CS underwear
Select messages from
 # through # FAQ
[/[Print]\]

The CBB -> Anything Else
#1: CS underwear Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 12:13 am
    —
Because there's quite a lot of underwear in the CS books - people are continually saving one another by tying their vests or petticoats together and making them into a rope, getting soaked 'all through' with various ink-related incidents, setting their forbidden frilly underthings on fire jumping over candles, or stealing 'various well-laundered underthings' from the staff for Saturday night fun and games - what exactly would the girls have worn as underwear in the earlier years of the series? Would the school have had regulation underwear, and if so (maybe former boarders could help out) how much did one bring to school? What about the staff? Differences between British and continental European underwear? Sturdy winter underwear? When did the bra begin to be worn by girls, and at what ages would they have started to wear them, roughly? Are we to imagine Matey doing fittings?
#2:  Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 2:06 am
    —
I amused myself last week by picturing the kind of underwear they might have stolen from the staff. That could be fodder for a norty communal drabble, now I think of it. Laughing Laughing Laughing Although if you were working in a school where the sixth formers had a penchant for 'pinching' things, you'd make sure that everything you had was as basic and as functional as you could make it. Still think it was quite an invasion of privacy, though.
#3:  Author: Elle, Location: Peterborough PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 7:21 am
    —
A liberty bodice?

Quote:
The liberty bodice (Australian and British English), like the emancipation bodice or North American emancipation waist, was an undergarment for women and girls invented towards the end of the 19th century, as an innovative alternative to a corset. In the United Kingdom they were well-known for decades, with some older women still using them in the 1970s. A liberty bodice was a simply-shaped sleeveless bodice, often made of warm, fleecy fabric, usually with suspenders (US garters) attached. It might be straight or slightly curvy, and sometimes had buttons to fasten on other underwear: drawers (knickers or US panties) or petticoat/slip. A vest (US undershirt) might be worn underneath. The bodices had no boning, unlike corsets, although some had firm cloth strapping which might encourage good posture.

While some writers discuss liberty bodices as a restrictive garment imposed on children,[1] these bodices were originally intended to liberate women. They derived from the Victorian dress reform movement which wanted to free women from body-compressing corsets and excessive layers of underclothing. The concept was related to women's emancipation,[2] but in practice some of the early liberty bodices in the UK were advertised for maids[3] who would be freer to get on with their work without a constricting corset. Later the liberty bodice came to be thought of as something practical for a child who could be buttoned up warmly.

Liberty bodices are famously associated with R. & W. H. Symington of Market Harborough, Leicestershire, but the name had already been used before they made their first bodice: a version for girls aged 9 -13 which sold for one shilling and ninepence-halfpenny in 1908. The name has also been used for products from other manufacturers or for home-made garments.
From Wiki
#4:  Author: Karry, Location: Stoke on Trent PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 8:05 am
    —
I was (fortunately) not subjected to the Liberty Bodice, but my older (18 and 11 years) sisters wore them. AFAIR they also had rubber buttons? I, in the early 60s wore a vest and a full petticoat, no waist slips until I was in high school! I can recall being very jealous of a class mate who wore a training bra in the last year of junior school (aged 11). BTW why were they called 'training'?
#5:  Author: Elle, Location: Peterborough PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 8:07 am
    —
Because they trained them to point in the right direction????
#6:  Author: Karry, Location: Stoke on Trent PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 8:22 am
    —
Elle said
Quote:
Because they trained them to point in the right direction????
I thought they were sheepdog bras - because they rounded them up and pointed them in the right direction?
#7:  Author: Catherine, Location: Newcastle upon Tyne PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 9:44 am
    —
I think Tom Gay is referred to as wearing a liberty bodice ... it was when Rosalie Way went missing and she had to scramble through that passage thing that Daisy, Beth and Gwensi found. Daisy made her take off her dress to stop it being torn and Miss Wilson, I think, was startled.

Thekla wore a highly unsuitable petticoat, didn't she? And didn't Betty Wynne-Davies wear a pair of gym knickers that lost their elastic in the middle of a duel? And the girls were always darning stockings!

In the HB of Leader, there's a picture of Margaret Twiss (I think?) after she'd been removed from her frock which was stuck to her chair and it looks like she's wearing school knickers of some sort. But that could just be conjecture on the part of the illustrator.

