Worst clothes you had to wear when you were a kid...

[Archae]

For me, it was corduroy pants.

I hated that "shoop shoop" they made.

[KarenS]

1. Hand-me-downs.

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

[Archae]

3. I was fortunate, since I was the only boy in my family. No hand me downs.

[2naSalit]

8. Oh I can relate!

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.

[3catwoman3]

2. I always disliked ankle socks, even as a little girl.

Very unflattering.

[Diamond_Dog]

10. I agree about the ankle socks.

Then there were the tights that were always falling down.

[HoosierDebbie]

20. Little white socks!

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".

[ms liberty]

26. And lace trim.

[2naSalit]

4. ...

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]

5. A wool sweater from my grandparents at Christmas

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

[mucifer]

6. Turtlenecks, panty hose and tights. I think I have something sensory going on . My clothes

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

[happybird]

45. I think I have something similar

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]

7. Girls clothing with tight elastic waists. Made my mother buy me jeans instead. Having to wear dresses to school

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

[electric_blue68]

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...

were allowed to!

Victory!

[dweller]

9. Pajamas

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]

11. Go-To-Church dresses and accompanying underwear.

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]

14. We must be of a similar vintage (born in 1951).

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]

33. OMG, your photos must look just like mine!

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

[electric_blue68]

18. 6, or 7 to wear a Girdle w Stockings??!!! 😮

How ridiculous! No fun!

[Tadpole Raisin]

12. Mandated gym apparel, usually with stripes. We weren't allowed to

wear shorts and a t shirt.

It made gym miserable.

[3catwoman3]

15. Ah, yes, gym suits.

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

[electric_blue68]

19. Ours were blue, or green baggy semi bloomers? Uck! 😄

[underpants]

34. My gym shorts back then were smaller than my underwear now

Accounting for age growth etc.

[synni]

13. Polyester ANYTHING! nt

[Figarosmom]

17. Tafata skirt at xmas time

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]

21. Possibly Saddle shoes one year. 😬 Hated them! Or if not those something quite "boxy" almost just as Ugly!

Ohhhh, boy, humiliating!

[Judi Lynn]

52. Saddle shoes were huge & heavy. Did you ever kick the ankle on one foot with the cement block on the other?

They had hard, rigid soles with sharp edges just right for mortally wounding small school kid feet!

[electric_blue68]

58. Ow, i don't think so bc my feet/ankles tended to turn outward

Last edited Thu Sep 19, 2024, 01:16 PM - Edit history (2)

[LoisB]

22. Bloomer-looking green one-piece gym uniform. Belted, with elastic at the bottom of the shorts.

[Mad_Dem_X]

23. A pink pantsuit I had to wear for Easter one year.

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]

24. At 70, I can't remember really hating any of this stuff

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.

[Emile]

25. Being raised by a single father, I was happy

to have a few clothes.

[marble falls]

27. Dressed well in school. My cousin, Billy, only wore things four or five times and my aumt Jane bought ...

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

[AZSkiffyGeek]

28. Absolutely corduroys

I still hate them.

[ms liberty]

29. My husband as a boy had to wear a baby blue polyester leisure suit

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]

30. Weird Michael Jackson inspired shirt

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

[WestMichRad]

48. This has gotta be the thread winner.

That shirt sounds hideous, regardless of color!

[Ocelot II]

31. Wool snow suits that the snow stuck to in clumps.

[WheelWalker]

32. Agree. Corduroy pants. And flannel shirts.

[AllaN01Bear]

35. dress suits . finaly stated my position that i wanted blue jeans .

[bucolic_frolic]

36. OMG this unearths the source of real trauma

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]

37. Having to wear dresses or skirts to school every day

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]

38. Short dresses, tights and knee socks.

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]

40. I call those short dresses the "Cindy Brady Dresses"

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]

39. I liked corduroy pants when I was a kid...

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]

41. Definitely hand-me-downs

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]

42. My mom threw out a dress I loved. I hated the one i had to wear after.

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

[RobinA]

43. Saddle Shoes

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]

44. When my Dad was stationed in Germany, my mother bought a dirndl for my sister, and a pair of lederhosen

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]

46. Jeans

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]

47. Autonomy. Owning your choice(s)

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]

49. flood pants is about all I remember hating

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.

[OldBaldy1701E]

50. Those thin dress sweaters that my mother loved for me to wear.

This did not stop when I reached adulthood. I finally went to Goodwill one day with 36 of the damned things. Most still had tags on them because I never wore them.

I really did not like those things. The 'sweater vest' was the worst offender in my book.

[NBachers]

51. My cousin sent me a hand me down wool suit that was like pricky needles torturing my skin. Sitting in church in misery.

There was no way I could sit without getting stuck by all those wool needles. It was more like a nettle suit than a wool suit.

[Silver Gaia]

53. Starched petticoats!

When I was a little girl, I had to wear those stiff, scratchy things that were impossible to sit on under an equally stiff and scratchy, frilly, ruffly, lacy dress on Easter Sundays. Lacy anklets were the least of my worries!

Preadolescent age, it was those damn knee socks that wouldn't stay up.

Preteens and early teens, it was garter belts and hose and those scratchy bras with the pointy cups stiched in concentric circles. Awful!

By the time I was teenager, I liked to sew and made a lot of my clothes, so I had a lot more control over what I wore. We had to wear skirts and dresses to school until I was in 11th grade though.

I actually like wearing dresses and skirts. I find them much more comfortable than pants or jeans, less constricting. But I did not like being forced to wear skirts in the winter!

Mini skirts and below zero temps is not a good combination. That's why we all got together in 11th grade and held a sit-in to demand that they change the dress policy. It worked. Girls got to wear pants or jeans and boys got to wear jeans.

[keithbvadu2]

54. Charles Bronson's family was so poor, he wore his sister's dress to school.

[Niagara]

61. Yes. He also starting working in the coal mines at 10 years old to contribute to his large family.

[Onthefly]

55. Qiana shirt: faux silk. Hot and stinky

These shirts were late 60’s. As a teen, thought they looked cool! Not. Sweaty and made of nylon.

From Wikipedia:
Qiana (/kiˈɑːnə/ kee-AH-nə [1] is a silky nylon fiber developed in 1962 at the DuPont Experimental Station by Stanley Brooke Speck. The fiber was named Qiana when introduced by DuPont in 1968.[2] Initially intended for high-end fashions, it became a popular material in the 1970s for faux-silk men's shirts, displaying bold patterns. The shirts were generally cut tight and included wide collars to fit over the collars of the double-knit suit coats, which were worn popularly to discos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiana

[Midnight Writer]

56. High-water pants.

I was the youngest of 7 in a low-income family. I either got well-worn hand-me-downs from my older brothers or clothes from the Salvation Army.

Those high-water pants, sometimes higher than the top of my socks, were the most embarrassing thing in the world to have to wear to school.

[meow2u3]

57. Skirt suits and dresses with tights and saddle shoes for school

I hated wearing knee-length skirts and dresses, even in single-digit cold in winter and boys trying to look up my skirt in spring. I couldn't wait until 1970, when girls were allowed to wear pants.

I always wanted to wear pants because they were more comfortable and ironically, more modest.

[HeartsCanHope]

59. Dresses and tights. I love jeans and pants, hate dresses!

[Trueblue1968]

60. Saddle shos in the 8th grade. All the other girls wore cute shoes. Little heels and flats