!

Laughing here....