High School Fashion Flashback

I went to high school from 1977 to 1981 at a single-sex parochial school with a dress code. Until that point I'd gone to public schools, so I'd never had to wear school uniforms as such, but unlike many of the other students, I didn't see wearing a jacket and tie as a burden or a punishment.

Button-front shirts were required. Collars were supposed to be buttoned and ties knotted and pulled up into place, but the faculty didn't bother enforcing that one unless a guy left his knot too loose, so we all went about our days with our collars casually unbuttoned and our ties slightly loosened.

Jeans were not allowed, but corduroy pants were, so I recall my school wardrobe was filled with Levi's five-pocket corduroys, which were technically not jeans because they were not denim. To this day I still favor this style of pants, and have about half a dozen pairs at the moment. (No Levi's, though; I don't think they make any in a cut I could wear now.)

We also could not wear sneakers. But we did not have to wear dress shoes, and in fact we were instructed not to wear leather-soled shoes, which I believe had something to do with how often the floors would have had to be polished if several hundred teenage boys were walking around every day in dress shoes, leaving scuff marks on the linoleum. (It probably influenced my general lack of favor toward leather-soled shoes, though that has been changing of late.) So most guys wore crepe-soled shoes like desert boots, or those other Clarks shoes called "wallabees." I honestly can't remember what sort of shoes I wore back then, though I'm pretty sure it wasn't either of the above. Boat shoes, certainly, though those didn't become popular until I'd been in high school for a couple of years.

My classmates filled the spectrum from one kid who proudly carried his books and other belongings in a big brown leather satchel (that, if I remember correctly, had belonged to his grandfather) to guys who had one sport jacket (typically, either tan corduroy or a navy blazer) and one tie (typically, a navy blue or black knit "sock tie" or a hideous striped thing swiped from dad's closet) which they would keep in their lockers and don each day, regardless of whatever else they were wearing, in order to meet the letter of the dress code, if not the spirit. It ended up that a lot of kids were walking around in plaid Western-style shirts with snaps (very popular at the time), with the added ties and jackets looking quite incongruous.

From after April vacation until the end of the school year, the dress code rules were relaxed somewhat. The jackets and ties went into storage until September, and now any shirt with a collar was acceptable, which meant polo shirts on warmer days. The first big moment of popularity for Lacoste and Polo polos was during this period, so there were plenty of those, along with the tigers, knights, and whatever other knockoffs were around at the time. I had a few "alligator shirts" because there was a store that sold them at a steep discount, and I could still fit into a boys' size 20, which made them even cheaper to buy.

We all looked forward to senior year, when, due to space constraints, seniors attended classes at a separate campus a mile or so away from the main school, on a gorgeous piece of waterfront property that belonged to the diocese and housed its seminary. (Later the school expanded the buildings at its main campus and seniors were brought back with the underclassmen, so I consider myself lucky that I got to enjoy that perk.) Also, for some reason that was never clear to any of us, we were allowed to wear sneakers.

Royal blue nylon and suede running shoes with white trim were quite popular at the time, as were Nikes, either the white canvas or leather basketball-style sneakers, or the Cortez, which was more of a lifestyle shoe even back then (and looks remarkably unchanged after all this time). A few of the preppier kids wore Tretorns, but no one had heard of Reebok or New Balance, and I can't remember a single kid wearing adidas or Puma—I wouldn't become aware those existed until I got to college. (Actually, thinking back on it, there may have been one guy who wore Stan Smiths in the traditional white with green trim.)

I had discovered that some of my father's clothes now fit me, and took to wearing a charcoal gray worsted wool jacket that had come from his 1960 honeymoon suit (the pants never fit, as his legs were shorter than mine) and some skinny ties I'd found in the basement. Blondie's Parallel Lines had come out a year or so before, and I'd been influenced not only by the music but by the style of the band's male members on the cover.

I didn't start wearing a black suit, but I had the dark jacket, a skinny black tie with white dots, a white or pink button-down collar shirt, the cord jeans, and white sneakers. There were a few other guys in my class who were into similar music, stuff that definitely wasn't anywhere near mainstream at this time, and they were sporting similar looks around campus that year. Later on, in college, I'd develop this style further and refine it into my mid-80s everyday look.