auction of Neil Armstrong property:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/science/neil-armstrong-auction.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/science/neil-armstrong-auction.html
Apologies if this came up elsewhere but this is one of the best documentaries I have seen and NASA ivy gold https://youtu.be/NgUYurzK-tM
Yeah,I remember that shot... Same day, he just lost the jacket... Great sunglasses but man he looks rough...
Last edited by Madras_Seersucker (2020-04-17 18:46:59)
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" The word's of the third man to step foot on the moon...
Blanks abound and yet this thread is, I think, packed with interest for anyone thinking of flirting with 'Severe Ivy' (which has an entire thread to itself) or 'US Marine Ivy'. It takes me back to that slightly iffy book of Hewitt's and his name-check of 'Countdown' with Caan and Duvall from 1967. I played around with this ultra-square American look in around 2007 and might do so again. Getting the haircut right is key. Yes, NASA Ivy, Astronaut Ivy. Very American. How could it be otherwise?
And then there are Hawkins Astronauts, a rather horrible type of footwear...
Too many blanks for me to follow that one. But No hair for me to play with. So flirting too closely to that is a no go for me. Bald, short sleeve button down and chunky shoes only means one thing to a lot of people over here doesn’t it?
Which is a shame. As I get older I do feel an affinity with the grumpy ex marine, short flat topped grandfathers I see in US films and tv.
There are elements of the NASA Ivy Look in the 1971 film 'The Andromeda Strain'.
The short sleeve button down worn with a tie seemed common in mission control, but it doesn’t make it look any better or less worthy of ridicule. But as Adam Ant said - redicule is nothing to be scared of. If you’re doing that look don’t forget the multiple pens in the shirt pocket.
But some of the styles worn on Earth by the astronauts were great, particularly in their more casual moments when they were ‘maintaining an even strain’, as it was put in the book The Right Stuff, a great expression that conjures all sorts of possibilities for disreputable behaviour.
'The Right Stuff': a film I enjoyed very much indeed. I've never read the novel though meant to.
There is a theory - probably fanciful - that the proto-skinhead look of circa 1967 was partly influenced by images of astronauts. Maybe a tiny minority of them were but, where I grew up, they were simply very horrible youths in huge boots and sheepskin coats who smoked endless amounts of Number Six at the bus-stop. Not an ounce of class amongst the lot of them. Oh, some liked decent music.
Fanciful probably. If the first moon landing was '69, it seems unlikely that British proto skins would have seen very much of astronauts two years previously? Certainly not in any 'off duty' looks.
More likely that look came from a rejection or ignorance of the incoming flower power influence? Which was very much over played by the media then and ever since.
I think as early as that it was just another branch of the on going, ever evolving mod. Forever overshadowed by the more media and retail friendly 'Swinging London', hippies etc.
Actually there had been plenty of coverage of US astronauts throughout the early 60s, so we knew what they looked like. And I can state categorically that the styles they wore had a huge influence on a tiny minority of young blokes, certainly here in London, where you could actually buy the clothes fairly easily. (If at a price!)
Interesting. Thanks for that Uncle Ian. Great to hear it first hand instead of opinions or distorted memories years later.
I always had half an idea that around that time button downs, straight trousers/jeans etc must have been thicker on the ground than the Sgt Pepper gear so often seen in old news reels?
It's an excellent thing to have older posters here who actually remember that period. I was still at junior school in '69, two years away from taking my Eleven-Plus (passed), and we watched it in the classroom. It had a massive impact at the time.
I've been interested in the look since reading about it but that was only in around 2004 or 2005. I saw 'The Right Stuff' in around 2009 and must now buy the novel.
Something that sticks with me from childhood are images of crop-haired grunts in Vietnam - in full colour - sometimes wearing rather thick-framed spectacles. I would have been aware of that war by about 1968; the photographs would have been in the kind of magazines working class parents like mine sometimes had around the house. I just wish I could remember the name of them - 'Weekend', something like that? It all came back to me when watching that rather odd film 'Full Metal Jacket'.