Pants? What Pants? A Stroll Down Memory Lane in School Dress Codes!

The only time I ever recall wearing pants at school was when I was in junior high and high school.

I was in the marching band, and pants was part of the marching band uniform.

And so that was the only time I or any of the other female students ever wore pants to school, was when we were wearing our band uniform.

Our teachers were amazing.

Our teachers, all of the teachers I recall, they were all beautiful.

And the ones who were not necessarily born with beautiful traits, they knew how to work it and pull it together so that every teacher I ever had was just amazing and gorgeous.

Our teachers, of course, the female teachers never wore pants, never saw a teacher in pants.

In fact, our teachers went above and beyond.

When they stepped into the classroom, they were just so pulled together.

They always looked so nice.

They would wear heels, if not heels, a flat, a flat shoe, but it was always kind of a dress shoe.

Nobody came to in sneakers.

I don't remember anybody changing out of their shoes and wearing sneakers through the day.

These teachers.

I remember these teachers standing up there and teaching all day wearing their heels, just looking really nice, looking really polished.

And the guys the same.

If they weren't wearing a suit, then they had just real nice pants on, a nice shirt.

I believe that I'm thinking a lot of them.

I'm seeing them in a tie now.

I don't.

I don't want to say they wore a tie every day, but they were always pulled together, too.

And whenever we went on a field trip or something like that, you didn't have to guess or ask who the teachers were.

I say that because I see in New York a lot.

In fact, I saw a group of high school students who were going on a trip and near my house, they were walking near my house on the way to the subway.

And I could not tell who was the teacher and who was the students, because by high school, you're almost just about the same size.

In fact, there are some teachers that are even a little shorter or a little smaller than a lot of the high school students today.

But I couldn't tell because they were all dressed the same.

They all had on sneakers.

They all had on some pants or jeans.

And I'm not saying they look bad.

I'm just trying to tell you the comparison of how we dressed in 1950s and how people dress today.

I'm not saying it's bad.

I'm just saying it's different.

And I'm trying to share these memories from the 1950s and the 1960s.

A few years ago, I was working in the front of the house in the Broadway community and in the front of the house.

I mean, the part where the audience is.

As opposed to being backstage and being in a show.

I was working in the front of the house with a company who provided assisted listening devices to audience members.

We'd see the students come in for.

Groups of students come in for a matinee of a show on certain days.

And if ever I needed to pass a message on to the teacher so that they could pass the message on to the students.

Whether I was doing that or anyone else in the theater, it was always very difficult because we could not tell the students from the teachers.

And a lot of times I would have to say, where is the teacher?

And I would try to say that as pleasantly as I could because I could not tell who the teachers were because they were all dressed alike, all very casual.

And that would not have happened when I was growing up.

That never happened where you couldn't tell who the teacher was.

You could tell who the teacher was by the way she was dressed.

Because the teachers, even though we had to wear dresses and skirts, there were.

The teachers were just.

They took it a step further.

They just went above and beyond.

I just think our teachers were just fabulous in how they dressed and how they carried themselves.

And it was a way they carried themselves that also said, I'm the teacher.

And again, I'm not bashing on dress today and how people are doing today.

That is not the point of what I want to do and that's not what I want to do on this channel.

What I want to do is share information and I want to tell you how it was.

I'm not here to say one way is better than the other.

I'm just here to say that's how it was.

So our teachers again would be go on a field trip.

They'd be in those hills.

They'd look like they were just getting ready to go to church.

If we had a field trip, oh, then it was really turned up.

And so I was always very proud of my teachers.

And I have great memories.

When I think back on my teachers, I believe they just provided us with so much self esteem.

They inspired us because they looked good.

They inspired us to want to look good too.

A lot of times people say, well, you're overdressed.

I know one time I took a temp job and the people used to get mad at me when I would come in.

I mean, they were just like, why are you wearing that?

And I'm thinking, well, doesn't it look nice?

I Thought it looked nice, so I thought I would wear it.

And to this day, I still like looking nice.

Sometimes I'm.

I'd rather be overdressed than underdressed.

In any occasion, I'd rather be overdressed.

When I first came to New York, I'd always heard about and dreamed about seeing a Broadway show.

And from what I had heard when, when I was growing up in Greensboro about Broadway, what little I could discern was that people got dressed up to go to Broadway.

Well, by the time I got to New York, people were dressing more and more casual to go to Broadway.

In 1968, a show opened on Broadway called Hair.

And it was the first time that a show on Broadway, correct me if I'm wrong, anybody, but it was the first time I, I believe that there was no set, there was no set to cover up the back wall.

So the show was very natural, very raw.

It was about what so called hippies and young kids fighting against the establishment and kids doing drugs and having different feelings about the Vietnam War and hanging out and wanting to not cooperate with the system.

And so it was a very casual show.

It was that show that as a result of that, I believe people started dressing more casual to come to the theater.

I can't say that it was all the show.

It could have been just a sign of the time that it was going to change anyway, that people were just going to stop dressing for the theater.

Although there are a lot of people that do.

And I love that, I respect that.

The way it is now, basically is for Broadway.

Come as you are, come wear what you want to wear, express yourself.

As long as it's legal, you know, we gonna let you in and enjoy the show.

But I remember there was a time when it was all about dressing a certain way to go to Broadway.

And I kind of wish, I kind of was sad that I had missed that era.

