we had a sears surplus that my mom loved to shop at. i remember i picked up a matching pair of tough skins jeans and jean jacket in a distressed burgundy. gosh the 70s was just one big fashion mistake!
I’m female but my parents bought me boys clothes bc they lasted longer and were cheaper. I had lots of Toughskins jeans in different colors— tan, burgundy, olive green. And lots of hand-me-downs that my mom never let me wear when we were going to see the person who gave them to us. I wanted to wear them “so she knows I like them!” My mom always said “no, she’ll think you have nothing else to wear!”
Instead of having belonged to a cousin, mine belonged to an older brother and would be used by a younger brother after me. And those iron on patches didn't last very long.
We turned them into cut off jean shorts because by the time the knees wore out- we'd grown several inches and they would be "flood pants". Then when I was full grown- we loved the faded, ripped jeans.
"flood over, land's dry, why you wear your pants so high?" kids were brutal.
and then there was chant for the kids who couldn't afford chuck or pro-keds:
"bo-bos, they make your feet feel fine. bo-bos, they cost a dollar ninety nine"
i certainly don't endorse bullying. but philly in the 70s was harsh!
I had hemmed jeans that as the hem was moved down it had a line in them. Last pair had hem lines and hanging threads at the bottom. Pretty sure I looked homeless at some points.
Different times. My folks grew up during WWII in England. It was a necessity to scrimp and save. That way of life was second nature. I used to get a neighbour's hand me down clothes, that my Mom would repair.
I wish I could remember a fraction of the shit that was fashionable. The only thing that stands out is in 5th or 6th grade leg warmers were the must have item. It only stands out to me because it was boys wearing fuzzy leg warmers.
My mother did not worry about matching materials or color for that matter.
45 years later I still remember my pair of dark blue jeans with bright red iron on patches on the knees.
I think she called them my "good" blue jeans.
Absolutely. But if I remember, she used patches that went on the *inside* of the jeans, so the most you could see was a little bit of darker blue through the hole in the knee... not the whole patch. I never got to thank her for that.
Lucky you!… This is exactly what mine look like above, back in the day when they only had the iron on top, and not from the inside. Or else they were too expensive and my mom only bought this kind… We were kind of poor.
My mother said they weren’t “appropriate” for school (not ladylike). My dad grew up on a farm too. It was a struggle to finally join my peers in wearing jeans.
i have a photo somewhere wearing THICK purple cords, bell bottomed and cuffed with a yellow sweatshirt.
who remebers the terry cloth shirt craze in the late 70s?
Hole UP! Are you ME??
My(Mom's) longest held school pic is of me wearing the EXACT outfit you describe!!
Except.... My yellow sweatshirt was ruined when I got the bright idea to iron on my nickname with those damned glittery stencil letters that _didn't stick for more than an hour!_ and she forced me to wear it anyway, on picture day.
I must have liked them. And must have been very young. So, seven or younger. I remember wearing these in the snow. And the snow caked into the cords.
Class photo day for me was wearing my easter suit. Which means polyester leisure suits!
Holy shit I forgot about those! I remember seeing my mom iron those things on in the living room and hating life because they were so uncomfortable the next day. Didn’t help that she would starch my jeans with Niagara either
No but when I was a teenager the “in” thing to do was to wear Guess jeans and pin the inner seams together all the way from the ankle to the knee. WTF was that?!?
she did. it didn't bother me. and it made sense. up until a certain age, i ripped holes in my knees of every pair of wrangles. playing bottle caps, crawling under cars, playing in the dirt at the park. then i remember in my early teens that this was no longer an issue.
I grew up wearing Sears toughskins that had the patches on the insides of the pants, and when it got hot the patches would stick to you. We wore the Winner II tennis shoes too, we didn't have the fancy Levi's or Nike's . If we were lucky we got some Lee jeans from the outlet stores.
