Fashions when you were at school

Nanna58
I really, really longed for an Afghan, but couldn’t afford one. I did have a plastic red midi coat, and bits kept peeling off it! I looked fab with my white boots, also peeling, but we are going on a few years from school, I was at college by then.

We used to do the same with our skirts when miniskirts were in, folding the waist band to make them shorter and shorter!

Oh lord ; Afgan coats!! They were smelly, my Dad made me keep mine in the shed!!!!? I also had a plastic maxi coat that was supposed to look like leather, but cracked and shed flakes everywhere!

+The only thing I can remember about this (mixed GS late 40s early 50s) was the baggy navy bloomers. Which we had to wear for PE and 'Games'. Often watched by the boys.
They had a little pocket at the side for your hanky.

I went to a convent school the uniform rules were very strict. We were hauled up in front of Rev Mother if our boaters were not on straight. Nobody would have dared to shorten a skirt. The worst item of uniform was a terrible itchy wool divided skirt we wore for gym, it reached our knees!

We used to wear French polos under our shirts to keep warm. Closing the top button of your shirt was deeply uncool, as was belting your gaberdine. Absolutely no make up was allowed although you could get away with a bit of lip gloss.

This was the 70s.

Platform soles were the order of the day too.

My chums and I wanted lambswool Pringle twinsets. Landgirl breeches that we wore for riding were must haves.

I went to an all girl Grammar School in London, no rolling up of skirts allowed, regulation school underwear, beret in the winter, boater in the summer. No deviations/customised attire tolerated!

If we were reported eating in the street or on public transport whilst wearing uniform, the consequences were felt...

Fashion in the 50s! Circular skirts and stiff petticoats were de rigeur in our leisure hours. Our school was permissive about uniform, but most of us found it convenient to wear our royal blue blazers and dark skirts. One year we were knitting ourselves balaclavas (it was windy on the west coast!) in 'poodle wool' - bouclé as it would now be called - in our house colours. Mine was red, my friend's was green. I don't think that 'craze' lasted into the next winter. Mini skirts were as yet unknown and even the raciest girls wore knee length. My first 'heels' at 14, were little stumpy red ones but I was the bees knees! By 17, I had talked my mum into buying me cream kitten heels - very bees knees!

I'm so much older. No mini skirts. Some tried to wear as many underskirts as they could to make the skirts of summer dresses stick out. my mum wasn't having that! We had berets which were sometimes hairpinned precariously to back-combed and lacquered hair.

We used to roll our skirts over too. If we didn't wear our berets we used to get detention. So we backcombed our hair the way we wanted it and gripped the beret on the back of our heads. The backcombed hair was stiff with lacquer which we bought in tubes and poured into a squeezy bottle.
Out of school I tried the lot and loved it all. Cheesecloth shirts, as short as possible skirts, Afghan coats. Happy days.

Sar53 could be describing my school uniform at my all girls’ grammar school. We wore a very distinctive brown and gold - easily recognizable around the City. We had to walk through the narrow streets in single file and needed a letter from a parent to get ‘shopping permission and only in a named shop’ from the Headmistress! Most mornings after assembly, she’d read out a short list of names of girls to ‘wait in her study’.
A sign of wrongdoing - as people would let the school know of any incidents which might bring the school into disrepute.
All changed now - sign of the times.

In the New Year's Honours for 1966, I think Mary Quant got a gong, for services to fashion, presumably. The mini-skirt was about, but not in our school as DW ashcombe has identified. A few years earlier a major step forward in the girls' fashions allowed them to wear pleated skirts - but only in the 6th form, which wasn't very numerous in those days. 6th form boys were allowed to wear a trilby - cool, eh? Both ideas had died out by the time I was in the 6th form in 1964. I still had to wear a cap.

As one who was particularly aware of being at a co-ed school, I suspect that miniskirts could have been a substantial extra distraction. As it was, even when skirts were definitely knee-length, one occasionally saw stocking-tops - and drew breath sharply!

The school uniform was modernised the year I started secondary school in 1968.

A short, sleeveless black tunic dress with a mustard/gold coloured 'roll neck' to wear underneath!

Ashcombe
I know what you mean, I had some red ones and blue ones trimmed with white lace!
What a peculiar fashion!

We were in the final years of the secondary modern, most of the best teachers had jumped ship, and I think they just couldn’t be bothered to try and keep us looking smart. I think by the fifth year, my grey pleated skirt had been changed to a black mini skirt, and my white shirt for a white polo neck.

Grannynannywanny

Much of the above chimes with me, especially the skirt length rule and the summer and winter hats. We also had to have indoor and outdoor shoes and all uniform items could only be bought from one (expensive!) local drapers. The Deputy Head would announce when summer uniform was allowed to be worn!!

In the mid Sixties, we went through a phase of wearing, under our uniforms, sleeveless vests with matching long johns (ended well above the knee) to cover the gap twixt knickers and stocking tops. These were sold in Dorothy Perkins and came in bright designs eg tartan. Despite looking online, I can’t find a picture to illustrate what I mean.

Ellianne
Shiny patent lace up black shoes

Tut tut! How could you? ?
I went to a convent school in the 60’s. We were told that it was immoral for a female to wear black patent shoes because they showed the reflection of of our underwear. We were also told that if we were standing on the bus and a man was seated and looking at the reflection it was our fault for causing him to have indecent thoughts.

That was from our form teacher and she wasn’t even one of the nuns.

We had indoor and outdoor shoes. A velour hat in the winter and a straw hat in the summer, detention if you didn't have it on. No eating in school uniform outside school. Very strict, nothing like these days. A good grammar school though and I was very proud to go there.

We didn’t have a uniform when I was at school and I hated it. We weren’t well off so couldn’t afford the latest fashions and I stood out. I wouldn’t have been allowed a lot of the fashions of the 70s anyway so a strict uniform would have suited me fine.

One of my schools was boarding so you couldn’t get away with any alterations! In any case try rolling up divided skirts .......teamed with short sleeve aertex blouses! Hideous felt hat with a “costume “. For Sunday and speech day etc.

Skirts were only just beginning to get shorter when I was in the sixth form in 1958, so that wasn’t an issue.

I quite liked my school uniform, which was black and white so smarter than some. Didn’t
like the velour hats or summer panamas. Berets were absolutely forbidden.

* which wasn't very long really.