But I still, I still try to pull it together if I'm going to Broadway.

To me, Broadway is something special.

And it's my way of showing my respect to the production and to the actors and respecting the theater is just showing up a little bit pulled up, making, letting people know.

I spent a little more time getting that.

I spent some time getting it together for you.

Oh, this reminds me of.

I'm not gonna call the singer's name, but she was very famous.

She has since passed on and she was doing a show when I was living in San Francisco at a very small club.

And I like that, I like small clubs because these big arenas I like to be able to just see the performer.

And so she was performing in this very small club and I made it my business to be there.

And I could literally just reach out where I was sitting.

I could reach out and touch the stage if I wanted to.

And I was so excited to see her because she was always so glamorous, looked so good and just.

She was just an amazing looking woman as, as well as an amazing vocalist.

And when I say amazing looking, she was an average looking woman who worked it, if you understand what I mean.

So.

But when she hit the stage and from her album covers, she was just always amazing to me and just looked beautiful and had on glitzy stuff and I just loved her for that as well as I loved her for her voice and her music.

So I went to see her at this club and when they introduced her, oh my.

She came out like she had just gotten out of bed.

She had on some old, they looked like men's pants, but they were kind of ill fitting.

And she had a shirt that didn't really match the pants and she didn't have her signature makeup that I always used to look for.

And oh, my heart was broken.

And as I'm sitting there, I made up in my mind right there.

As a performer, I said, your audience members should never be dressed better than the performer on the stage.

And I enjoyed her performance that night.

But I walked away feeling that, knowing that, wow, whenever I hit the stage to do anything, I want to be.

I don't want the people in the audience to, to be dressed better than I am because I'm supposed to be bringing you something.

And I just.

And to this day I hold to that.

And one of the things when I'm asked to do a presentation, one of the first things that goes through my mind is, okay, what am I going to wear anyway?

I may have digressed right there.

In the summers, when I would go visit my grandmother and my aunt, they were people who I think I mentioned before, they were sewers.

They knew how to make clothes.

And so instead of going to a department store to get shorts for the summer and get dresses for the coming fall school year, we would go to the fabric store and we would be asked to pick out the fabric that we liked for, that we wanted shorts out of or we wanted a dress for school or a skirt for school.

So we would do our shopping in the fabric store and then my aunt would make us clothes.

My mother would make us a lot of clothes too.

But when we were younger, she was so Busy with her working and everything that she, she.

When we were younger, most of the time if we needed something, she'd go to the store and.

And get it because she just didn't have that time to make things.

Although I do remember recall her making me some dresses for some special events or programs that I was in in school.

And I always felt very proud and very happy and I always loved the things that she made for me, my mother.

After we were older, sewing became her number one thing to do and that was her hobby.

She sewed and she made everything that she wore, she made herself.

And she loved letting you know that she made it herself in.

Sometimes I'd have a friend over and my mother would just bust into the living room with something on and she said, see this?

This is what I'm going to wear to church on Sunday.

See this collar?

See how that's just laying down like that?

I did that myself.

And look in here.

This is lined.

This is lined.

Yes, I did all of this.

I know this looks good.

And child, I'm going to get me my bone hat.

I got a bone bag and some bone shoes.

Child, when I walk in church, heads are going to turn.

Now that was.

I wish I was saying I was exaggerating, but that was my mother.

My mother was very proud of her clothes and she always liked looking good and she Yaga did.

She made everything except her hats.

And of course she got.

Always had a purse and shoes to match.

And she.

That's what we were taught to do as girls growing up.

You will always want a hat that blends in and you want to have several purses and shoes, but you want the purse to match perfectly with the shoes.

And that's the way we were taught to dress.

And to this day, I still follow those rules.

It's a little harder in New York.

As I'd mentioned before in one of my previous videos, it's harder in New York because to me, just walking through New York and not having a car, taking the subway is.

I don't want to wear pretty shoes in through the streets of New York.

I want my feet protected.

I wear boots, actually, I wear boots winter, summer, fall and spring in New York City because I don't know what's on these streets.

Because every now and then you're out on a block and it's clean and it's pretty, but you can turn the corner and all of a sudden you're like, you know, not everybody curbs their dog and it's liquids on the sidewalk.

And you don't know what it is.

And then down in the subway, I see rats every now and then and I don't want them to.

Some rats have come too close to my feet that I want them covered.

So here in New York, I don't.

I don't follow that rule of the matching purse and, and the matching shoes.

Plus in New York in these shoes that you can run in.

So I need to have shoes that I can run in if I need to run.

And of course, traveling through the city in New York is just so much easier to have a backpack now that messes up my whole fashion statement.

But I've kind of incorporated those things, the boots all year long and some type of backpack so that I can run when I need to run and I don't have to worry about my feet or my pretty shoes being ruined.

As I said have said before, if I have to go somewhere and I'm making a presentation or something, I will wear my boots to get there.

And then I will change into my pretty shoes when I.

And sometimes even take out a purse and just put the check, the backpack and the boots and so that I can make my fashion statement.

Christmas was when we got the bulk of our clothes for school at Christmas we would get several skirts and mini sweaters.

Sweaters was a big thing.

And maybe a pair of shoes.

And that would get us through that year and have things ready to start for the beginning of the next year.

At Easter time, we would get an Easter outfit and maybe another dress.

And that would get us through the spring and the summer like that.

And so that is how we used to do it.