At 84, I feel like I have just spent an hour watching a rerun of my life, that inculuded wearing detachable collars, when I was a Junior Bank Officer working with the ANZ Bank Relieving Staff, where the detachable collar kept me looking smart while I was doing a lot of travelling. And in the 1970s I thought I look very smart with the broad lapels and wide cuffs. Phil
Broad, or at least “moderate” lapels need to make a comeback, it’s hard to find a jacket off the rack, or even made-to-measure with more than a 3”, or even 2.75” lapel. Something half-way decent almost NEEDS to be bespoke or vintage thesedays, I’m in my 30s and I’m afraid by the time I’m around your age, or even younger than that…I worry I won’t be able to buy a suit off the rack anywhere, regardless of its level of quality.
70s, in my estimation, were an attempt to introduce native indigenous wardrobe and re-introduce the 1700's high fallutin' ostentatious flowy rufflly garb of the European Courts but wuth a twist for the modern era. The library at the California State Los Angeles campus has a large collection of fashion magazines of the 70's, and I find that the upper class wore some of the best TAILORED CLOTHES EVER SEEN. Compare them to what Real Housewives Shows wear at the "Reunion" shows. These Real Houewives ladies dress like street harlots sometimes at the reunions. Take a look at 1970's photos of Steve McQueen at parties, and Patricia Altschul 1970's personal photos at parties: IMPECCABLE.
I like the bright 60s clothing, body shirts, and short shorts. I get that it's too much for some people, but one thing they're not is bland. So so much of men's clothing is in dark, muted, or neutral colors and simple or boxy cuts. Men's clothing is often so unimaginative and dull it puts me to sleep. I'm not knocking suits/"classic" things at all, they look great and you should wear them if you like them! But color, loud prints, decorative elements, interesting cuts and materials, and breaking the rules of fashion are for 100% you too if you want. Whatever you wear, you deserve to feel good in it!
Ah the 70’s. Me in 1974 wearing my Michael Jackson inspired attire while my father wore crushed velvet sport coats flair legged plaid pants with 3 inch cuff. Grandfather was in solid color jumpsuits. Uncle favored leisure suits. We all were confident and in style.
My father was a Teddy Boy and for a time wore a genuine Edwardian suit which he was given by an elderly neighbour who had kept it since his youth. It was black, apparently it fitted like a glove and was the envy of my dad's friends.
I must disagree about the 40's work wear. I'd much rather see that than the current trend of going to work looking like they dressed out of a rag bag. 😕 I wish my current employer had a uniform service. It looks very professional, even if not really an exciting look.
Gentlemen in the 30's, 40's and even 50's were far more elegant than today. It's great to watch old London town in mid 20 century movies. Such a fashionable place and with a clearly identifiable culture and people.
You forgot the disco era, tight polyester shirts with big collars, open to the waist, chains around the neck and way too tight high waisted pants and platform shoes, you forgot those.
1970s dress loafers were definitely inspired by the Victorian/pre-Victorian footwear, what with the long curved tongues and all. The pirates in Hook wear that stuff. As such, the 1970s loafer is no more, extinct.
My grandfather, who would be well into his 100s if he were still living, wore his green work sets for decades. That alone vouches for how well made and durable the pieces were. Those pants and shirts withstood many years of hard use on construction sites, doing yardwork, fixing cars, and gardening. The young kids in the neighborhood used to call him Mr. Green Jeans.
Can confirm that there's still a few old boys who never gave up the Teddy Boy look and you can still see them I some pubs. They certainly aren't common, but you certainly won't miss them. Even if they're wearing modern clothes, the hair cut persists.
I remember my grandfather wearing the 1940-60s style 'work uniform'. As a kid I thought he looked like a police officer though he was actually a milk man. LoL That said he and his coworkers as well as other workers looked far more professional than workmen have in the last four or five decades.
One of my colleague asked me once, (who noticed that I usually wear suit pants), is there something between jeans and suit pants? He wanted to wear something a bit more professional looking, but not too fancy. I answered, sure, look for chinos and khaki pants. He was genuinely amazed, that plain cloth pants are exists and also look nice. He instantly bought a few pairs. Jeans have such a monopoly, people are basically know nothing else.
I disagree on the work uniform bit. It's no different than what people do now with field jacket/safari jackets. Even high end brands such as Balmain uses military uniforms as inspiration for their flagship products and there is nothing unfashionable about about it.
