Not even vaguely horse related…
Oct 30 2007
But I HAD to post this because it seems like a lot of my readers are from my, erm, vintage and will remember all of this stuff when we…somehow…inexplicably…didn’t realize how fugly it was.
J.C. Penney 1977
I was 10 in 1977 and recall wearing such atrocities as an aqua plaid pantsuit of the type that now would only be seen on ladies over 70 years of age with at least some degree of dementia. What was my mother thinking? The mind boggles.
(I wonder if this is the same phenomenon that causes people to breed furry little yaks and think they are beautiful? If enough people tell you an aqua plaid pantsuit is cool, do you eventually believe it, despite all evidence to the contrary? Hmmm…)
65 comments to “Not even vaguely horse related…”
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OMG, Ms. Fugly–I laughed so hard!! Great link to pass on. I remember wearing a pair of those chunky hi-heeled sandals w/ blue and white checkered pants, bell-bottoms to the hilt, thinking I was One Cool Chick! Yikes.
HA-my older brother is a 70′s kid, and I’ve seen pics of him dressed just like the kid w/the belt!! OMG-I think I just ruined my keyboard from shooting milk through my nose onto it…but it was SO WORTH IT!
so glad i missed that stuff! What IS that in the 7th pic down?
I had a really kickin pant suit that was a red yellow and blue plaid pants, then the jacket was solid blue with big ass spots of the plaid pattern. I wore said ensamble (sp) with a bight yellow turtle neck. I was 7. I wore the hell out of that pant suit until the bell bottoms got caught in the chain of my bike and I had to drag it (my bike) home by holding up my pants and dragging my leg and the bike behind me. I was so devistated that the stupid bike ruined my pants. What the hell was I thinking, and how did my mom NOT die laughing.
I wasn’t born until 1984, and my generation has had its own atrocious fashions, but seriously…that’s so terrible it’s fantastic. I’m gonna have to show my mom when I get home.
How very, um, *groovy.
You’d enjoy the Interior Desecrations, and Gallery of Regrettable Food books and website here: http://www.lileks.com/
institute/index.html
And I still miss my garish rust, red, yellow and blue plaid flared Sears Toughskins (I was born in ’69).
Well, at least you didn’t have to buy a pair of boobs to be stylish back then. Sigh.
Ah yes, I remember the red plaid pants that I thought were so cool. I was stylin’. And born in ’70.
Oh, this is a crack up! I was 11 in 1977…and I did have purple bell bottoms with ponies all over them and a matching (?) striped button down top with a white collar with points so big I’m surprised I didn’t just fly away…
And you know, I think I recognize some of those models from JC Penny inserts in the Sunday paper circa 1977.
LOVE your blog. Very educational esp. in terms of conformation, and eye opening in terms of uh…well…those crazy things people do. Thanks and keep it up.
Whoa! I promise, I will thank god everyday from now on that I was born in 1988 and only had to deal with my mother’s handsewn, leftover curtain fabric dresses.
bwaahahaha i am genuinely looking forward to my aging dementia in which i plan to don a tight purple velvet jumpsuit and large disintegrating straw hat with real small bird and plastic fruit accoutrements. with no children of my own i only hope i can rustle up some nieces and nephews to humiliate in public, otherwise ill be the woman at the busstop with the string, greasy hair and plastic bags, screaming at noone and nothing in particular
Citydog, what are you doing in my brain? I was going to suggest Lileks, too
If it makes you feel any better, Fugly, my generation was the generation of Hammer pants. Yeah.
Hey I am vintage and you cannot believe the grief I experienced to have to wear all that polyester back in the 70′s…in 1977 I was all of 21 yrs old and to this day wranglers and a t-shirt is all I can muster for fashion! I had no ideals when I was growing up!!
How many times I fell off my platforms…But you could conceal purple ankles with huge bellbottoms…
1977–the year I graduated from high school–and we thought we were oh-so-cool! I had a lovely short skirt, denim with a print of large, bright yellow bananas all over it.
