With Bells On

I’m pretty thorough about the donating or disposing (depending on condition) of clothes I no longer use. The “if you haven’t worn it in two years” rule is a good one and most of the time I follow it. The few exceptions are items, some of them not even mine, that I’ve held onto for nostalgia reasons: my dad’s military uniforms for example. I also kept a handful of samples of some of the wilder fashions of the 60s and 70s just in case I wanted to do a theme party or some such thing. Yet, over the years they have decayed – colors fading, holes appearing – despite being unworn in a dark closet. I don’t know why, since those uniforms from 25 years earlier are still intact, but so it is. As a practical matter they would be unwearable even if they still fit (which they don’t), so I set nostalgia aside the other day and bade my sartorial past a permanent goodbye, including the green striped bell bottoms. The only bell bottoms left now in my closet are on my dad’s old sailor whites.
 
Bell bottoms used to be everywhere in my teens and twenties. This was so much the case that when they made a bit of a comeback I didn’t even notice until it was pointed out to me. They just look normal to me. This time they are primarily in women’s fashion but in the 60s/70s they were both. The pics below of myself and my sister in bells are both from 1970.

My mom and I 1970

My sister Sharon

 
The origin of bell bottoms is usually traced to the US Navy around 1800. Though not official uniforms at the time, they became common as everyday shipboard work clothes. They were favored by sailors for being easy to roll up when swabbing the deck and performing other chores. They caught the eye of someone in the Royal Navy where they did become part of the uniform. This in turn back-influenced the US Navy, which then also officially adopted bells. By the end of the 19^th century, classic blue denim bell bottom trousers were the standard US Navy shipboard work uniform. They remained so until 1999.
 
Civilian versions turned up from time to time. In the 1920s they were a minor women’s fashion trend. They often were called “yacht pants” because of the seafaring origin. They really took off with the general public, though, in the 1960s. Some publications credit the Army/Navy surplus stores, which sold cheap denim bells to impecunious hippies. Maybe. But maybe not. I remember those years, and most self-styled hippies were from solidly middle class families. They shopped more for fashion than price. Army/Navy surplus was indeed more of a thing than it is today, but I doubt the civilian fashion started there; more likely the Army/Navy stores just benefited from it. In any case, textile companies (jeans producers in particular) jumped into the field immediately. Bells, ranging from modest to bulging, had spread from the counterculture to the mainstream by the late 60s, even in semi-formal wear. It actually was harder to find straight legs – they were there but you had to look for them.
 
Precisely because bells were mainstream in the 1970s, ditching them became a statement of fashion rebellion, notably among punk rockers and their fans. By the 1980s, bells were passé though you still saw them on people who hadn’t refreshed their closets in a few years.
 
Enough years have passed for bells to re-emerge, this time without any significant social statement or context. It is just a style. Most of the US population, after all, was born after 1985 so there is no direct memory of the 60s/70s among those setting fashion trends.
 
My own bells, however, are gone. I do have “boot cut” jeans because… well… I wear boots, but the flairs on those are so trifling as to be unnoticeable with a casual glance. They will have to do.
 
 

Derek & The Dominos (Eric Clapton lead guitar) – Bell Bottom Blues