General Douglas MacArthur comes to my mind as a prime model for the matching work sets. His getup may seem strange to us modern men, but he successfully pulled off that bossy and intimidating, "down to business" look. I think it's quite manly.
Same. The work uniform was made for bricklayers, mechanics and other blue collars. Most didn't wear t-shirts and jeans to work as it was considered slopppy. Heck at that time most farmers were wearing collared shirts. The work uniform was something you could be seen in public with and was practical if boring. ( I imagine some men mixed colors as well) Great video BTW.
I actually like the matching work uniforms as well; however, I like it as simply that. The appearance also does make me think of the romanticized images of simpler times as shown by the image of the milk man.
Starched collars were not as dangerous as you make it out to be (I wear them, and they're very comfortable). If fitted correctly they are perfectly fine. It's the equivalent to calling corsets deadly, when infact it's been proven to be wrong hundred times before and are still used in medicine today. I should note that starched collars can also help with bad neck posture, as it did with me.
In the 80’s I remember that the trends changed every week, I worked in a department store in a mall so I could see the trends all the time. I had to wear a suit at work and I couldn’t afford an expensive one so I bought two black 80’s suits but they were not long with padded collars. They were both high waisted tailored one was double breasted and one was like a tuxedo and I wore them with really skinny ties. I had a very slim build so these suits looked great on me. But I do remember parachute pants and aviator clip belts and neon colored shirts and padded quilted shiny fabric shoes.
The shirt collar worn over the jacket's collar became a 'thing' in the late-30s with what were known then as "Hepsters", who became "Hipsters" by the 1950s. It's really not a bad look if done properly... The later 40s early 50s 2-tone Leisure suits/wrap jackets lend themselves to the practice... There's nothing as Kool as a "popped" Capri collar over a Dupioni silk jacket. But I have to agree... The shirt collar DID become grossly exaggerated by the late 1960s and into the 70s... Ruining a once-good idea.
My grandmother went out with a teddy boy in the 1950s. She used to talk about his hair, his drainpipe trousers and the fact he was what we'd call a "hard man" (like a tough guy to Americans). I think they broke up after he got in trouble with the police. She herself got a haircut they called a DA (Duck's Arse) much to her own Victorian grandmother's horror
I have to admit that some of the guys in the shown pictures really rocked that style though. I guess even terrible fashion styles can be done in a cool way if you know what you are doing
As a guy who likes a lot of Industrial music - where the bands literally dress like this - I didn't mind them, I actually thought they looked pretty cool! I would totally wear one.
How could you not mention the Zoot Suit of the late 1930's and early 1940's. With its super-sized shoulder pads, sprawling lapels and peg-leg pants. Think of the fashions of Dizzy Gillespie, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, my Uncle Lloyd and the movie Malcolm X with Denzel Washington and Spike Lee dancing the jitterbug at the dance hall. High fashion for POC!!
Reviewbrah agrees. It does look really good, as long as it fits you well. The alternative is to look like you are a used car retailer that bough the suit for 15$
Agree,..Miami Vice is WHY a lot of men even cared about Fashion and style to begin with,..both then AND now LoL! before Don Johnson you'd never find any American man who considered himself masculine wearing pink LoL!
I have a cheap suit jacket, which the pants were missing, and it fits me pretty much perfectly. Double breasted navy blue, 6x1 sack. Reminds me of the 80s and 90s, though I can wear it like it's from the 50s easily, even with a vest. Versatile wardrobe is the key to mastering any look or style you're going for.
Great video. Like others, I would like to see you cover the 70s in more detail, with such items as leisure suits, the so-called non-suit or un-suit, and chains. Actually, many of the 60s and 70s fashions look good compared to the grunge and t-shirt yoga pants uniforms of today. Indeed, in many ways, the 60s and 70s had a more free-wheeling feel than today. Another idea might be to take a look at the Rat Pack members and how their fashions changed over the years. A good example is Sammy Davis Jr. Thanks for all your videos. Keep up the good work.
I prefer the bright colors of the late 60's and 70's as long as they were used tastefully. I never did like the preponderance of dark colors in the early 60's or the lack of flair. The real horrors in fashion started in the mid-1990's and continues to deteriorate to this day. People are dressing down entirely too much and too far down into appearing indistinguishable from the homeless.
