What clothes did you wear as a child?

[Fabienne]

I'm just appalled by the clothing available for children in most US department stores.  Gap does better.  Some small children's shops also provide more choices.

Why is it that most little boys are dressed in blue or red?  I get most of the clothes for my son in France, and it comes in a multitude of colors and shades, interesting designs, etc.

How were you, as a child?  Did you care what clothes were bought for you?

 

[LA Guy]

I cared from the time I was about 8; but my father was a starting academic, my mom stayed at home, there was a mortgage to pau, so money was tight. I wore mainly hand me downs and thrift shop stuff. I started really caring in about grade 7 (age 12), and my parents were a little better off then, but they still thought that clothes for growing boys was a frivolity. I did get the occasional item I really wanted after much pleading and whining. Maybe that was the root of my jeans and sneakers habit (I have at least 8 pairs of each on rotation at any one time, and I have well over a dozen pairs of jeans and two dozen pairs of sneakers.)

 

[globetrotter]

sorry, totally irrelevant, but cute none the less

my son has a collection of hats - a fun har from russia, a fez, a huge embroidered skullcap, a dutch football fan hat, etc. when we are at dinner, we all have to wear a hat, which he chooses for us, and then, at his command, we rotate.

so I am guessing that my son likes clothes.

a direct answer - a lot of my sons clothes came from a cottege store in india - tie died overalls. he also wears a lot of standard gap stuff, with the rate the he grows, and the way he likes to get dirty, I am more interested in keeping him comfortable and clean than stylish.

 

[1Dgaf]

I wore what other kids did, though I didn't really have any labels or expensive trainers.

For a while I went to school in a labcoat. I was about 11 or 12. I was never any good at science.

 

[Roy]

a dutch football fan hat, etc.

Is this your son?

 

[globetrotter]

no, but boy he looks like him, espectially his charming manner..

 

[marc237]

We grew up real, real poor, so clothing was whatever was cheapest. I did not care much until my 30's.

In HS, during the early 70"s, I wore elephant bells, a T-shirt from some rock concert or Army-Navy store, and a work-shirt (usually with GF embroidery or sewn on patches), and old army-navy stuff. Only wore Frye boots or moccasins.

In college the uniform remained the same except that the jeans became more and more straight legged.

By law school, I traded jeans for khaki's and wore blue button down shirts for the most part (again, whatever was cheapest.)

 

[Stu]

Grade School:  Burgundy bell-bottomed Tough Skins jeans from Sears.  Remember those? That and crappy Beta Bullet sneakers. Hey, my parents were struggling, not poor but always struggling.

By HS it was ratty Levis, hiking boots, crappy T-shirt with a flannel ls shirt unbuttoned and untucked. I was Kurt Cobain before Kurt Cobain, sans the heroin habit and the sciata.

 

[STYLESTUDENT]

Like LA Guy, my father was beginning an academic career when I was young and we didn't have much. Nobody else did either in my old New York neighborhood and the boys my age really cared about playing ball and the Yankees. I got a scholarship to a private country day school in 7th grade (for the wealthy) and my jeans and sneakers didn't cut it. All the other boys wore "prep style" Brooks clothes. That's when I became interested.

 

[bch]

I cared way too much when I was a kid. One example that I remmber: I grew up when striped tube socks (with NFL colors) were standard issue. I would get overly upset when my socks migrated downward, and even put rubber bands on them to keep them up.

My daughter is just as particular. It must be genetic.

 

[globetrotter]

It's intersting - I also grew up pretty poor, wearing a combination of thrift shop, hand-me-downs and sears clothes. in high school I mostly wore work clothes, as a combination styel statement and because they were easy to maintain and cheap. it was only after I got out of the military that I started to think about buying real clothes. I have a feeling, looking at other posts that this wasn't an uncommon thing. I guess we are all Jay Gatsby at heart

 

[Roy]

I started to care when I was about 11. I only wore jeans, nikes and Oxbow T-shirts. Later when I was about 17 I started enjoying shirts made by Armani/Versace etc. Later on I preferred Trussardi and Joop. Now at 22 I still like the look of Trussardi, Armani etc. But I prefer to buy Barba di Napoli or Andrea Finamore. As far as shoes go I love Santoni (also for sneakers).

 

[topcatny]

I always cared about what clothes were bought for me from the time I was about 6 or 7. We never could afford what I wanted as a kid so there wasn't much use worrying or complaining about it though. I put together outfits I would like to have all the time, I was just never able to have them. I grew up basically wearing jeans and s/s knit shirts and l/s buttondowns in the winter with whatever sneakers were left over from the previous years basketball season. That war basically my uniform through college. When I started working I really started expanding my wardrobe.

I think shopping for boys is harder than it is for girls. My wife doesn't seem to have any trouble finding all sorts of things for our little girl (she's 6 months old and her closet is literally completely filled) but when she has to buy a gift for any of our friends little boys she often struggles. I figure with 2 parents in the fashion industry she is bound to get caught up in the frenzy. It will no doubt cost me a lot of money over the years. Hopefully, I can maintain enough contacts that I can at least buy things at a major discount.

 

[johnw86]

Priceless photo, Roy.

Growing up, I used to wear an awful lot of clothes from Sears (as I disclosed on the earlier Sears thread). When I was in high school, my mom hired a seamstress (in my very small hometown) to make me a couple of shirts (mid-1970s) with balloon sleeves and three-button cuffs, long pointed collars, etc. I remember bitching because they weren't from a store. Now I realize I had bespoke clothing and didn't realize it.

 

[Fabienne]

Absolutely: shopping for little girls' clothes is far more engaging, in the US (although you do get a lot of red and pink). I think my son cares. He's 2 1/2, and has set ideas about what he wants to wear, most days. He also notices what we wear. "Papa" wears suits. All the suits in the world. Any suit out there belongs to his father. You all had better understand that right now.

When I was a child, I remember what I couldn't have, and that I wasn't as well-dressed as some of the other kids. I was attached to a few items, of whom I mostly recall details: the zipper on an orange cardigan, the trim at the edge of my Russian dance costume, the hallucinating design of one of my pairs of pants.

I was saved for a while: the company where my dad worked gave us, three years in a row, "des blouses", sort of long thin coats with cheerful prints, to wear on top of your clothes, to spare them. This was good.

My most traumatic memory, at age 3, is when my parents bought me a pair of brown lace-up shoes. I told them they were boys' shoes. Pleaded and reasoned with them, almost lied when they asked if they hurt my big toe. Nothing doing. They were bought. Somehow, I got out of wearing them. Ever. Which seems pretty unbelievable, given how inflexible my parents were.