I always thought the underthings stolen in Shocks were more stockings and petticoats as opposed to anything personal.
#8:  Author: Alex, Location: Oxford PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 9:53 am
    —
There was a GO book I read (no idea what it was called, we randomly had a copy of it) in which the girls used their liberty bodices for skipping one evening in the dormitary. The short fat girl is described as having a long thin bodice and was very successful, but the tall thin girl has a wide short bodice and can't do it at all.
#9:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:43 am
    —
Bit earlier, but Noel Streatfeild mentions the progression from liberty bodices to more grown-up underwear (not that grown up, you lot in the cheap seats) in The Vicarage Children.
#10:  Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:44 am
    —
I remember liberty bodices with considerable abhorrence – they were extremely uncomfortable – especially when worn – as mine always had to be – with a vest underneath. The length of time it took, especially for a not-quite-four-year-old, to get vest tucked into knickers, then liberty bodice smoothly over the top after ‘spending a penny’ was responsible for a great embarrassment on my first day at school, when I had gone into the lavatory cubicle towards the end of playtime, and was missing for so long that my mother, who taught in the junior section of the same school, was called out of class to find me, as I hadn’t showed up in the classroom where I should have been Embarassed
#11:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 12:00 pm
    —
So - to you liberty bodice experts and former wearers - when did these stop being worn? I mean that in terms of roughly what decade of the 20thc, and also, given that they were clearly originally introduced as a kind of child alternative to the corset, but survived after the demise of the corset, was there a point in one's teens when one moved from the liberty bodice to the vest? Or to the bra? Take Joey, for example - at what point in her life would she have begun to wear a bra?
#12:  Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 1:36 pm
    —
I've always thought of the teenage Joey as being very slight that way, and they're always telling us that girls are developing earlier now. I'll hazard a guess and say Joey probably wouldn't have worn what we recognise as a bra until 16/17?

...and am enormously amused that a piece of underwear called a 'liberty' bodice should be so very unliberating. Although there's a school of thought that says that one way of controlling women in the 19th/early 20th centuries was done by their underwear, which makes a lot of sense when you think of the restrictions imposed by the combination of long skirts and tightly laced corsets.

Talking of skirts - in the HB of New Mistress, I noticed that Dorothy Lawrence turns up to the Saturday evening in a red dress that had become 'skin tight' and had shortened so that it was 'nearly to her knees'. That made me laugh, especially the comment about length. I've seen my share of 40s and 50s movies and from what I can see, women of that era wore skirts/dresses just on or over the knee, so what gives?!
#13:  Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 1:52 pm
    —
Sunglass wrote:
So - to you liberty bodice experts and former wearers - when did these stop being worn? I mean that in terms of roughly what decade of the 20thc, and also, given that they were clearly originally introduced as a kind of child alternative to the corset, but survived after the demise of the corset, was there a point in one's teens when one moved from the liberty bodice to the vest? Or to the bra? Take Joey, for example - at what point in her life would she have begun to wear a bra?


Well I don't know about being an expert, but I certainly wore one in the winters from before 1954 [I started school in Jan 54 before turning 5 in April of that year] until probably 1959. I started senior school in Sept 60, and I'm fairly sure I insisted that I was too grown up for a l-b now. I was a 'late developer' in terms of bosoms - made up for it later Rolling Eyes - but one girl in my year had been wearing a bra since age 9, and most of us had 'graduated' by age 13 - if only into a double A cup. My mother was reluctant to let me have one until I 'really needed' one, as she put it, arguing that once it was supported it would lose tone Shocked

Fairly sure that so-called 'trainer bras' came in later - possibly from US - and were lightly padded so that girls who didn't really have anything but wanted to wear a bra could have a figure of sorts. I don't think I heard the term until the 80s.
#14:  Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 3:46 pm
    —
If you can get your hands on them via borrowing or in some way like that, there was a VERY long and detailed discussion of liberty bodices and CS underwear, with pictures and personal testimonies Laughing in the FOCS magazines of about 2 years ago. Just to supplement your knowledge Wink

Edit: forgot to say that I can't summarise it for you as I skipped those pages Laughing
#15:  Author: Kat, Location: Little Venice/Swansea PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:27 pm
    —
Róisín wrote:
If you can get your hands on them via borrowing or in some way like that