Somewhat unconsciously, I have acquired a lot of familiarity with upper class men's fashion of the early decades of the last century. This is because I am a fan of P.G. Wodehouse, and his Bertie and Jeeves stories. Bertie would always describe in great detail the clothing he wore, and in fact in most of the stories, an item of clothing was an important plot point. Frequently, Jeeves, the valet, would be offended by some new item that Bertie insisted on wearing, against Jeeves's objection. After Jeeves's would invariably extract his master from some pickle, he would be rewarded by being allowed to trash the offending object. On a different subject, I was very much around in the seventies, and never saw any of those dog ear collars. I do remember some bad styles from the 60s and 70s that weren't mentioned.
I am disappointed that you did not mention platform shoes from the 70's. I can still remember one daft lad with 4 inch platform shoes trying to climb a flight of steps.
Whoa whoa there tiger! The power suits of the 80's weren't that much an affront to good fashion. I even went to college dressed like that. Those ample jackets were like portable RC's in the summer. And it was also about the type of fabrics that were popular these days, making those suits very comfortable. Lots of viscose, linen, wool, terlenka, silk and cashmere for ties. I had Valentino, Bogey, XYZ, Addy Riviera suits. Roberto Botticelli shoes. Of course the Miami Vice series had a lot of influence too (shees, Don Johnson was practically wearing women's clothing every episode).
Don Johnson, and the basis of Miami Vice's costumes, were ripped off from early New Wave groups. In 1982 there was a band already wearing what Don Johnson popularised. This channel only has Miami Vice to reference when the 1980s are the topic. Without it, they'd have nothing to say about the 1980s. Without Miami Vice, fashion would have still taken a similar course of trajectory, thanks to New Wave and MTV which were crazy popular before Miami Vice.
I love these videos but I was wondering if you guys could put together one showing the specific tailoring styles of all the decades to help people decide which era of tailoring they want to follow. I know I'm at the point where I am trying to find which era I want to follow for my suits.
Yes! I agree with the commenter that certain jobs (in the US) should require them. On visits home (to the US) I would mistake guys who came to fix pipelines or whatever as burglars or something; dressed in their dirty jeans and workshirts...
13:10 NO! I will NOT pardon that pun, Preston! It was a good, well delivered pun and i will not have you insulate it with that expression! Pun lives matter!
There's something missing in 1990's time: the plateau boots! I remember quite well, that some "trendy" people wore Sneakers with absurdely high entire plateaus.
Preston, you are the perfect guide for this amusing skip along the long and winding Yellow Brick Road of men's fashion oddities and curiosities of the past century. Grazie mille!
This channel only highlights the irony trends of the time, and not the classy stuff that was regularly caught. Hitchcock's final film had great costumes.
@@josephwalsh7546 I love the long flowing hair whether real or with some help from the wigmaker. I don't know about the lice though. The shaved heads under the wigs prevented lice. The lice in the wigs could be killed relatively easily when the wigs were regularly cleaned by boiling them.
@@christophergraves6725 I've never heard of the wigs being boiled ( I would have thought it would ruin the wig ). I have heard of them being dusted with a compound containing arsenic which is alleged to have made some wearers very ill fom arsenic poisoning.
We should be able to wear whatever we want to wear, whatever we are comfortable with, and not how it's judged by others. The 60's, 70's and 80's had good fashion choices, and many should be revived.
@Napoleon XXIII. Paul Hogan had Working Class Style by the bucket load, He started his career in Australia doing a series of humouros routines, on the TV Show of a Media Identity. While he was never a "Second Bannana" he worked in a team with "Strop" and Delvine Delany, whom I think Strop married. But Paul Hogan just oozed self confidence, while all of the time maintaining the persona of his Day Job which was either a Rigger or a Painter, working on Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge. Then he wrote and starred in Crocodile Dundee, the most successful film ever made in Australia, And he looked good in shorts because he was "Work Fit". Phil.
5:10 besides double breastfed jackets and cuffed pants, waistcoats fell out of favor. In the prior decades, suits had high waisted slacks, held up by suspenders, and the vest was meant to smooth out the look. With fabric rationing, the waistband was trimmed lower, and the vest was eliminated till after the war.
The early 60s had the best silhouette for men's suits really. The fit was close like the early 20s but the proportions were shorter. I own some jackets from the 60s and they're well made.
Unfortunately yes, I did see a few people with them on. The only thing I never seen anyone wear in the 70s, that they mentioned was the dog ear collars
1970s were the worst. Polyester, big ties and collars, and safari suits to name a few. The 80s had parachute pants but the Miami Vice look was cool. Still love Crockett and Tubbs. .
