The cultural break between the early sixties and the latter part of the decade has been written about many times, including here at misterboomer.com. Yet Mister Boomer, as a mid-generation boomer, recalls the late 1950s and early ’60s as a time of set fashion social mores that fathers would teach sons, and mothers would teach daughters.
One of these fashion social mores — how to be a gentlemen — was, as far as Mister B was concerned, a minefield filled with potential faux pas. It was a time when there was a definite difference in the way people dressed for formal occasions and casual ones. Dress clothes for the proper gentleman meant a suit and tie, and in the early part of the Boomer Generation, a hat. Situations that called for dress clothes were weddings and funerals, to be sure, but also for weekly church attendance, going to the theater, holiday parties, and travel by train, ship or plane. Men usually dressed for any business situation, too, such as applying for a bank loan or attending a house closing.
As a boy, Mister Boomer’s clothes, like other boomers his age, were selected and purchased by his parents. Consequently, he and Brother Boomer had a set of dress clothes and casual clothes. (Mister B and his brother also had a third set that was school clothes to match the required dress code). For Mister B and Brother Boomer, it also meant a hat. Their father was part of a growing trend of post-war men who did not wear hats, yet he raised his boys with the fashion and showed them how and when to take the hat off, and how to correctly store it. In the Boomer family’s church, men took their hats off when entering, while women covered their heads at the same time. Once seated in a pew, the church had a clip installed every yard on the back of each pew that was designed to hold a man’s hat. Mister B’s father demonstrated this for his boys until they understood what the clip was for and how to use it.
There was another thing Mister B’s dad showed his boys in church: how to correctly move the pant crease from their suit pants when sitting down. A sharp-dressed man’s dress pants were pressed with a crease that ran down the front of the leg that was sharp enough to cut titanium. The only possible reason to move the crease away from the front-center of the leg that Mister Boomer can think of is, in an age before the proliferation of permanent press and no-iron fabrics, the crease might hold longer if protected when sitting down. A gentleman would need to keep his crease lest he be thought less of — a faux pas no father wanted for his boys since their appearance reflected on his status as a parent.
Mister Boomer’s father would get the attention of his two boys and, as he sat down, grabbed the front creases of both pant legs with the thumbs and index fingers of his hands. In one motion, his hands had gracefully pulled the creases to the outer side of each leg. Sometimes he demonstrated the process again, since the boys must have displayed quizzical looks. Brother Boomer caught on to this seemingly simple process fairly early on, but it flummoxed Mister Boomer into the 1960s. His father let him be as each week, Mister B grabbed the creases of his pant legs and frantically pulled them, only to end up with the creases remaining where they started. Mister Boomer waded that minefield each week, and failed. He never was able to get the creases pointing in the “correct” direction.
By the late sixties, the casualization of America had begun, and, along with the availability of permanent press and no-iron pants, made the whole process obsolete. That was not a moment too soon for Mister Boomer, who did not understand to begin with why society felt a gentleman had to do that.
Do you remember shifting your dress pant creases, boomer men? And boomer women, what fashion quirks did your mothers show you?