I thought you were meant the l-b's then, not the magazines! *rotflmao*

rofl mrgreen
#16:  Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 12:05 am
    —
I'm another liberty-bodice wearer (and yes, they did have rubber buttons, and very fiddly they were) and I still remember the total joy when my mother reluctantly let me stop wearing them. I was still at primary school, possibly even Infants, so sometime in the early 1950s, I guess (I was born in 1947). I started wearing a bra in my first year at secondary school (1958) , which was more or less normal. My very clothes-conscious and elegant 90 year-old mother still wears an incredible amount of underwear.
Regarding length of skirts, I always chuckle over the hornets incident in Camp, when the staff being chased by said hornets put their skirts up over their heads- presumably the skirts are long enough for them to be able to do that without showing their knickers!
#17:  Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 1:08 am
    —
Or they might have decided that showing their knickers was the lesser of the two evils! Shocked Shocked
#18:  Author: CBW, Location: Kent PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:07 am
    —
Quote:

Or they might have decided that showing their knickers was the lesser of the two evils


petticoats?
#19:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:28 am
    —
Guides were not meant to wear petticoats, I think. Or maybe only one, if mothers were getting a bit uptight. I have no idea where I read this off the top of my head, but it makes me giggle.
#20:  Author: CBW, Location: Kent PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 12:48 pm
    —
Quote:

Guides were not meant to wear petticoats, I think. Or maybe only one, if mothers were getting a bit uptight. I have no idea where I read this off the top of my head, but it makes me giggle.


That sounds just like some of the rules the Guide pack I belonged to (very briefly) had.
#21:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 5:04 pm
    —
Good lord, there were Guide underwear rules?

Re the point about the Guiders throwing their skirts over their heads to escape the hornets - I always assume that the underwear of the period was so much more capacious than ours that one would not be particularly undressed by raising one's skirt in some emergency situation. (Presumably the Guiders would have been wearing extremely sensible knickers which covered a lot of flesh, and thus weren't terribly revealing...) In the CS people are continually getting down to their underwear/using their underwear in various crisis situations in a quite matter of fact way - Miss Wilmot tucks her dress into her knickers to help the girls across a flooded stream, and Beth or Gwensi or whoever it is who has to search inside the hollow hedge at Plas Howell takes off her dress as a matter of course to stop it being torn, and isn't Anne Seymour rescued from her plunge by a chain of tied-together petticoats?

Many of us might not be wildly keen on the idea of flashing our pants at a pair of doctors while escaping from hornets, or revealing our underwear to a pack of schoolgirls we are going to have to face in the classroom the following day, but it's all in a day's work for the CS girls and mistresses. I was thinking something similar about I Capture the Castle the other day - not that anyone gets undressed to escape a flood or hornets, but Cassandra sits around in her sensible school knickers in the inn after she gets wet, quite unself-consciously etc. Presumably one didn't feel particularly undressed in these useful affairs. Though unfortunately none of the CS girls appear to keep anything up the legs of their knickers - I seem to remember a snapped knicker elastic and missing pound notes being a crucial plot point in one of the Malory Towers books. Perhaps Matey's inspections were very thorough?
#22:  Author: Jenefer, Location: London PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 5:10 pm
    —
We had to wear 'big' knickers in the school colour which was brown.
#23:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 6:21 pm
    —
Sunglass wrote:
Good lord, there were Guide underwear rules?


I think, to be fair, that it was very much fighting against the idea of girls having to be constrained by their clothes, and instead trying to show they could be a bit freer and such like, because you can't track across a moor in umpteen petticoats and a corset...
#24:  Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 7:09 pm
    —
Jenefer wrote:
We had to wear 'big' knickers in the school colour which was brown.


Ditto, but ours were navy
#25:  Author: CBW, Location: Kent PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 7:29 pm
    —
Quote:

Good lord, there were Guide underwear rules?


the one I particularly remember is not wearing patent leather shoes because of your knickers reflecting in them. (Convent school with the nuns running the brownies and guides too)
#26:  Author: Fi, Location: Somerset PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:05 pm
    —
Jenefer wrote:
We had to wear 'big' knickers in the school colour which was brown.

We did for PE under our games skirts and they were bottle-green. That was in the mid to late 90's. We didn't for school generally. Not that it would have mattered because we mostly wore trousers anyway.