I don’t know which is scarier: that until recently my husband still had stuff like that in his closet or that people actually bought it off me on eBay.
That’s nothing. When I was 9 or 10 (in 1957, my vintage is better than your vintage – ha!), my grandmother got into making Christmas skirts (and not for trees, either) – big white felt circles with heavily sequinned and beaded felt appliques – santa, sleigh & reindeer, poinsettias, etc. In the center was a large green tree with small ornaments and – lights! In the pocket (a chimney, of course) was a battery pack and switch so you could turn the lights on (thanks a lot, grandpa).
However, even at 9 or 10, I knew enough to be mortified, though my mom loved her identical skirt and when we would go into a dark restaurant, would say “turn on your tree, honey”….
Ai-yi-yi. Still scarred after all these years.
Too funny. That was about the same time that we wore one-piece polyester equitation suits with the matching color taco cowboy hat in the western pleasure classes. The show blankets under our show saddles had fringe on the back (which was really stupid looking, IMO, because it covered up the big [speed bump] hips we liked on our QHs back then). And yes, we had blue/green shag carpeting in our house. LOL. But I was born in 1955. I’ve seen lots of goofy trends since then.
And 30 years from now, people won’t find this equally funny? Actually, the styles aren’t that far apart!!
http://www.aldroid.com/emo/
There’s another urban chic catalog my son gets that’s even weirder but I’ll be damned if I can remember the name of it. Definite laugh fodder in 2037!!
This is GREAT!! I was a teenager in the 70′s; no wonder I don’t have any taste in clothing and will only wear jeans and t-shirts. LOL. My favorite suit, bought from the J.C. Penneys catalog, was a crushed dark blue velvet pant and vest suit, with a light blue, long sleve, top with ruffles in the front. The waist was elastic, and pants and vest were embroidered. I had to talk my dad into purchasing it for me, it was expensive, and I wore it to school with such pride…LOL. Gag!
There was this one catalog, J.C. Penneys, or Sears, in the men’s underwear section the model was “hanging out” below his boxer shorts. I don’t know if the company never noticed, or what, but we sure did…and being young I was sure interested at looking at him.
Thanks for reminding me what a dork I looked like in those years!! (And probably now, too, but maybe I won’t realize that for a few more decades…) Purple palazzo pants with white go-go boots (I was in the 6th grade then). Loved ‘em dearly.
Imagine, if you can, that my mother found JCPenney a bit pricey, and so MADE many of our clothes in those delightful 70′s styles. Because wearing the homemade versions really did make my sister and me look *special.*
My husband’s mom sewed, too, God bless him… I’ll never forget his tan polyester leisure suit!
Ahhhh, those were the days. I am firmly a child of the ’70′s, with all of my formative years spent in that decade. One of my favorite outfits from back then was a pair of hip-hugger bell-bottom pants, blue with red pinstripes, a red and tan checked mock-turtleneck body suit, and a huge brown belt. I was quite the fashion plate.
We had a living room full of red, crushed velvet furniture and a red/orange/rust/avocado green shag carpet. Even at the age 14, I recognized the whorehouse resemblance.
Oh, and the groom, father of the bride, and father of the groom at my sister’s wedding all wore matching leisure suits.
I was rearranging furniture the other day and among the things I took off a bookshelf and looked at was my wedding photo album. Holy shit! I had BIG, permed, tightly curled hair. Holy shit! (Because just saying it once wasn’t enough.)
Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, FHOTD.
Let’s break out the “Leisure Suits”–and have some leisure!
And the “Go-Go” boots–and go-go.
OK I just had a REALLY funny idea!
Send me your show pictures from the 1970′s!
Put 1970s in the subject line so I know that’s what it is. I see a funny, funny, FUNNY post here.
resqtb@yahoo.com
Wow! I had to pass that on to my older brother and sister. I was born in the early 70′s so I still got to wear the plaid bell bottoms. Mom sewed everything including matching mother daughter outfits. I would love to share the pictures, but I think they have long since been burned!