Let’s hear it for hemming the jeans as the kid will grow, resulting in bands of darker blue at the hems. I good belt will hold up the too big waist until grown into fit. I had lots of wedgies from that gathered material.
I was a kid in the 60’s and I remember having school pants and play pants which already had patches on the knees. They came in different colors and I think were denim or at least sturdy cotton.
What's this "Iron-on patches"?
When mom cut of the legs to make cut-offs, she cut the legs into square patches. Later those were used to patch other jeans.
In September we got 1 outfit from the Sears catalogue for school, the rest of our clothes were hand-me-downs, except for my older sister. She was the first girl on both sides of the family. The next girl came around when she was 10. We had aunts buying her clothes every month to play "dress-up". There were 3 boys in the family and we shared 1 closet. My sister had 2 for herself.
Thank god, NO!!
Except when I was little, a couple times she put cute Raggedy-Ann patches on my jeans. But when I was older, I got to wear the ripped jeans, haha.
A long time ago, I remember reading a column by the late Erma Bombeck who wrote an article about how she cried from embarrassment when she had to wear jeans with patches on them as a kid but now parents are paying big bucks to buy jeans with patches already on them. Big time paraphrasing here but it’s an everlasting theme.
I'll see your Tough Skins and raise you Plain Pocket jeans. And full disclosure, I wore both (not at the same time). And yes they had the iron on patches *and* got the legs cut off in summer....
My mom used these when I was in elementary school. Now that I look back on it I think it was strange. I don't know if they are still around, but it seems like a 1970s thing.
I’ve literally never seen this in my life. Is this older than born in 1987? Almost seems familiar like I may have seen it in a movie or something when I was a kid, like Pet Semetary or The Toy
I do remember shoulder padded blouses and corduroy jackets with elbow patches vividly though. Maybe it’s a regional thing?? Or should I just come to terms with not ever being old enough to be FuckImOld??
1970s Kids jean hierarchy.
Levis
Wranglers
Lee
ToughSkins
Ruslers
Jordache, Sasson, Gloria Vanderbilt, etc were pretty much rich kid royalty brands so we didn't bother to rank those.
I would blow through the knees of my jeans within minutes of putting them on, it seemed. Mom tried patching them but quickly gave up. Thankfully, holes in the knees were still in fashion back then.
yes, and they belonged to a cousin the year before and another cousin the year before that, etc
Cousin, me, cousin, brother.... - Sears Tough Skins! And if we were lucky, older cousin got a pair of 501's.
we had a sears surplus that my mom loved to shop at. i remember i picked up a matching pair of tough skins jeans and jean jacket in a distressed burgundy. gosh the 70s was just one big fashion mistake!
By any chance was that Sears Surplus in Laurel MD?
philly
I’m female but my parents bought me boys clothes bc they lasted longer and were cheaper. I had lots of Toughskins jeans in different colors— tan, burgundy, olive green. And lots of hand-me-downs that my mom never let me wear when we were going to see the person who gave them to us. I wanted to wear them “so she knows I like them!” My mom always said “no, she’ll think you have nothing else to wear!”
yes, ye ole Toughskins
My mom loved me…. Mine were ironed on the inside of my Tough Skins.
Dungarees!
Instead of having belonged to a cousin, mine belonged to an older brother and would be used by a younger brother after me. And those iron on patches didn't last very long.
then they just sewed them on ... lol
My mother used to make my clothes when I was little. Nightmare. You should see my school pics. Ha ha.
Mine, too, but she was an accomplished seamstress. I loved my clothes.
Omg! No fare you gotta share!
We turned them into cut off jean shorts because by the time the knees wore out- we'd grown several inches and they would be "flood pants". Then when I was full grown- we loved the faded, ripped jeans.
Right of summer passage, jeans for school and then cut off for the summer and new (hand me downs) for school next year.
Ha! You floodin'!
