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Worst clothes you had to wear when you were a kid... (Original Post) Archae Tuesday OP
Hand-me-downs. KarenS Tuesday #1
I was fortunate, since I was the only boy in my family. No hand me downs. Archae Tuesday #3
Oh I can relate! 2naSalit Tuesday #8
I always disliked ankle socks, even as a little girl. 3catwoman3 Tuesday #2
I agree about the ankle socks. Diamond_Dog Tuesday #10
Little white socks! HoosierDebbie Yesterday #20
And lace trim. ms liberty 18 hrs ago #26
... 2naSalit Tuesday #4
A wool sweater from my grandparents at Christmas True Dough Tuesday #5
Turtlenecks, panty hose and tights. I think I have something sensory going on . My clothes mucifer Tuesday #6
I think I have something similar happybird 10 hrs ago #45
Girls clothing with tight elastic waists. Made my mother buy me jeans instead. Having to wear dresses to school diane in sf Tuesday #7
In NYC I told my mom I thought we girls should be allowed to wear pants in the winter. Eventually by ?6th grade we... electric_blue68 Yesterday #16
Pajamas dweller Tuesday #9
Go-To-Church dresses and accompanying underwear. chowmama Tuesday #11
We must be of a similar vintage (born in 1951). 3catwoman3 Yesterday #14
OMG, your photos must look just like mine! Ocelot II 18 hrs ago #33
6, or 7 to wear a Girdle w Stockings??!!! 😮 electric_blue68 Yesterday #18
Mandated gym apparel, usually with stripes. We weren't allowed to Tadpole Raisin Tuesday #12
Ah, yes, gym suits. 3catwoman3 Yesterday #15
Ours were blue, or green baggy semi bloomers? Uck! 😄 electric_blue68 Yesterday #19
My gym shorts back then were smaller than my underwear now underpants 18 hrs ago #34
Polyester ANYTHING! nt synni Tuesday #13
Tafata skirt at xmas time Figarosmom Yesterday #17
Possibly Saddle shoes one year. 😬 Hated them! Or if not those something quite "boxy" almost just as Ugly! electric_blue68 Yesterday #21
Bloomer-looking green one-piece gym uniform. Belted, with elastic at the bottom of the shorts. LoisB Yesterday #22
A pink pantsuit I had to wear for Easter one year. Mad_Dem_X 18 hrs ago #23
At 70, I can't remember really hating any of this stuff Nittersing 18 hrs ago #24
Being raised by a single father, I was happy Emile 18 hrs ago #25
Dressed well in school. My cousin, Billy, only wore things four or five times and my aumt Jane bought ... marble falls 18 hrs ago #27
Absolutely corduroys AZSkiffyGeek 18 hrs ago #28
My husband as a boy had to wear a baby blue polyester leisure suit ms liberty 18 hrs ago #29
Weird Michael Jackson inspired shirt Diraven 18 hrs ago #30
This has gotta be the thread winner. WestMichRad 8 hrs ago #48
Wool snow suits that the snow stuck to in clumps. Ocelot II 18 hrs ago #31
Agree. Corduroy pants. And flannel shirts. WheelWalker 18 hrs ago #32
dress suits . finaly stated my position that i wanted blue jeans . AllaN01Bear 18 hrs ago #35
OMG this unearths the source of real trauma bucolic_frolic 17 hrs ago #36
Having to wear dresses or skirts to school every day Freddie 17 hrs ago #37
Short dresses, tights and knee socks. surrealAmerican 16 hrs ago #38
I call those short dresses the "Cindy Brady Dresses" Niagara 16 hrs ago #40
I liked corduroy pants when I was a kid... Niagara 16 hrs ago #39
Definitely hand-me-downs Bayard 15 hrs ago #41
My mom threw out a dress I loved. I hated the one i had to wear after. applegrove 14 hrs ago #42
Saddle Shoes RobinA 14 hrs ago #43
When my Dad was stationed in Germany, my mother bought a dirndl for my sister, and a pair of lederhosen Aristus 11 hrs ago #44
Jeans ProfessorGAC 9 hrs ago #46
Autonomy. Owning your choice(s) dlilafae 8 hrs ago #47
flood pants is about all I remember hating Kali 7 hrs ago #49

KarenS

(4,490 posts)
1. Hand-me-downs.
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:20 PM
Tuesday

We were poor. Dad was an enlisted Sargent in the Air Force, I was the oldest of 4 kids.