I was born in ’69, but I was seriously unfashionable, so almost none of my clothing was particularly outrageous by today’s standards. Though there was this one tie blouse with a frog pattern…
The stuff the men were wearing was just too fucking funny. How did any children actually get produced with men dressed like that????
ROTFLMAO
My dear sweet Mom, who is no longer with us, once made me as a kid, probably in 77, wear red polyester houndstooth slacks. They were hideous, and even though I have no fashion sense now, something in my core told me they were so wrong that I cried when I put them on. I know now I was so right. THANKS for posting, that was hilarious.
I was 10 as well in 77 and had to wear the same nasty clothes. I had a pair of Levi cords that had huge bell bottoms on them and I wore the nasty Addidas tennis shoes.
Geez, kids of the 60s have had to go through many bad fashion trends in our life time.
I seriously MISS those outrageous platform shoes we bought at the ‘Wild Pair’. In ’76 I joined the military and the world changed….
Here’s the story of a lovely lady
Who was bringing up three very lovely girls
Each of them had hair of gold
Just like the mother
The youngest one in curls.
For some reason those clothes make me think pure Brady Bunch. LOL
>>
an_appy_breeder said:
There was this one catalog, J.C. Penneys, or Sears, in the men’s underwear section the model was “hanging out” below his boxer shorts. I don’t know if the company never noticed, or what, but we sure did…and being young I was sure interested at looking at him.
>>
Here ya go:
http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/sears.asp
thank you, dlgilbert4, for that link. i nearly peed myself laughing. water blemish, my ass. i work in the writing/ad/printing industry and i can tell you, that is no blemish…..that is the god-given original. huah!
Oh my. I was 32 in 1977. If you couldn’t pay designer prices, there wasn’t much out there. I lived in solid-colored slacks and nice blouses for work. At least the FLOWER printed linen/polyester suits/pant suits I wore to work weren’t QUITE as retarded.
Here ya go:
http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/sears.asp
Yes, dlgilbert4, that is it…too funny. That does not look like any kind of water mark, who are they trying to kid? One couldn’t have convinced me back then, nor now….LOL. Thanks for the link.
The guy in the plaid suit reminds me of Herb from the show WKRP! Wow. Even Dan Feilding from Night Court dressed better, but then he did get all the girls too.
I graduated high school in ’77 and wow, did that post bring back memories. Thanks for posting, I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.
See, youd think being born in 1980 far far across the ocean in little old England…
Id have escaped the horror that is those clothes….
But no, because by around 82, that style had made it here, oh yes. And by 85, I was wearing it, the cast off stuff from parents friends kids.
Second hand cheesey pants-to-your-armpits, stripey tshirts, tiny shorts with the white piping round them…. and the jumpsuits…. oh dear sweet mother of God. The Jumpsuits.
Mine, was green. Somewhere between lime and grass in shade, with a self coloured belt.
It gets worse… mother and sister had co-ordinating ones, and for winter….. we had FURRY ONES!
So by ’87 when you’d all suffered and survived that…. Kids in the UK were still going through that horror!
The guy in the Sears catalog reminds me of when I was in high school and in yearbook class. The sports section was ready to go to print all the text was ready to go the pictures were chosen for the girls tennis, everything was good.
Then it happened!
One girl spots the male coach in the background of one photo, ‘rearranging the furniture’ so to speak. He was really going to town too. The photo was pulled and he was saved the embarrassment, but we passed it around class all hour laughing our asses off!
Ooky bathroom! I also frequent an old house BB, and we’ve floated this around more than once: Try and imagine, in some dim future, some old house lover/preservationist coming upon a house with _that_ bathroom and _those_ chairs, and saying, “OMG! I’m closing on the most Amazing 70′s house! And the kitchen! You guys won’t believe it, they even had an avocado sink -drool- . You can see there was carpet some idiot replaced but Whoozywhatsit Reproductions makes that really great sculpted stuff in harvest gold. And the toppper–look at this amazing dining room set the old guy wanted to throw in”!
1st grade and still traumatized.
