CHAPTER ONE
In the Public Eye
In the first half of the twentieth century, college students seemed to be everywhere. Their football games were followed at a national level, their dances were deemed immoral, and their hygiene habits were suspect. Journalists, social commentators, and educators dissected nearly every aspect of collegiansâ culture, and did so in front of a very interested American public. Songs such as 1925âs âCollegiateâ proclaimed the undergradâs arrival: âTrousers baggy. And our clothes look raggy. But weâre rough and ready.â1 They were rough and readyâto play and to buy.
Collegians came to national attention in the 1910s, phased into a raccoon-coated phenomenon in the 1920s, and proved their collective buying power in the 1930s. Itself just a newcomer to the countryâs cultural landscape, the American fashion industry understood that âcasual clothing which will stand up under hard wear and still continue to look well is what the co-ed wants.â2 Yet retailers, manufacturers, and fashion editors struggled to understand and meet the groupâs demands. Princeton was inundated with trend scouts who were looking for inspiration. In 1936, a student reporter snipped, âItâs hardly worth an undergraduateâs life these days to appear on the campus in presentable garb. If he does, a dapper gentleman with a camera pops out from behind some tree or other, snaps a quick photo, and the next thing the bewildered undergrad knows, he finds himself in the style magazines or in clothing advertisements.â3
Retailers recruited students to help select and sell back-to-school styles. Magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post (1897), Vanity Fair (1913), Esquire (1932), and Mademoiselle (1935) ran advertisements, fiction, and fashion advice aimed to catch the eye of collegiansâor the many others who followed their cultural lead. âCollege students,â writes historian Paula Fass, âwere fashion and fad pacesetters whose behavior, interest, and amusements caught the national imagination and were emulated by other youth.â This power âturned the idea of youth into an eminently salable commodity.â4 In 1932, fashion theorist J. C. Flugel noted the influence of college youth on their parentsâ generation: âMaturity has willingly forgone its former dignities in return for the right of sharing in the appearance and activities of youth.â5 Illustrations by John Held and novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald delivered a deceptively homogenous collegiate experience in which everyone was white and upper middle class.
Visible cracks came to the surface after World War II, as the sheer number of collegians made even the semblance of monolithic student culture impossible. The ranks of college students swelled from 1.5 million in 1940 to 3.7 million in 1960.6 These new recruits came from across the socioeconomic spectrum, but the bulk of them were solidly middle class. With time, students became increasingly disenchanted with the status quo. Historian of student culture Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz writes of the 1960s, âTraditional college life had lost its appeal to many. Schools suspended college rituals due to lack of interest.â Clothing made to âdistinguish between the sexes, and enhance status, gave way to revealing, ânatural,â androgenized looks democratized by denim.â7 A more diverse collegiate demographic and an increasingly powerful teenage market complicated the fashion industryâs attempts to understand youthâs tastes. In many ways, as historian Thomas Frank has explained, âThe conceptual position of youthfulness became as great an element of the marketing picture as youth itself.â8 In 1969, the editor of Mademoiselle told fashion industry insiders, âFor the first time in history, there is freedom of fashion choice . . . the mature and the young can establish her own identity, express her own individuality, and, as never before, do her own thing.â9 âLifestyle,â with its celebration of personal choice, guided consumption. As fashion executives, publicity agents, and department store buyers learned, one size no longer fit all.
What and how an individual student bought depended on circumstance, individual tastes, and most significantly, personal finance. Radcliffe freshman and clotheshorse Nancy Murray (Class of 1946) wrote of her relationship with spending: âMoney is liquid and flows gaily in the wrong directionâto other pockets than my own.â10 Princetonâs Chalmers Alexander (Class of 1932) received weekly boxes of his maidâs oatmeal-raisin cookies and his motherâs latest offerings for his wardrobe. His purchasing instructions were exacting, and many packages were exchanged between his home in Jackson, Mississippi, and his dorm room in New Jersey. Despite his seemingly affluent background, the tightly wound Chalmers methodically documented daily expenses. During the Depression, the familyâs financial situation was dire, and Chalmers moved to Edwards Hall, a dorm he described as âold and shaggy and the lowest ranking dormitory on campus (a lot of boys who are working their way through).â The move was difficult, and he admitted to his parents, âI naturally would prefer not moving there just as youâd prefer not moving to South Jackson.â11 The decision to buy or not to buy was ultimately a personal one.12
âA Kind of âExhibit Xââ: Collegians Come to the Fore
The number of college-going youth grew from nearly 240,000 in 1900 to 600,000 in 1920âa 150 percent increase that repositioned collegians on Americaâs cultural landscape.13 Ready-to-wear clothing manufacturers and retailers realized that collegiansâ dress standards were markedly different from those of their parents. College men sought clothing that proclaimed their alliance to the campusâs all-important sports culture. These men wanted comfortable, practical clothing that could be worn from the golf course to the dining hall to the classroom with few social repercussions. Magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collierâs brought images of J. C. Leyendeckerâs Arrow Collar Man and tales of gridiron battles into American homes and lives. Manufacturers such as Brooks Brothers stepped in to supply the demand. For college women, however, this distinctly new genre of dress called âsportswearâ met with raised eyebrows from social critics. While college women were identified as potential consumers, the retailers, manufacturers, and magazine editors of the 1910s were slow to pursue them.