2naSalit

(90,847 posts)
8. Oh I can relate!
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:29 PM
Tuesday

We not only had them float through our gang of five girls, there was a gap in ages so stuff got shipped out for my cousins to wear and then back to us. I was the second daughter but ten years younger than the eldest, I had to wait until my cousins got through with stuff. But after a while they got wealthy from oil money and started just sending the nicer things they were done with so it wasn't too bad after the first six or so years. My mom made all my clothes until the three that came after me started showing up.

I also hated when she dressed me in pink or bright red, not sure what that was about.

HoosierDebbie

(355 posts)
20. Little white socks!
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:43 AM
Yesterday

I think this is the same type of sock that you are talking about. Folded over. I'm not sure what the alternative might have been at the time, but I didn't like them. And, my older brother made fun of me in my "little white socks".

2naSalit

(90,847 posts)
4. ...
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:23 PM
Tuesday

Fucking Saddle Shoes and socks that crinkled up in them! AHHHH!

My mom always tied them in double knots so I couldn't take them off. By the time I started breaking the laces, she bought other shoes for me. Torture!


True Dough

(19,013 posts)
5. A wool sweater from my grandparents at Christmas
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:24 PM
Tuesday

It was prickly and itchy! But my folks made me say thank you. I was a polite miserable little wretch!

mucifer

(24,532 posts)
6. Turtlenecks, panty hose and tights. I think I have something sensory going on . My clothes
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:25 PM
Tuesday

have to be loose. Any tight clothes are uncomfortable and often make me itch.

happybird

(4,954 posts)
45. I think I have something similar
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 06:49 PM
10 hrs ago

Not sure where it came from, but I cannot stand tight clothes including bras and socks and can’t wear jewelry or sunglasses. Or hats. Or makeup. My dentures are a challenge because I can always feel them in my mouth. That’s the issue- I can always feel the items on me and it’s a constant annoyance and often makes me itchy, or anxious, and sometimes like I have a low grade fever. It’s weird, like a hypersensitivity to things on me. Shoes can be an issue, too, so I mainly wear Birkenstocks and even have no-slip Birk clogs for work. My parents got me contact lenses at 10 yo (Mom and older sister already had them) because they were tired of buying me new glasses. I’d take them off, set them down and lose them all the time.

diane in sf

(4,024 posts)
7. Girls clothing with tight elastic waists. Made my mother buy me jeans instead. Having to wear dresses to school
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:26 PM
Tuesday

in cold weather, tho I did have snow pants in grade school.

electric_blue68

(16,854 posts)
16. In NYC I told my mom I thought we girls should be allowed to wear pants in the winter. Eventually by ?6th grade we...
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:36 AM
Yesterday

were allowed to!

Victory!

dweller

(24,444 posts)
9. Pajamas
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 10:40 PM
Tuesday

Started fighting my way out of them around age 8 ?
Still got them for Christmas every year but quit wearing them except to bed , then tossed them off .
By the time I was 11 I no longer wore them at all , and to this day still don’t …
I figure if you’ve got to wear clothes all day , then sleep time is your time for nekkid

Blankets keep you warm enough in winter

wheee


✌🏻

chowmama

(463 posts)
11. Go-To-Church dresses and accompanying underwear.
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 11:03 PM
Tuesday

You had to learn to be ladylike, after all. And this is pre-pantyhose.

At 6 or 7, I could still get away with an undershirt, but we're talking full girdle, with the little tabs to hold up the nylon stockings. Swear to God, there was no comfortable way to sit with all the lumps. (And that isn't even counting that you were supposed to keep both feet on the floor and your knees clamped tight together, for an eternity. I'm really short - my feet didn't even reach the ground.) And, yeah, saddle shoes. I had, and have, really wide feet and they were the only girls' shoes that would fit me.

Add the pixie cut hair and the glasses with the cat-eye frames, and I was this little, tiny librarian gnome.

3catwoman3

(25,020 posts)
14. We must be of a similar vintage (born in 1951).
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:04 AM
Yesterday

Knees and ankles tightly together at all times. The cat’s eye glasses seemed to be the only style when I got my first pair at age 9. Add my mother’s preference to bangs cuts half way up my high forehead, and there is plenty of reason to cringe when I look at pictures of myself when I was in grade school.

Ocelot II

(119,240 posts)
33. OMG, your photos must look just like mine!
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 11:36 AM
18 hrs ago

Cats-eye glasses and very short bangs, what was with that?

