Rural Youth Culture of the 1950s & 1960s

For those growing up during the 1950s and '60s, fashion was characterized by dress codes at school and casual attire around the farm. Female narrators described smoothing their hair with orange juice concentrate cans. Regarding clothing, specific styles were Bobbie Brooks pleated skirts and sweaters, as well as poodle skirts.

Carla Riley

Carla: "What was I going to do when I grew up? Well, I guess I thought maybe I was going to be a well-loved, renowned fashion designer because I was into clothes even then. I did love the fashion magazines and all that stuff as a kid. I mean, I just loved pretty fabrics and pretty dresses and just got a big kick out of that."

LeAnn Dean

LeAnn: "In high school there was a brand named Bobbie Brooks, and you had matching, in the winter, wool pleated skirts, probably a faint plaid, and then matching sweaters. And that was the look you wanted. I think in late elementary, it was the era of the cancans or the skirts over slips that were crinoline that made your skirt fan out. So you'd brag of whether you had a 50 yard cancan or a 75 yard cancan and, I mean, that's what the fashion magazines would encourage you to emulate. Poodle skirts, we'd wear a cancan under those. So they were like felt skirts with this poodle design, and they was just caught on."

LeAnn: "And at one point maybe in the late '60s where the styles were less curly, girls would dry their hair with wrapped around orange juice concentrate because they were the smaller."

Vern Brown

Vern: "...when I was in country school, my usual garb was coveralls or overalls, suspenders, and things. But when I got into high school, I think it was more regular shirts and then khaki pants and stuff like that."

Linda Krogsrud

Linda: "We didn't have the miniskirts. We didn't have to wear long skirts. We could wear a regular skirt, or dress, or whatever. But yeah. Then they changed it so that we could wear slacks on Fridays. They changed the dress code then. When I first started school, it was the skirts and the brown stockings. And I went like, 'Everybody else in my class, mom, has white stockings, can't I have white stockings too?' So I finally got white stockings. But we all wore the stockings and snow pants and that type of thing because we all played outside all the time."

Joe Riley

Joe: "And the trends were everybody wore loafers and blue jeans, that's the only thing I ever wore to school all my life was a pair of blue jeans and just a button-down shirt or a cotton shirt, there was never no dress up, never ever wore—I don't think I ever in my life wore a pair of slacks at school and neither did anybody else. Or maybe some did, especially on every Friday they had a pep fest for football, and maybe the players dressed up a little bit but I never was into sports. And not that I wouldn't like to go in sports, but I knew it wasn't going to work so I never even thought about it. But it was very, very casual dress and come home and slip your school jeans off and get in another pair and went to work."

Sarah: "What about church, what would you wear to church?"

Joe: "We did wear dress slacks and stuff to church, always did. Always had slacks and dress shirts and better clothes to wear to church for sure. But that was basically the only time we ever wore anything outside of, what I would say, blue jeans."

Dawn Benson

Dawn: "But then at some point in high school when it got long enough, then you rolled your hair up on electric curlers. Mine was you plugged in the box and you put—mine had water, some of them were just dry heat, but you put water in the bottom and these curlers sat on posts in the box so they'd heat up, and then you'd roll your hair in it and you'd come out with a curl or a wave."

Annegine Vipond

Jodi: "What did—shopping, what did your closet look like and where did you go to shop?"
Annegine: "Well, my mom made most of my clothes. And then back then you ordered things from Sears, Montgomery Ward, JCPenney's, and then you had to go to the store and pick them up, the clothing item and stuff. Penney's was in more so—I guess maybe that was our most go-to. If we took any big event, it was going to Fergus Falls, and that would be like nowadays going to Minneapolis. Because you probably only made two trips all year if you had to get some major things that you didn't find in Morris."
Jodi: "So that's how you did your school shopping?"
Annegine: "Yeah. But like I said, my mom sewed almost all my dresses and stuff. And we didn't, per se, go major shopping, you just shopped when you needed something special. In the catalog."
Jodi: "And so were—well, the clothing of the time, was it very muted? So we go through cycles where it's real muted, are they really bright colors or anything like that stand out?"
Annegine: "I'd say pretty neutral. I don't remember ever going into any really wild, crazy fashion. My junior, senior year, we did wear wool shorts in the winter with tall knee highs. That was probably the most thing I remember the adults always saying, oh, you're going to get arthritis, your knees are going to be so cold. But we'd be running through snowbanks with our tall socks on and I think nothing—"
Jodi: "It sounds super preppy."
Annegine: "Thinking nothing of it. Yeah, that was a major thing that you could—and then you could wear those to ball games."