I looked after a 90+ year old lady, several years ago, who wore a LB. I totally agree about the fiddly rubber buttons - very time consuming.
#27:  Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:50 pm
    —
We had black gym knickers (this was late '80s/early '90s). After the first year we always wore our PE skirts over them, but in the first year we had to do gym in just Aertex blouses and black knickers which was horrible. Even worse, if you forgot your black knickers (thankfully I never did) then the sadistic PE teacher made you do gym without them, in just your Aertex blouse and ordinary knickers: I bet the school'd get done for all sorts if they did that now!
#28:  Author: Maeve, Location: Romania PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 9:21 pm
    —
I have a very hazy recollection -- is it from the Mallory Towers books? -- where people shove things like letters and hankies in their knicker elastic, and I never understood this as a child. Did they shove the things in the elasticated legs of their knickers? Did anyone here ever do this? It always sounded so strange to me as a child.
#29:  Author: LauraMcC, Location: St Andrews or Kinross PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 9:38 pm
    —
The girls had to wear *the* most fetching pair of gym knickers too, in my Primary School (well, P1-5) in the mid to late 90s, so I'm glad that I wasn't the only one! Ours were navy blue with our school house colours in stripes going down the side - I was in the red house, and I thought that they looked rather fetching, although not everyone agreed with me. Very Happy Nowadays they get to wear shorts, like the boys, although I'm not entirely sure when the wearing of the knickers stopped.
#30:  Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:17 pm
    —
Maeve wrote:
I have a very hazy recollection -- is it from the Mallory Towers books? -- where people shove things like letters and hankies in their knicker elastic, and I never understood this as a child. Did they shove the things in the elasticated legs of their knickers? Did anyone here ever do this? It always sounded so strange to me as a child.


The elasticated legs came quite a way down the thigh, and a hankie or other item for safe keeping was often deposited there. Some knickers even had a small patch-pocket on the inside that was accessible via the elasticated leg-ends, and could be used to keep small amounts of cash in. I was discouraged from doing this by my mother, but I was at school with people who did.
#31:  Author: JackieP, Location: Kingston upon Hull PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:19 pm
    —
Oh, where's RTW when you need her - she's knitted a Nanny Ogg doll (from Discworld) complete with knicker leg purse arrangement....

JackieP
#32:  Author: Maeve, Location: Romania PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:24 pm
    —
Thanks, abbeybufo Smile One mystery solved!
Jackie P wrote:
Quote:
Oh, where's RTW when you need her - she's knitted a Nanny Ogg doll (from Discworld) complete with knicker leg purse arrangement....


Huh? What? dontknow help Smile
#33:  Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:30 pm
    —
JackieP wrote:
Oh, where's RTW when you need her - she's knitted a Nanny Ogg doll (from Discworld) complete with knicker leg purse arrangement....

JackieP


Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

I'd like to see that - just love Discworld Very Happy
#34:  Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 11:22 pm
    —
*g* Only RTW....I seem to remember a CS/Discworld crossover, but possibly I am inventing this.

If the knickers were more like knickerbockers of Trinny&Susannah style hold-it-all-in pants I can understand why people would be less selfconscious. The one that always makes me

Shocked Shocked though is in Jane during the tree climbing incident when one or other of them end up nearly naked in forest, and everyone is reasonably calm about it. Even Jack is more mortified about her impromptu faint rather than her state of dress.

(Maeve, RTW is also known as Rachel the Witch. Once upon a time it was just 'Rachel' but the nickname kinda ... stuck. Embarassed Embarassed She has an interesting collection of talents including massacring teddy bears and knitting dolls that are slightly wacky. She's also talented at murdering people, so it's usually a good idea to keep on her good side... Laughing Laughing I assume that's what you're asking about since Nanny Ogg is obviously a Discworld character from Terry Pratchett's series of the same name.)
#35:  Author: Pat, Location: Doncaster PostPosted: Sat May 03, 2008 11:40 pm
    —
RTW also had at one time a menagerie of virtual animals. Twisted Evil Twisted Evil
#36:  Author: Maeve, Location: Romania PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2008 8:23 am
    —
Lisa_T wrote:
Quote:
Maeve, RTW is also known as Rachel the Witch. Once upon a time it was just 'Rachel' but the nickname kinda ... stuck. Embarassed Embarassed She has an interesting collection of talents including massacring teddy bears and knitting dolls that are slightly wacky. She's also talented at murdering people, so it's usually a good idea to keep on her good side... Laughing Laughing I assume that's what you're asking about since Nanny Ogg is obviously a Discworld character from Terry Pratchett's series of the same name.)


