http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/936/8247Richie_Cunningham.JPG
Edit: Actually, that's a fantastic shirt.
Last edited by Russell_Street (2009-02-20 06:43:34)
http://www.megomuseum.com/teevee/images/happyrichie-01.jpg - Very "Ivy Style".
Here with his boyfriend... http://cache.g4tv.com/images/blog/2008/06/20/633495620283352429.jpg
... Remember what The Fonz's 'Office' was? The Dirty Get!
aaahhh happy days. yer and my mates take the piss outta me for watching tele like that
take a look at American Graffiti if not already... a film worth watching just for some of the clothes ron howard's in that too!
and richard dreyfuss with a shirt in the forst scene that i happen to really like.
I always found the Fonz's use of the toilet as his "office" pretty gross, even as a kid. Now I'm struck by the creepiness of his pursuit of teenaged twin sisters. How old was he supposed to be?
RC and Dreyfuss in AG are style models for me in the warmer months--short-sleeved button-down shirts, chinos, Chuck Taylors.
http://supermantv.net/images/happydays-potsy.jpg
Potsy's not wearing a button down.......burn all images of him!!
Well? Was he?
I never fully understood the concept of 'Trad'. To me, it was, and still is, Americana. I do it pretty much every day in some form or another.
Isn’t ‘trad’ a made up term coined on Ask Andy or some similar site? Where I’ve seen pictures of clothing geeks who identify as trads they’ve been dressed quite formally in suits or jacket, collar and tie, preferably with a wide brim hat like a fedora. Not hip like us Ivy cats.
Richie Cunningham was high school age in Happy Days, I’m not sure that you could be a ‘trad’ at that age, maybe you could? In any case the series was set in the 50s when trad dress would have been regarded as normal for older men so the term wouldn’t have any validity or reason to be used. Anyway Richie always seemed to be wearing letterman cardigans or varsity jackets.
It was a funny little program really wasn’t it?
Obviously very contemporary 70’s. The 50’s aspect always looked shoehorned in to give it a decent soundtrack and a healthy dose of Mom’s apple pie.
It’s sound proof of how quickly the world moved back then. I can’t imagine anyone today making a program based on feel good nostalgia for the year 2000. Nothing looks or feels particularly different.
If I’d been much older I probably would have seen it as corny early Saturday night TV. But I was what? 6/7/8? I thought it was great.
The Fonz never impressed me. But even at that age I always had an eye for Richie and the gang’s clothes. Golf and letterman jackets. Loose, no break chinos and turned up straight jeans. Loafers, converse and (I think) white bucks. And those white T’s under button downs. I moved on for a few years but the imagery never left me. Letterman jackets haven’t aged that well I think. Everything else is solid. Give or take, it’s what I wear most days of the week.
Was he trad? When I think of trad I probably wrongly think bow ties. Seersucker. Stereotypical older Southern gentleman style. Or a young Jimmy Stewart maybe. Not high school kids making out at Inspiration Point to a Fats Domino soundtrack.
Bits and pieces of it are what, at one time, Woody Allen and some jazz musicians were wearing. Well, more or less. But how can it be prevented from looking like pure pastiche?
We might have eyed the clothes but wouldn't have had an inkling where to buy them. Not then. I glimpsed the programme in around 1974/5. I thought it was drivel, like 'Mork And Mindy', and it was a bore that the kind of twitty boys I knew suddenly morphed from Bruce Lee into 'Fonzie'. I thought he was an arse. And it all paved the way for 'Grease'.
Frankly, few of us had style then. Not where I grew up. My stepbrother and sister seemed infinitely cooler in 1973, with their 'Bronco Bullfrog' type clothing.
Spendthrift -‘ It’s sound proof of how quickly the world moved back then. I can’t imagine anyone today making a program based on feel good nostalgia for the year 2000. Nothing looks or feels particularly different.’
Sound observation. I recently watched a 3 part documentary ‘The House of Maxwell’ about the family of that name. It was an interesting reminder of the extent of Robert Maxwell’s and his children’s crimes, some of which couldn’t be fully reported on at the time due to court proceedings. What an awful bunch, as far removed from normal as you could get, you can’t help wondering, if they had received the occasional hug and had to do a paper round, whether they might have turned out differently. Hardly anyone normal featured in those programs. Anyway back to the point; a lot of footage of London and other places in the 80s and 90s appeared and it reminded me what an ugly time that was, the only good thing was that it was slightly less bad and distorted than things are now. But I would have no desire to turn the clock back to 1990, I wouldn’t mind having my 35 year old person’s body back though.
I was in my 20s when I watched Happy Days. I think I was in thrall to all things American. I liked the programme but found Fonzie unconvincing and creepy. I watched because of the clothes and the hint of a better innocent time already past. I might have started wearing the white t shirts because of Happy Days.
I never did get to Milwaulkee and in the words of Rod Stewart 'what made Milwaukee famous made a loser out of me'
Richie too young to be trad.
Oh and I don't know if I should say this but I saw his mum as a MILF.
He wasn't trad because that type of American dress surfaced in the early 2000's (although it is heavily influenced by Ivy League and Preppy styles). The term may have been invented online (as the internet is the largest medium of media at this time) just as the term Ivy League Style was made up but not online because online didn't exist. Richie Cunningham was definitely influenced by the Hey Day popularity of Ivy League Style.
Last edited by oxford cloth button down (2022-04-19 06:56:30)
Jimmy, I can't help feeling, used to agonise over these terms. I never thought they had any significance whatever. All Jimmy was trying to prove was that his knowledge had been acquired pre-Internet. But then - unlike, say, John Simons - he became a child and captive of the Internet.
