Just a twinkle in yer old man's eye, eh?

We must pick another year for the younger guys here too.

Wearing: 501s and chinos, Brooksgate oxford cloth shirts, Brooksgate shetland sweaters, Clarks desert boots
Listening: The Jam (became addicted after traveling thru the UK in '80.)
Where: going to school in Berkeley

Age : 16
Doing O'levels at Alsop Comprehensive, Walton, L4
Music : The Jam. Obsessed with Paul Weller. Virtually nothing else.
Literature : NME
Clothes : cheap mod. 'College' shoes from Dolcis. Actually they weren't too bad. Beefroll. Decent shape but cheap leather. White socks. Half-mast black sta-press. I had 2 oxford cloth button-downs. I think they were OK looking back. Blue with shadow stripe and plain white.
I didn't really go anywhere apart from Goodison Park.
I was a late developer. Girls shared the shit out of me.

L.L.

81.....

Me 19, apprentice electrical engineer, had abandoned Modernism and was looking for direction with clothes so had gone back to wearing pegs and a short back and sides.....dyed auburn(ok ok..I know, but this is honesty..I could have gone a couple of years earlier and said Levis 501's and Desert Boots and Polo shirts and rip off harringtons, tailored suits....but really that was being worn by most 14 year olds round my way by then , except for the tailoring).see Lockerloops post above.

Music..Northern soul on the whole, spending a lot of time in Wigan Casino and other Northen clubs.....this was the year that Wigan Casino shut down........mixed blessing on the scene back then.

Oh did I mention a fondness for chemical stimulants.

Nothing wrong there Colin. It's all in the game, as Nat King Cole said.

Age 13 in a San Francisco area "Silicon Valley" suburb. Black Izod Lacoste polo (I had several in black), worn snug, never buttoned, and I think I tucked it in. Levi's 501's, often in disrepair. I may have had a pair of tan Levi's needlecords lingering from the 70's as they were popular then. Topsiders like half of everyone else I knew (maybe a year or so later...can't recall). I remember wearing Incontinence pants running shoes with black soles that rolled up at the front tip. I did have a pair of Doc Martens but I'm pretty sure they came a bit later. Black hair cut short. Some sort of dark generic windbreaker jacket but not a Harrington and I doubt I even knew what one was. Avoided the sun to avoid a California tan. Original Sony Walkman with a mix of Joy Division, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Buzzcocks, etc. If chilly, often threw on an LL Bean Norwegian sweater in size large, which was awfully baggy on me. Sometime around then I decided to radically change my look and went for the Ralph Lauren polo in black. I wasn't part of any sort of youth subculture as you have in the UK. Rather, I was sort of a misfit computer geek and hated the 80's clown colors so wore lots of dark to "rebel". The what-you're-wearing thread over at the Ask Andy Trad forum makes my eyes burn.

My father, though very un-Ivy and un-"Trad", was a longtime fan of LL Bean and he'd often buy things for me out of the catalog. I also remember having a pair of the Maine Hunting Shoe but I hardly wore them because they were too warm and would squeak. Oh yeah, had an LL Bean polo with a multicolored logo of the Hunting Shoe.

I don't even own a polo shirt nor deck shoes now. I mostly wear OCBD's (more white than blue), dark Levi's 501's or flat-front slim chinos, and various double-soled brogues, Norwegian's, etc. I like checked BD's and had some made by Jantzen and order tailored fit from Lands' End if I see something interesting. A pair of heavy black plain-toe derbies with metal taps on the toes and heels are often worn when I'm feeling onery. Often wear a couple of knock-off G9's (JtG). Quit wearing loafers years ago but wore the heck ouf of a pair of JM Weston model 180's in tan throughout the 90's.

Last edited by eightysixed (2010-02-08 22:55:10)

I fink my engrish has broke.

say, summer 1981. i'm 11, living in a council estate in turku, sw finland. wearing pretty much the same that everyone else does: short sleeved Incontinence pants sport t or a no name polo, skintight jeans (lee preferably), jeans jacket and Incontinence pants jaguar supers. if one stuck out of the crowd too much one would get a serious kicking.

at the time, spawned by the clash, fueled by the dead kennedys and finnish hc punk acts such as rattus & kaaos etc and inspired by a few older  lads + my friends elder brother i'd started to develop an interest towards punk and the finnish hc punk scene. at the time it didn't sow much if not for the clash, sham and dead kennedys badges on my jeans jacket alongside with motorhead and iron maiden lol.

You'd have loved me in '81, four years into my Ivy obsession:

Totally serious.
Totally focused.
Totally devoted.

1) There is no other music than Jazz. All other music leads up to, or falters away from Jazz. It's the one true form, the purest expression of the divine spark expressed through music. It is the one true religion. No other music contains the humanity of Jazz. No other music expresses the human soul like Jazz.

2) There are no other clothes than Ivy League (I knew the term by then from my reading). Ivy League is the most perfect expression of clobber - A blend of the formal and informal which reeks of quality, taste & discernment. Also, it is so hip that only the anointed know about it - There's me (obviously), Chet, Miles, Trane...

3) 'O' Levels must be got through, but they have nothing to do with MY education. In fact I shouldn't even be here - There's been some mistake - I belong in Soho or Chinatown... Neon lights and the stink of stale duck fat...

4) How long do I have to live before I can LIVE? I have to speed up this process somehow...

Last edited by Just Jim (2010-02-09 03:17:44)