I beg to differ about the "Oxford bags" (within reason of course), glamorized by magazine covers illustrated by John Held Jr. I still think they look rather cool! I entered the 70s as a 15 year old and eventually and reluctantly started wearing bell bottoms but got hooked (partly due to increasing lack of options as time went on!). At that age I was unaware that fashions change and thought bell bottoms and long pointy collars, wide lapels and ridiculously wide ties were here to stay and I didn't mind. It wasn't till the mid eighties that I noticed bell bottoms were not forever! I still prefer wearing airy pants; guess I'm biased. I wonder if it's generational??
I`m 65 , and I have never seen dog ear collars ! LOL as for the mullet of the 80`s it originated a good two centuries earlier , when it was a regular military haircut !
In the late 60's and early 70's, if I chose to wear denim jeans they were bell bottoms and not a dark wash. I wore short sleeved white linen shirts or yellow t-shirts with jeans. I like the 40's and 50's style of menswear worn by the movie stars. Pleated, high rise trousers with cuffs. I wear those kinds of trousers today but I am not a movie star.
Am I the only one who likes the Canadian tux?? (I cosplay cliff booth from once upon a time in Hollywood) got the Minnetonka boots and the Levi 501 classic jeans and the vintage wrangler jacket with the black Levi sport t shirt with the chest pocket
I was fully expecting you to mention the zoot suits of the 40s. I'm disappointed. Also, the '90s deserves to be grouped along with the '60s, '70s, and '80s as a decade of terrible fashion trends.
The absolute worst fashion disaster ever, the Nehru Jacket. I was in High School in 1968 when this dumb look arose. It was in fashion,as I recall, for roughly 3 short months
It seems to me they completely overlooked the Zuit-suits while praising the 30s and 40s era. Maybe it wasn't sufficiently widespread at the time but certainly a look that didn't age well either.
Decrying some of the excesses of the Power Suit is fine but generally, the Power Suit as introduced by Hugo Boss looks 1000000 times better than the Slim Fit suit of our millennium. 14:40 Notice the worst example are from Miami Vice, and Fashion shows. But Pierce Brosnan, and some models like Knopfspielerein look outright acceptable, considering what we went through with the slim fit suits with tiny lapels.
I have a sort of power suit, I think from the 80's. It's tapered at the waist but has huge shoulders and shoulder pads. It makes me look like an athlete, when I'm anything but. Suits cut like that are awesome.
Those Oxford bags are what the Peaky Blinders actually wore (at least based on what I've read). Good thing the show's costume designers kept that little detail out.
@inregionecaecorum. It appears that I am the only person on thi Channel who actually lived through the 1970's. As has been said several times in the mainstream Media .... If you can remember the 60's/70's ..... Then you weren't there !!! Lol. Phil.
The flat top hair style and the saggy pants, can't even call that a style. I never saw anyone wearing velvet jackets, wild pants, or dog-ear shirts. They did wear the tight fitting shirts. Also wide lapels suit jackets. No one wore "stubbies", never saw them or ever heard of them.
The advertisement clearly said "Colossal Dog Ear Collar" which means it was always a joke - hence nobody bought them and nobody was caught in them. Not sure why GG believes every last thing they read is the wholly absolute truth about the past, regarding terrible taste and trends. With stubbies, in my neck of the woods they're not completely extinct but about 10-15 years ago they were quite common for many outdoor tasks and also the gym, not so much industry workwear as it was something to wear when you weren't wearing sweats or trackpants. That's how I remember them, didn't know it was insanely 1980s in origin but I knew when I first saw them that they're a vintage thing.
The 1970s was the decade that should just not have been. There was so much wrong, not even limited to clothing. But my personal favorite fail was the plaid polyester leisure suit, with the afore mentioned super wide lapels and platform shoes. Oh and you can throw in the insanely wide ties too.
Hilarious video! A few honorable mentions you missed: the 70s/80s fringed leather jackets and the Jams shorts phase of the 80s. Not sure if you've done this already but you should do an accessory fails compilation and hairdo fails too.
Anyone remember the psychedelic letters and decals you glued to your t-shirts in the 70's and early 80's? They had stores entirely dedicated to them, complete with catalogs filled with these things. And they somehow curled up around the edges no matter how hard you tried to make them stick to the shirt......