Many of us now share that misfortune.
The have significance because they are a result of the social/political context of the time. When you remove the context from which they existed they do not exist in the same way.
Last edited by oxford cloth button down (2022-04-19 08:00:19)
Someone dissed Mork & Mindy on this thread which I am not having. Robbie saw Richie C's mum as a MILF. Well I certainly saw the delicious Mindy as an ILF. And Mork's stripy braces were quite trad.
Happy Days was initially a cool show for kids.
I was about 8 and forced my Mum to get me a leather jacket.
I never saw it as grown-up entertainment.
My understanding is that in the early Eighties that All American look was considered pretty cool in soul clubs. Not so the haircut but more the varsity jackets, Levis and white T shirts under a Oxford.
USA loafers were always good for dancing in.
My understanding is that in the early Eighties that All American look was considered pretty cool in soul clubs. Not so the haircut but more the varsity jackets, Levis and white T shirts under a Oxford.
USA loafers were always good for dancing in.
You can also add old Baseball tops which we thrifted from Flip.
I was a Mork and Mindy fan. And yes Mindy ILF.
It was agreed, many years ago, on another thread, that some of us were prepared - indeed eager - to perform shocking sexual acts upon the personage of the said Mindy.
We need lower the tone no further.
Returning to the original theme, I have to admit to disliking the word 'trad', even in its correct jazz context. The word 'preppie'/'preppy' seems to me to be derogatory - at least, that's the way it first came across to me, back around 1980. I'm not entirely convinced now by the phrase 'Ivy League', either: certainly not in a non-American context. Oddly, I've come to prefer 'collegiate', with its overtones of solid academic learning (possibly in the Arts and Humanities), an open mind regarding the wider world, appreciation of 'Esquire' and 'The New Yorker', a liking for jazz, for movies, for decent food. 'Ivy' has become shorthand for - what exactly? What the average Ebay seller imagines it is, which can be anything from a rugby shirt to a jacket that originated at C&A.
Yes I know exactly what you mean.
To me, ‘Trad’, as I understand it, is wholly owned by Americans. I don’t see how anyone from any other country or background can convincingly come close to it, without there being a huge amount of cosplay involved. Maybe that’s also true for some Americans? Maybe it’s not a big deal or much of a statement to dress or act like that over there? However they see it, they’re probably right.
I’m hard wired to reject ‘trad’ and embrace ‘modern’. Even though I’m not a huge jazz fan. Which is ridiculous really.
I also see prep as being slightly derogatory. The eighties TV shows and films I grew up with invariably featured one or two rich, spoiled asshole characters. Usually beating up on the poorer kid who wins out in the end. I think this image travelled well to the UK where Yuppies downing £1000 bottles if champers were often portrayed as a bit preppy. Again, hugely unlikable characters.
All that said, how can a fifty year old man from England claim to be in any way Ivy League? Or Collegiate? It doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny really does it?
I suppose whatever it was, or has evolved into in the UK, no doubt for some of us taking on a fair amount of continental influence along the way, Ivy League is just what it happens to be called. I wouldn’t describe myself as Ivy League, an Ivy Leaguer, an Ivyist, or Preppy the way I used to call myself a mod. I’m just me and these are the style of clothes I like. I think it’s great that others have that same ‘world view’ that AFS refers to.
Last edited by Spendthrift (2022-04-20 00:15:51)
'Trad' is an oddity even in musical terms. I'd doubt if any American musician, black or white, involved in jazz would have recognised such a term. Perhaps, like Eddie Condon, they simply referred to it as music. It strikes me as more a self-consciously English piece of labelling (although I wonder if a purist like Ken Colyer would have referred to it in those terms; I doubt it). To me it goes along with skiffle and folk singing and that rather puzzling rediscovery of singers like Leadbelly.
I'm not expressing myself very well here.
But the connections between jazz and 'Ivy League' dressing are, as Yuca has pointed out elsewhere, pretty tenuous. He mentioned Cal Tjader and Horace Silver. There were others, on the West Coast, for example, who were wearing elements of it (at least according to Roy Carr): often polo shirts, chinos and loafers (still an excellent look for the warmer weather).
Descriptions of jazz musicians and what they wore feature pretty often in Whitney Balliett's essays and interviews. They often, like Miles Davis and Bill Evans at one stage, sound 'funky': striped shirts with red trousers. That kind of thing.
As for the rest - maybe a largely whitebread look.
Maybe the trad jazz revival/rediscovery over here in the 50s/60s, Acker Bilk, Melly etc. was specifically referred to as 'Trad Jazz'? But that would have been the British again feeling a need to put a label on it.
Didn't Chris Barber get abuse from the trad crowd when he modernised his sound? He probably thought of it as just music. If the musician's good enough at their job they usually want to move it on. And usually get lambasted by the fans that want the same stuff ad infinitum. I don't know enough about jazz to know if Americans called that sound trad. Probably not. Probably 'New Orleans ' or something?
There was the continental influence there too in the UK at that time I think. Students hanging out in French themed cellars. Berets, baggy jumpers. It probably seemed very edgy then.
I would tend to believe that a lot of the American musicians just went out shopping for clothes and bought what they fancied, influenced by others around them, rather than having some kind of epiphany moment. Ivy stuff would have crept in and out at various times over quite a long period of time. It's us that has the luxury of lumping it all together and picking and choosing.
Last edited by Spendthrift (2022-04-20 03:32:54)