Tadpole Raisin

(1,317 posts)
12. Mandated gym apparel, usually with stripes. We weren't allowed to
Tue Sep 17, 2024, 11:05 PM
Tuesday

wear shorts and a t shirt.

It made gym miserable.

3catwoman3

(25,020 posts)
15. Ah, yes, gym suits.
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:06 AM
Yesterday

Ours were pale yellow one piece atrocities that looked like undergarments from the 1800s.

Figarosmom

(721 posts)
17. Tafata skirt at xmas time
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:39 AM
Yesterday

It was pretty but it was noisy

And oh yeah, garter belts and hose. We had to wear dresses or skirts I and blouses to school. So we had to wear hose since girls could not have exposed legs in school. In grade school you could wear socks but in junior high and senior high had to wear hose or tights. But I was a bit of a beatnik so I wore black tights most of the time. Finally panty hose were invented in time for my last year and I still wore those in colors like hot pink or blue and black since I was more a hippy by then . The year after I graduated they allowed girls to wear slacks and jeans .

electric_blue68

(16,854 posts)
21. Possibly Saddle shoes one year. 😬 Hated them! Or if not those something quite "boxy" almost just as Ugly!
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:46 AM
Yesterday


Ohhhh, boy, humiliating!

Mad_Dem_X

(9,719 posts)
23. A pink pantsuit I had to wear for Easter one year.
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 10:48 AM
18 hrs ago

Stiff and itchy, very uncomfortable. My sister wore a matching one. We couldn't wait until church was over so we could come home and put our play clothes on!

Nittersing

(6,692 posts)
24. At 70, I can't remember really hating any of this stuff
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 11:05 AM
18 hrs ago

We had the gym suit/bloomer things. Ours were maroon. School colors were maroon and gray. They never really bothered me.

I had saddle shoes for cheerleading. Loved them. They were so comfortable.

Never really was into fashion. I did the obligatory hose/garter thing for a year or two and gladly transitioned to panty hose.

When I was in 10th grade, my Dad took a temp job in Puerto Rico where I went to an Episcopalian school with uniforms. I *loved* not having to think about what I was going to wear every day. When we got back to the states, we (girls) were finally allowed to wear pants to school and I've been in jeans pretty much since then.

marble falls

(60,182 posts)
27. Dressed well in school. My cousin, Billy, only wore things four or five times and my aumt Jane bought ...
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 11:26 AM
18 hrs ago

... only the best. She did 'peg' his trousers, But I'd just cut the thread and open them back up - early mid sixties.

ms liberty

(9,559 posts)
29. My husband as a boy had to wear a baby blue polyester leisure suit
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 11:30 AM
18 hrs ago

For his school pictures one year. You know the 70's suit with the lapels. Oh how he hates that picture, and even thinking about the suit makes him wince painfully.
But then, he had a mullet in high school too, so how bad was the leisure suit, really?

For me, it was when they started letting us wear pants to school but we had to wear a skirt over them. That lasted like one year, I think. Then we were good to wear just pants.

Diraven

(879 posts)
30. Weird Michael Jackson inspired shirt
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 11:33 AM
18 hrs ago

100% polyester and nylon, with no sleeves and a zipper that ran diagonally across the front.

bucolic_frolic

(45,798 posts)
36. OMG this unearths the source of real trauma
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:09 PM
17 hrs ago

I mean like 3-4 years old, it was called a Sunday suit, to go to church. It was fairly coarse wool tweed, pants, blazer, and round cap with visor. I don't think they realized how itchy it was, so I was allergic to it. I still avoid wool and coarse acrylics.

Freddie

(9,510 posts)
37. Having to wear dresses or skirts to school every day
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:29 PM
17 hrs ago

In 8th grade they “allowed” us to wear pants in the winter months. How magnanimous. Finally allowed to wear pants anytime in 9th grade. By the time I was a senior there was no dress code whatsoever - hot pants and halter tops and boys acting like idiots (more than usual). To this day I hate wearing dresses and skirts, the last time I wore a dress was my MOB gown when my daughter got married in 2010. They’re getting divorced now.

surrealAmerican

(11,453 posts)
38. Short dresses, tights and knee socks.
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 12:55 PM
16 hrs ago

The dresses because it meant you couldn't play on the playground without your underwear showing.
The tights because the crotch would try to work it's way down to my knees, requiring constant tugging.
The knee socks because they would never stay up.

Niagara

(8,904 posts)
40. I call those short dresses the "Cindy Brady Dresses"
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 01:47 PM
16 hrs ago

Unfortunately, I had one of those too.


