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[Taz2]

This looks an interesting read for those of us who were teenagers in the 70's. You can save a third by buying it on Amazon http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/fashion-beauty/388595/Growing-up-in-the-decade-that-style-forgot

Taz x

[Rowan]

Clogs, over the knee socks  those shorts with bibs forgot what we called them, I did like the hippy stuff too, cheese cloth and long skirts and those Platte headbands that we wore around our foreheads like Twiggie.

Maybe best we forget them 

[Taz2]

It's more than that though - it's about how we had a social life without any internet, phones, even landlines in a lot of cases, only one television per house. The only way to find out if someone was in or if they were coming out was to walk to their house and knock on the door. Face to face talking? Wow!!

I'm still called a hippy. Do you mean hot pants?

Taz x 

[Rowan]

That's it Hot Pants.

I often think about how on earth we managed without todays technology, we take it all for granted, yet we did and it was all normal and we were probably just as happy or unhappy as we are today.

Going to look on Amazon for the book.

[Pennyfarthing]

Looks really interesting Taz. Thanks.

I remember going to a Canned Heat concert and buying my first ever pair of Loon pants and a black grandad style T shirt covered in little mirrors and embroidery.  I also remember wearing HUGE wooden platform clogs - I think they were about 5" high in they had studs along where the leather joined the wood. 

I had long straight hair,as did all my friends.  Usually left to hang straight and parted down the middle but sometimes in hippy-style plaits with some flowers stuck in for good effect. 

We didn't have a phone at home but the phone box at the end of our road was my own personal phone room.   Our school had a huge catchment area and I knew all the phone box numbers for miles around.  There wasn't much for kids to do in rural areas except hang around the phone box.  I'm laughing as I type this but it is absolutely true.   You just rang the number of the phonebox in a village, say 10 miles away and some kid would answer and go and fetch your friend for you or get them to call back to your phone box.

[Pennyfarthing]

I also wore hotpants at some point in that decade and I  wore Maxi coats over top.  I had a sort of cream and brown tweed coat which came down to the ground and wore that with wet-look knee high boots (remember them?)

[Taz2]

I still have mine up in the attic - white ones. I used to wear them with purple satin hot pants and a purple maxi coat. My mum used to keep my dad talking so I could get out of the house without him seeing me. Happy days.

Taz x

[grumpy2008]

I'm forever telling my daughter (she's 12) about the days before mobiles, ipads etc.

In those days, taping the top 20 onto a cassette was the highlight of my week! And having my best friend round to listen to scratchy records. And walking for hours in the countryside, along the canal... even though I couldn't swim! I still can't believe my mum let me do it 

Do you remember monkey boots, a kind of early doc martin? The tough kids at school wore them (no disrespect to anyone! I lived in doc martins myself later on). I was more a cheese cloth top, jeans & poncho kinda girl in the 70s...

[Rowan]

Mine were  neutral colour canvas boots laced in the front up to my knees, I wore them with a Biba purple max skirt buttoned up the front and silky sheared cream blouse, I think that was one of my favourite outfits, . I also wore tiny little dresses and pants to match that I made myself.

I had my waist length hair all through the seventies and eighties

Anyone remember the  musk oils? I think Rimmel sold them in small bottles.

[Elena]

Who had a stinky afghan coat then?  Fess up!!   

[Hurdity]

Haha! I didn't - mine was a ratty old black fur coat made of moleskin I got second-hand from some market or other in London. My husband still has his that he bought in Afghanistan in 1974! Still stinks ( he hasn't worn it for years obvs) Hot pants, loon pants. Yes had them - the hot ones (with a bib) only briefly until I bought my lovely loons (bought from ads in Melody Maker!) and converted all other straight jeans to flares by means of a sewn-in panel - who else did this? This was not the throw-away age - I used to sew - like you Rowan! Endless smocks over loons. I also had a tapestry fringed jacket which I also still have up in the loft. Long floaty floral skirts - those were the days. Back then I didn't have long hair but had it short and what used to be called a feather cut - but then grew it long from late 70's onwards and kept it like that for years afterwards, until too much grey meant that colouring was a pain so now more manageable shoulder length. Oh yes loved the cheesecloth - getting carried away now.......! Clogs clogs clogs - very uncomfortable too.

Pennyfarthing - I had one of those T shirts too! - it was black - yes embroidery and mirrors and wore it all the time with my green loons!

This is making me very nostalgic...

Hurdity x

[Elena]

Ahh, the tapestry coat.  My best friend had one, I was so envious 

[pixie]

I remember having a short haircut like purdy (Joanna Lumley), around '77. I had a cheese cloth top with very small buttons and loops that I wore with pale blue brutus jeans around 1975!
During 1976, I had a boyfriend, who wore an Afghan coat all the time. I wore a floppy hat.  It was around that time that they always used to play "High Ho Silver Lining" at the end of the over 18s disco!  We were about 15/16. We used to go and sit in the pubs with the boys. I can even remember smoking pot at the back of the church yard, and being unable to move and as a result was very sick at the bus stop, in front of a queue of people.
We also used to toast banana skins and crumble it all up and smoke it!! What a wayward time we had, and how did I get to be so 'sensible'?!!

[ariadne]

Oh, all of your outfits and hairstyles sound just like mine were! Loved those times.

I taped the Top 20 too - you had to stay silent  throughout.  My Mum was on one of my tapes because she shouted up to me "Do you want a Mars bar?" Then the sound of a Mars bar hitting the bedroom door as she threw it up the stairs for me.

I made endless white smocks with floaty sleeves from white bed sheets, worn with home made long floaty skirts that used to drag in the wet and mud, as did the Loons

My white Afghan coat was "distressed" by being dragged over the garden path because it looked too new.. It was also scented with bucket loads of Norman Hartnell's "In Love" talcum powder.

Pixie - that outfit you describe was exactly one of mine with the cheesecloth top and tiny buttons and loops that took ages to do up (and undo too  )

Oh, happy memories

ariadne xx

[pixie]

 

As a 10year old, I used to draw a lot of pictures of girls in hot pants with long boots and  long coats with  Elvis type of collars and puffed sleeves.  They all had the same feather haircut. This must've been around 1971ish, because I remember being very struck with the fashions of the time, and wanting to create new designs in my head! I got a lot of these ideas from Top of the Pops and my sister and my friend.  I never had hot pants, but had a red poncho with blue and white stripes at the bottom and a white fringe!

As a teenager of about 13years old, my school friends and I (went to a girls school) used to write stories about boys and what we would get up to with them! It usually involved snogging boys we fancied at the fairground. I was about 14 when I first snogged a boy at a friends party, and remember how exciting it was and how we all talked about it at school and what the technique was supposed to be.