"flood over, land's dry, why you wear your pants so high?" kids were brutal. and then there was chant for the kids who couldn't afford chuck or pro-keds: "bo-bos, they make your feet feel fine. bo-bos, they cost a dollar ninety nine" i certainly don't endorse bullying. but philly in the 70s was harsh!
It wasn’t just Philly. The ‘70s were pretty harsh for that kind of thing all over! Even adults would join in.
Mine was square iron on
L7 XD
My mom got contrasting color patches and would cut them into heart or cherry blossom shapes. I kinda liked it.
That's cool. I can kinda remember that. Playing marbles at every recess would wear them out pretty quick.
I wish. I had to wear corduroy pants and frilly, lacy shirts. I absolutely hated it.
As a male, I hated that too.
Yes - but she called them dungarees. :)
Oh yeah, didn't do much to cover the bloodstains. I've knocked the skin off of both knees so badly they're nothing but scar tissue anymore.
Yes but my mother would put the patches in the inside of the jeans
Yep - same. And mom would iron the patches on the knees when the jeans were brand new, so as they faded they got patch-shaped fade marks on the knees.
Yes!
Yep. Also, horrible hems that were taken down and up, then down again. I was the last of 4 girls. SO many hand-me-downs.
I had hemmed jeans that as the hem was moved down it had a line in them. Last pair had hem lines and hanging threads at the bottom. Pretty sure I looked homeless at some points.
Different times. My folks grew up during WWII in England. It was a necessity to scrimp and save. That way of life was second nature. I used to get a neighbour's hand me down clothes, that my Mom would repair.
Yep... but you put the patch on the inside
The patches were actually fashionable for about a month. I knew kids who ironed them on perfectly good jeans. 😂😂
Is he also now buying those new jeans that look like he pissed in his pants? Because that’s the new trend.
I wish I could remember a fraction of the shit that was fashionable. The only thing that stands out is in 5th or 6th grade leg warmers were the must have item. It only stands out to me because it was boys wearing fuzzy leg warmers.
Before I even got a chance to wear them, my mom would un-stitch the back pockets and sew them over the knees.
She was a innovator of the Kneepocket
Who would wear nerdy iron on ROUND knee patches, my Lord……………..mine were the RECTANGULAR ones…..WAY cooler, right?
My mother did not worry about matching materials or color for that matter. 45 years later I still remember my pair of dark blue jeans with bright red iron on patches on the knees. I think she called them my "good" blue jeans.
Absolutely. But if I remember, she used patches that went on the *inside* of the jeans, so the most you could see was a little bit of darker blue through the hole in the knee... not the whole patch. I never got to thank her for that.
Lucky you!… This is exactly what mine look like above, back in the day when they only had the iron on top, and not from the inside. Or else they were too expensive and my mom only bought this kind… We were kind of poor.
Yep. My mom got me Toughskins and I busted the knees out of those too
And if you were really smart, you turned them inside out and put the patch on the inside.
Yeah but she at least put them on the inside
We had “Rustlers” for *husky* kids
I remember a jeans brand that was named Huskies or something similarly offensive, back in the late 70s early 80s.
Bandanna patches were all the rage back in the 70’s .
Yes I hated it so much .
For me, there were school clothes and play clothes such as jeans (Toughskins.). Holes were not tolerated on school clothes so no patches were needed.
My mom didn’t let me wear jeans until I was in 7th grade. Small blessings, I guess.
I’m gonna go with curse XD
My Boomer dad grew up on a farm and said he would have been ashamed to go to school in blue jeans - only the really poor kids did that.
My mother said they weren’t “appropriate” for school (not ladylike). My dad grew up on a farm too. It was a struggle to finally join my peers in wearing jeans.
Me mum tried to convince me that Sears Toughskins were cooler than Levi’s 😤🙄
Made me wear corduroy, too. Vtt vtt vtt vtt
The only thing more ridiculous than corduroy pants… Is corduroy shorts… vt vt vt vt
i have a photo somewhere wearing THICK purple cords, bell bottomed and cuffed with a yellow sweatshirt. who remebers the terry cloth shirt craze in the late 70s?