In my generation we could wear pants to school and I flat out told my mom please, please no more of these short dresses where it feels like everyone can see my underwear if I move the wrong way.


Thankfully, my mom actually listened to me. I know that my mom wasn't so lucky because she had to wear skirts/dresses all the way from Kindergarten to Senior year in school.

Niagara

(8,904 posts)
39. I liked corduroy pants when I was a kid...
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 01:39 PM
16 hrs ago

However, I was in Kindergarten or 1st grade and my mom purchased an outfit for me out of either Sears or the J.C. Penney catalog for our main family Christmas gathering.


This outfit looked like something right of the boys section. A white oxford button down shirt, dark blue corduroy pants and a button down matching vest. I think my mom knew that I hated it right out of the gate.


Then we go to grandma's with all the uncles, aunts and cousins. My two older female cousins and I were hanging out in a back bedroom like we always did. My one oldest cousin asked me if I liked my outfit and I simply replied, "no."

"Well, my parents got you that same exact outfit for Christmas and you better pretend that you like it or we'll never talk to you again."

I don't exactly remember how it all when down when I opened up my Christmas present but a photo was taken of me wearing this hideous outfit and me holding the replica of the same hideous outfit in a clothing gift box. That extra blue hideous outfit got exchanged for a red one! So, now I have two hideous outfits, one blue, the other red.

A few important details here:

1. Both outfits got thrown in either the back of my closet or my dresser until I outgrew them. I wore the blue one once for Christmas and the red one was never worn.

2. Both female cousins are politically opposite of me and I don't have anything to do with either one of them and I stopped talking to
them many years ago.


There was another outfit that I had that I liked. The pants were black corduroy and the white button down shirt that went with it had some lace to the neck and some lace on the cuffs of the sleeves. I was bummed when I outgrew that outfit.

Bayard

(23,560 posts)
41. Definitely hand-me-downs
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 02:40 PM
15 hrs ago

Not only did I have 2 older sisters' clothes to inherit, I ended up in my big brother's winter coat.

One time, someone gave my Mom 2 wool dresses that had belonged to their amazon daughters. She wouldn't downsize them, so I was swimming in them. They came down halfway to my ankles, when everybody else was wearing mini skirts. I was so embarrassed, I wore my winter coat over them all day at school.

applegrove

(121,626 posts)
42. My mom threw out a dress I loved. I hated the one i had to wear after.
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 03:20 PM
14 hrs ago

I was 4 and I can still remember the pretty colour's in the one I liked.

RobinA

(10,063 posts)
43. Saddle Shoes
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 03:26 PM
14 hrs ago

My mother liked them, so I had to wear them. Fugly, stiff, slippery pains in the ass. Plus, this was somewhat after they were stylish, so I looked like a throwback. I fought my mother tooth and nail and she won for several years but finally I got old enough to pick my own shoes. My mother and I spent a lot of time fighting about clothes because she insisted that I wear stuff that was uncomfortable and I was one of those kids who couldn't stand tags.

Aristus

(67,613 posts)
44. When my Dad was stationed in Germany, my mother bought a dirndl for my sister, and a pair of lederhosen
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 06:16 PM
11 hrs ago

for me.

Wearing them in Germany was no big deal. But when my Dad was rotated back to the States, we attended Department of Defense schools. My mother made me wear my lederhosen to school one day, and I was nearly laughed out of the building. Shit, even the janitor made fun of me!

The social fallout was so bad, my mother never made me wear them again.

I was six.

ProfessorGAC

(68,412 posts)
46. Jeans
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 08:42 PM
9 hrs ago

Even as a kid, I didn't like them.
I got that I needed them for baseball practice & park football. But, if wasn't playing a sport, I didn't want to wear jeans.
The last time I had jeans, I was 15.

dlilafae

(94 posts)
47. Autonomy. Owning your choice(s)
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 09:14 PM
8 hrs ago

Elementary School ~ I had these hateful brown shoes. I had my eye on a different option, but was out-voted in favor of the hateful ones. From then on out, I carried a grudge. I would slide on the road a good 6-10 feet worth, just trying to wear the soles out, and that happened very, very slowly. To date, it was the ugliest pair of sensible shoes, that I've ever owned.

Kali

(55,494 posts)
49. flood pants is about all I remember hating
Wed Sep 18, 2024, 10:12 PM
7 hrs ago

it was kind of the opposite for me...I had clothes I loved to wear and my mom had to fight me to wear something else or I would have just worn them every day until they fell apart. which is close to how it went.

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