In the first years of the twentieth century, a cultural interest in youthfulness brought collegians to the attention of the American public as never before. Historian Bill Osgerby argues that the growing emphasis on age stratification was a result of changing demographics and labor markets interfacing with âdevelopments in the fields of legislation, family organization and education to mark out young people as a distinct group associated with particular social needs and cultural characteristics.â14 In the early decades, a new masculinity emerged that stood âin stark contrast to Victorian ideals of masculinity that had prized diligence, thrift and self control.â As witnessed in the educational writings of G. Stanley Hall, the Rough Rider rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt, and the naturalist novels of Frank Norris, the male âbody itself became a vital component of manhood: strength, appearance,â writes historian E. Anthony Rotundo, and âathletic skill mattered more than in previous centuries.â15 The emphasis on youthâs physical wellness was, in the words of one Princeton educator, about âmore than health and strength.â Joseph E. Raycroft, the head of the universityâs Hygiene and Physical Education Department, told alumni in 1915 that by staying fit, the American man was âgetting a training in emotional control and an ability to adapt himself successfully to changing conditions that give poise and confidence.â These experiences, said Raycroft, were âthe most effective ways of educating and developing the real man that lies back of his intellectual processes.â16 Well-funded institutions had elaborate facilities. The lore of Yaleâs gym, swimming pool, and locker rooms made it all the way to the West Coast. A Cal student who had visited New Haven in 1912 reported in his student newspaper of the private fencing, boxing, and wrestling lessons available.17 Morehouse College was on the other end of the spectrum, and its students raised money for their own gym. At Morehouse, sports were âencouraged under restrictions that prevent danger to health and neglect to regular school duties.â18 Administrators kept a close eye on the menâs exercise to ensure it aided in the âdevelopment of manly qualities and moral character.â19 Historian Martin Summers writes of the growing tension between school administrators and young black men on the campuses of Fisk and Howard. The students were ârebelling against the imposition of late-Victorian standards of morality at a time when the ascendancy of consumer culture was increasingly undermining the importance of producer values and respectability among the American middle class.â âAt stake,â says Summers âwas the [menâs] desire and ability to control their own bodies, the freedom to consume and experience bodily pleasure without fear of being punished.â20
Figure 1.1. An avid shopper even during wartime, Nancy Murray (Radcliffe, Class of 1946) wrote to her parents in September of 1942, âMoney is liquid and flows gaily in the wrong directionâto other pockets than my own.â Here, she wears saddle shoes, a manâs work shirt, and dungaree jeans (note the heavy seams and patch pockets). This kind of clothing was first worn in the 1930s on elite womenâs campuses in the Northeast but became standard campus wear for women during World War II. Murrayâs letters home chronicled her buying and beautifying regimen. She wrote of a new and costly perm, a lost earring, and a cocktail dress that was too long. Courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
As social critics, educators, and the students themselves reconceptualized the American man as youthful and healthful, J. C. Leyendecker gave him an enduring image in the Arrow Collar Man.21 In the first decades of the century, Leyendecker produced illustrations for fashion companies such as Kuppenheimer and Hart, Schaffner & Marx, but his work for Arrow Collars, based in Troy, New York, proved most popular. Arrow Collars and college men were silent partners in the transition from the hard, detachable collar to the more casual, soft or rolled collar. The soft collar was first worn at Princeton around 1912 and then picked up on other campuses after World War I. Students, recent graduates, and the many others who followed collegiate fashions saw themselves in Leyendeckerâs creation. For example, the Penn State student in figure 1.2 sports a clean-shaven face, lightly slicked (or âwateredâ hair), and the all-important lettermanâs sweater. The Arrow Collar Manâs fresh-faced appeal broke with âprevious notions of masculinity that relegated grooming and fashion to the feminine sphere.â22
Figure 1.2. The fresh-faced, athletic college man became a cultural icon in the first decades of the twentieth century. His lettermanâs sweater was a badge of allegiance to the campus sports culture, making it a sought-after fashion statement. Sweatersâand their less formal cousins, sweatshirtsâbecame staples of casual style because they inspired versatility. This 1908 Penn State student and his roomate lounging on the bed behind him demonstrate the varieties of dormwear. Thick robes and wool sweaters were practical solutions to drafty dorms. Courtesy of the Penn State University Archives, Pennsylvania State University Libraries.
In the first decade of the century, magazines such as Scribnerâs, Collierâs, and Good Housekeeping featured articles about white college students, but not necessarily for them. The magazinesâ readers were middle-class Americans, those who aspired to (and did) send their children to college. Hence, hopeful and prospective parents were the target audience. Many insiders believed the result of this coverage to be a âsuperficial glance,â as one put it, made by âtheoretical critics who have never lived on a college campus, but have gained their information in secondhand fashion from questionnaires or from newspaper-accounts of the youthful escapades of students.â Such a portrait painted the collegian as âan enigma . . . not exactly a boy, certainly not a man, an interesting species, a kind of âExhibit X.ââ23 Magazines were routinely charged with miscasting collegians as pranksters or dilettantes. By the eve of World War I, publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and the more heady Smart Set, whose tagline was âA Magazine of Cleverness,â had established a readership of actual undergraduates. Vanity Fair was the most coveted magazine by the clothing-conscious collegian. Only one year after it was launched in 1914, the CondĂ© Nast publication ran more pages of advertisements than any other magazine. College students were front and center in the magazineâs target dem...