Gear Up for Uni: The Campus Looks That Redefined Americana
Menacing glares, sharp words, the clatter of a salad bowl dropped savagely on the dining table. It was a time long before “it’s not a phase, mom” became a concept and even longer before it became a punchline. Teenagers weren’t causing their parents grief with piercings, tattoos, or addictions to social media. Yet parents had one major bone to pick with their children: Sportswear at the dinner table.
During the first half of the 20th century, innovations were being made in university athletics teams that were slowly but surely being adopted by college students more broadly. Classrooms that at first had required formal dress – suits and ties, long skirts and smart jackets, began to resemble the sideline of a football match more so than a hall of learning.
As the years went on, American college student’s affinity with the comfort and ease afforded by sportswear led the style to take over the streets. First dates moved from formal dinner settings to movie theatres and drive-ins, bowling alleys and diners – and rather than a faux pas, sportswear WAS the style to be seen in. So when crewnecks and track shorts seeped into formal family affairs, parents were pressed.
The teenage phase that we confront with a shrug today wasn’t experienced as we know it until around the 1950s. Before then, children went from childhood to the austerity of adulthood essentially overnight. Ever the country of extremes – when American college students rejected the restrictive clothing of their parent’s era, they naturally leaned hard in the opposite direction. Sportswear was not only comfortable, but affordable and easy to launder.
Fashion became accessible to many for the first time. Retailers began to respond to consumer desires rather than wagging their finger at the youth market and telling them what they should be wearing. “Taste” became something that the individual would hone themselves, rather than a thing to be acquired by following a set of rules.
When you wear a collegiate inspired piece, you are wearing the most rebellious fit that a 20-something could wear in the 1950s. It was a revolt against the “square” styles of their parents’ generation and welcomed a new lifestyle that would define Americana for decades to come.
Shop the collegiate range at Glue Store.
Images by Teruyoshi Hayashida