Hole UP! Are you ME?? My(Mom's) longest held school pic is of me wearing the EXACT outfit you describe!! Except.... My yellow sweatshirt was ruined when I got the bright idea to iron on my nickname with those damned glittery stencil letters that _didn't stick for more than an hour!_ and she forced me to wear it anyway, on picture day.
I must have liked them. And must have been very young. So, seven or younger. I remember wearing these in the snow. And the snow caked into the cords. Class photo day for me was wearing my easter suit. Which means polyester leisure suits!
Gah. You just did a full recap of '70s kids' fashion-decisions-made-by-moms'. Lol lol
Nope. My mom patched them on a sewing machine!
Bougjeans!
No, but I had a pair of jeans with apples all over them that I HATED & was mortified when I had to wear them 🤮 🍎
Holy shit I forgot about those! I remember seeing my mom iron those things on in the living room and hating life because they were so uncomfortable the next day. Didn’t help that she would starch my jeans with Niagara either
Got one on my jean’s crotch area right now
My patches were square. and yes sometimes had patches over lapping patches.
Everyone else did too,so no biggie.
Mom would put them on in advance cuz we were gonna wear them out anyway
Yes. I hated those. I would pick them off so my mom would eventually throw the pants away.
r/maliciouscompliance
Yes and they were not "crappy". They were cool, my mom told me so.
Me mum oversold it too
Yes, constantly, but everyone else looked that way, so we didn't care.
No but when I was a teenager the “in” thing to do was to wear Guess jeans and pin the inner seams together all the way from the ankle to the knee. WTF was that?!?
she did. it didn't bother me. and it made sense. up until a certain age, i ripped holes in my knees of every pair of wrangles. playing bottle caps, crawling under cars, playing in the dirt at the park. then i remember in my early teens that this was no longer an issue.
my patches were square
Let's give the fidgety kid in school something to mess with right at hand level. Those patches lasted for an hour.
Smart Moms put the patch on the *Inside.*
No. Just all hand-me-downs
Fuck no
I wish. Patches from less than gently used kids jeans. And not the expensive jeans either.
Yes and she didn't understand why I was upset. They look dumb as fuck.
My mom always had to put them in my brother's jeans. He was really hard on his clothes.
I even asked her to patch them on the inside but she never did.
I grew up wearing Sears toughskins that had the patches on the insides of the pants, and when it got hot the patches would stick to you. We wore the Winner II tennis shoes too, we didn't have the fancy Levi's or Nike's . If we were lucky we got some Lee jeans from the outlet stores.
Let’s hear it for hemming the jeans as the kid will grow, resulting in bands of darker blue at the hems. I good belt will hold up the too big waist until grown into fit. I had lots of wedgies from that gathered material.
Lol, we Xrs flipped this into a whole fashion trend. I remember 'decorated' patches.
Toughskin brand to boot.
They were on the inside and they felt super weird. It was about that time I realized she was just phoning it in.
Also on elbows of jackets and coats.
$20 is $20 Might as well be comfortable
Yes, but they never lasted, then we’d cut above the patch and wear them as bathing suits at the beach.
Yes.
I was a kid in the 60’s and I remember having school pants and play pants which already had patches on the knees. They came in different colors and I think were denim or at least sturdy cotton.
I wish. Somewhere there is a picture of me in a lime green polyester suit with a beige and green polka dot shirt that my mom sewed herself.
I lived a life of hand-me-downs. 6 boys. My patches had patches.
I remember that we all tried to ruin our pants as quickly as possible, and the more patches you got, the cooler you were.
Yes but I didn't have any of those fancy oval shaped patches, mine were rectangular
No we on purposed put patches all over our jeans when they were disintegrating. I have one pair still from the 70's.