-twitch- -cringe- -shudder-
Samantha–Hey, I resemble that remark. Actually, I still like/kept a couple of 80′s things though I’m not sure what the hell what made me love my day-glo green sweats or made folks think Big Hair/Mullets were universal ‘dos. I had a classmate with, what, 5-10 hairs on her whole head, and she made them bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. She should’ve gone into engineering.
Just be glad you didn’t have to wear a denim jumper…(wait for it…) with applecores printed all over
Sandy M said…
“I was 32 in 1977. If you couldn’t pay designer prices, there wasn’t much out there..”
I am 5′ 3″ and weighed 108 all my life. Believe me, if you didn’t sew there was nothing that even came close to fitting back in the 60′s. Certainly not anything remotely “cool.”
Then came the James Bond influence. High leather boots with heels and a trenchcoat. I think that’s all I wore for a decade in there in the early 70′s. Ha! Was I cool!
Well even though I was only 3 in 1977 I can remember some of the totally freaky weird crap we used to wear… UGH.. and of course there’s those pictures your parents hold onto for proof.
Thanks for the laugh.
ROTFLMAO – *Tears*
I lived through this decade and would rather forget it, thank you very much!
This was great! I graduated in 78, so I not only remember these fashions, I wore them with pride! LOL!
I had white go go boots I wore with my miniskirts, and 3, count em, 3 suits of houndstooth check, one green, one blue and one vermilion red (my favorite!) I had purple bell bottomed hip-hugger pants I wore with a wide white belt. All our Appliances were harvest gold or Advacado green, and we had shag carpet to match. Yeah, we were cool – Not!
dlgilbert4 and an appy breeder – The Sears Catalog! OMG – I remember that one! My friend showed me the catalog (we were like 15 or 16) and got all stupid about it.
The explanation we heard was that the men wore pantyhose in the pictures to smooth their legs. This guy had a hole in his hose which gave the appearance of the umm- skin tone change?
We prefered the more giggly idea that his personal property had been exposed! Now there’s a trip down memory lane!
you know whats reeeeaaaally fugly? old knitting patterns! have a look next time youre in a secondhand shop… they are truly repugnance personified. or is that knittified? whatever, yesterdays knitting looks like it was made both out of and to fit that hairy yak filly.
lifelike001 said…
you know whats reeeeaaaally fugly? old knitting patterns! have a look next time youre in a secondhand shop… they are truly repugnance personified. or is that knittified? whatever, yesterdays knitting looks like it was made both out of and to fit that hairy yak filly.
As one who knits and crochets (and taught it), I can agree with you on this one! LOL. I have thousands of the pattern books back to about 1910 for sweaters, socks, afghans, hats, filet crochet, tablecloths, bedspreads, tatting, you name it. Some of the fashions were atrocious, mostly the ones from the 1970s. LOL!
GROSS!!!!
Do lets bury the 70′s
What a shitty decade, for just about EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!
What’s really scary is how much today’s fashion looks like the 70′s stuff.
Some kids I know went to Disneyworld on a school trip. They all wore the hip hugging bell bottom, drag the ground bluejeans. It rained. The drag the ground pants wicked that water up all the way to the top. They all got totally soaked and got really sick. Of course the hootch they smuggled on the trip and the lack of sleep probably didn’t help but wow were those jeans cold in that rain!!
I actually caught my right foot in my left bell bottom when I was running down the hall in school, tripped, dropped thousands of papers I had in my hands and landed full weight on my knee. That knee gave me trouble for years. I think what cured it was when I cut into it with the chain saw. But that’s another story!!
Someone mentioned how people in the future will look at how we dress today. FUTURE, hell! Some of these teenagers today I have to laugh at now. (maybe it’s just jealousy, though, at their flat tummies)
Kind of reminds me of the nylon Two-Tone Tuffy tack that was so popular when I was barrel racing (years and years ago). Now, if you showed up at a barrel show with multi-colored nylon tack, all the people with their “bling-bling” leather would laugh you out of the arena.
bwahahahaa TATTING! OMG someone said tatting *runs around in circles squealing and waving arms* i found an old tatting book in an op shop and sadly have not tatted a single tat as i cant find a… erm… that thingy they tat with in the pictures O_o
my mum and i recently went through a huge scrapbook full of knitting pattens shed inherited from her mum. there were one or two lovely vintage gems, quite a few things that held precious sentimental value… and a veritable treasure trove of orange polyester fugorama. i am now the proud owner of numerous patterns for frilled doilies. i kid you not! apparently you make these hideously elaborate lacey whatsits, then soak them in heavily sugared water and set them so the edge frills… they dry overnight and you have a permanent disgusting dust trap that took so much freakin work you cant bear to toss it to the neighbours dog like a big lace frisbee.
lifelike -
Sugared water? What happens when they get wet? Don’t they attract bugs? I’ve seen those stiff lace doileys before, but sugared water? Hell – I guess if I cut up my dishtowel, and wiped up my kid’s juice, and then just let it sit there, I could make my own!
Lifelike – LOL on the tatting stuff. Heehee. I don’t like those frilly doilies that have the puffy edges (or the sugar water thing) but I do like the intricate flatwork on some of the larger pieces. I’m in the middle of a thread crochet popcorn bedspread from a 1932 pattern book. Size 7 steel hook. I can only work on it once in a while, but it’s pretty neat. Of course, when it’s done, I couldn’t possibly use it! Just like the huge king size bedspread I knitted from my own design with wool and mohair. It’s gorgeous, but I don’t dare use it! LOL.
forthefutureofthebreed said…
The show blankets under our show saddles had fringe on the back
Me, too! Only I couldn’t afford to buy one of the nice ones so I went down to the fabric store, bought the fringe (a very pretty, slinky blue) and sewed it on my plain green & white blanket. It went so nicely with the fuzzy green covers for the breast collar, girth and noseband that I had. And I still have it collecting spiders in the tack room…
Hey, that works!
Bet no one could tell it wasn’t one of those expensive ones.
I would sooooo wear that tomorrow if I had it in my closet. At least my underwear wouldn’t be hanging out the top…or worse my “muffin top.”
OMG!!! I laughed so hard I cryed! Thanx for that, and thanx to my parents for not letting me be born in time to wear that stuff!! Tho just barely;(
OMG! This is about the funniest thing I think I’ve ever read. Normally I just lurk and laugh, but this time I simply had to post. Thanks FHOTD!!!
yeah, sugared water! how wrong does that sound… im picturing someone making them in australia and just creating a sticky, lacey flytrap *barfs*
Hmm…Phentex ponchos….some Memory Lanes need need those big ass concrete barriers.
Hey, I remember the fringed sakkle blankets. Of course on the Arabs they used to cover half of their butt – not always a bad thing.
Green corderoy bell bottoms – HUGE bells. They squeaked when I walked.
4horses&holding: When I gamed on my fugly (now almost 33 year old beloved retiree) QH gelding, I thought I would DIE if I didn’t have the 2 tone nylon Tuffy bridle, reins, and tiedown, WITH matching breastcollar, in blue and white to match my fluffy blue fleece saddle pad and blue bell boots. Unfortunately, a well-meaning family member bought me the bridle and reins…..in tan and dark brown….because tan and dark brown was the only set on sale (and unreturnable). And yes, I think that set still resides in my parents basement with the rest of the relics of my youth.
Regarding the 1977 catalog “fashions”, I recall inheriting a certain pair of hand-me-down cordouroy bell bottoms in granny smith apple green, that I wore with a red turtleneck that had little apple green turtles on it. And later on, the rainbow ribbon belt….can I get a shout out from all my fellow members of the rainbow ribbon belt tribe?
artdoc – we cross posted on the green bell bottoms. What did you wear yours with?
although its long dead, this blogs archives are full of fugly knitting related japes
http://youknitwhat.blogspot.com/
So funny…I was left in tears. Thank you
please put that catalog back where you found it!! LOL,JK!
good stuff, seriously!