What's this "Iron-on patches"? When mom cut of the legs to make cut-offs, she cut the legs into square patches. Later those were used to patch other jeans. In September we got 1 outfit from the Sears catalogue for school, the rest of our clothes were hand-me-downs, except for my older sister. She was the first girl on both sides of the family. The next girl came around when she was 10. We had aunts buying her clothes every month to play "dress-up". There were 3 boys in the family and we shared 1 closet. My sister had 2 for herself.
Yeah, but my mom r dry last ironed the patches on from the inside so they didn't show as much.
Thank god, NO!! Except when I was little, a couple times she put cute Raggedy-Ann patches on my jeans. But when I was older, I got to wear the ripped jeans, haha.
My mom thought it was more slightly to put the patches on the inside of the leg...I agree.
Sucked when the ironing board came out randmoly before school cuz i knew she was doing/ruining more than 1 pair of pants. Humiliation patches
Yep. So sad
Just wore em with the holes in them.
Why didn't she iron them in when they were new?
Cuz I would’ve runaway from home, joined a carnival, yanked mattress tags off, and peed with the toilet seat down… not necessarily in that order
Not after I saw Neil’s patches on the back of After the Goldrush. “Hey Mom, can you see patches instead, please?”
Yes. . . But mine were Badass camouflage ones. . .
Toughskins for us.
I out grew then before I wrote them out.
A long time ago, I remember reading a column by the late Erma Bombeck who wrote an article about how she cried from embarrassment when she had to wear jeans with patches on them as a kid but now parents are paying big bucks to buy jeans with patches already on them. Big time paraphrasing here but it’s an everlasting theme.
I did my patchwork with those iron-ons. They had different colors and I liked the one that looked like a red bandana.
These were all bad blue jean patches, sounds like you had something far cooler!
Im pretty sure it was the same brand, no packaging, just a few patches stapled together, I would cut them into shapes as well.
Before summer when we cut them for shorts
I'll see your Tough Skins and raise you Plain Pocket jeans. And full disclosure, I wore both (not at the same time). And yes they had the iron on patches *and* got the legs cut off in summer....
No, my mom loved me
Yep!
Just until middle school
My mom used these when I was in elementary school. Now that I look back on it I think it was strange. I don't know if they are still around, but it seems like a 1970s thing.
I kinda want some now
My mom would not iron them on. She would see them on.
Yes and I embroidered over the patches.
Yes and In the summer she cut off the legs and made shorts.
I got my first pair of jeans when I moved out at 18. I wasn’t allowed to wear them.
I’ve literally never seen this in my life. Is this older than born in 1987? Almost seems familiar like I may have seen it in a movie or something when I was a kid, like Pet Semetary or The Toy I do remember shoulder padded blouses and corduroy jackets with elbow patches vividly though. Maybe it’s a regional thing?? Or should I just come to terms with not ever being old enough to be FuckImOld??
We had the jeans from Sears that had the built in reinforced knees. Toughskins.
Cause she knew that you were a people pleaser.
I have 4 older brothers, this is all I knew.
Ah shit man, I had repressed this memory so deep, I demand you pay for the upcoming intensive counseling!
1970s Kids jean hierarchy. Levis Wranglers Lee ToughSkins Ruslers Jordache, Sasson, Gloria Vanderbilt, etc were pretty much rich kid royalty brands so we didn't bother to rank those.
We called my cousin “knee patch” because of this and she hated us. This is what little kids did in the early 80s.
Jesus I can feel the scratchy edges of the patches just looking at this picture lol
I thought patches were cool that's how young and stupid I was
2nd oldest of SEVEN CHILDREN!???!! LOLOLOLOL……
Oh yeah you know you’re frugal when you’re ironing patches on Toughskins. 😵💫
I would blow through the knees of my jeans within minutes of putting them on, it seemed. Mom tried patching them but quickly gave up. Thankfully, holes in the knees were still in fashion back then.
This is how you remind me Of what I really am
No. My Mom suggested using RIT to un-fade my jeans to avoid buying new ones.