Thanks, yes, that was all over my head. Hmm, love to see a drabble with RTW during a hobbies period making things for the sale Twisted Evil Wink
#37:  Author: Miss Di, Location: Newcastle, NSW PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2008 8:32 am
    —
Maeve wrote:
I have a very hazy recollection -- is it from the Mallory Towers books? -- where people shove things like letters and hankies in their knicker elastic, and I never understood this as a child. Did they shove the things in the elasticated legs of their knickers? Did anyone here ever do this? It always sounded so strange to me as a child.


My mother (a post ww2 baby) told me they wore "witches britches" which sound a bit like bike pants - over your normal undies, under your skirt. That way you didn't flash your knickers when pulling your skirt over your hear to avoid wasps.

We wore gym pants - like PKs (cottontails, or other passion killers) over our undies so we didn't flash. A nice royal blue polyester were the uniform ones.

Do girls now bother about not flashing? Or has 'raunch culture' removed that fear?
#38:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2008 9:53 am
    —
We used to wear cycle shorts under our gingham summer dresses at primary school we so we could do cartwheels and hang from the climbing frame without flashing our knickers.

Certainly, my 5-7 y-os have no shame at all (can be a tad problematic at times...), but the older girls I think do. But more wear trousers anyway.
#39:  Author: Sarah_G-G, Location: Sheffield (termtime), ? any other time! PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2008 11:07 am
    —
We had to wear our PE shorts under our skirts as well if we wanted to go on the climbing frame/ turn cartwheels/ play leapfrog etc when I was at primary school (early to mid-90s). I also remember a PSHE lesson in year 3 (ages 7-Cool where our teacher took the girls to one side and taught us all to sit with our legs curled to one side instead of sitting cross-legged as we all had been, so we wouldn't show our knickers. If someone forgot, our "subtle" reminder was to say Marks and Sparks to them! Laughing Oddly enough, to this day I still sit like that most of the time even though I usually wear trousers.

Slightly random point perhaps but I now do Ballroom and Latin dancing and at dance competitions we're all told to wear full knickers matching the colour of our dresses/ skirts just in case the skirt flies up/ we fall over/ whatever else might happen that could involve knickers being flashed! So people do still care about such things even situations like that, which is nice. Well, most people. It's best not to think about those who disregard/ somehow never heard the instructions. Shocked

ETA: I finally found out who lives next door! I've only been in my first lesson for about 3 years now... Rolling Eyes
#40:  Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast PostPosted: Sun May 04, 2008 1:56 pm
    —
On a related issue, I was always rather envious of the CS cubicles. I remember the contortions of trying to get dressed in a rather small dormitory with four other girls.... Mary-Lou's comments on privacy always made me laugh. A cubey would have been luxury!

But some people respond differently - the first time I went to Florence it was with a school trip and one of the other girls who was in the year below paraded quite happily around the dormitory in nothing but her knickers. My year girls didn't know where to look because this just wasn't done among our lot, but the girls in her own year just shrugged and went, "Yeah. She always does this. We're used to it." It was rather mind-boggling watching the girl in question carry on a conversation about the things we'd seen that day with our art teacher when she came in, totally unconcerned by the fact that by that point all she was wearing was a bra and knickers. They weren't the CS kind either! Laughing Laughing
#41:  Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 4:04 pm
    —
Quick quote or two from the CS - Princess first, where Jo and Veta use their vests as a rope. They are wearing: knickers, camis (camisoles, presumably, not cami-knickers... Shocked ) and cellular vests - though I've never been sure whether they are wearing camisoles and vests, or whether EBD is using the terms interchangably...

At this point, Jo is 14 and a half and Veta is 12. So, no bra yet for Joey, but she's beyond a liberty bodice...

Quote:
‘Our frocks?’ suggested Elisaveta.
Joey shook her head. ‘No; I don’t think we’d better do that. People might have fits if we wandered to Briesau in only knickers and camis.’
This was so true that the Princess said no more, but cast about in her mind for some substitute. ‘What about our vests?’ she said.
Joey brightened up at once. ‘Good scheme! What an idiot I was not to think of them myself. We must buck up and undress. Only do be careful and don’t slip down. It would be awfully easy to do that.’
They undressed, and removed their cellular vests, getting into their clothes again at top speed. The knife came into use again, and then they had a rope just long enough. It looked frail, but neither was very big, and both were thin, so they hoped for the best.


In Jo of, a couple of years earlier, Jo dresses after the flood:

Quote:
Then minutes later she returned, dressed as far as her liberty bodice and knickers, and proceeded to give her golliwog mop a good hard brushing till it shone glossily.


So, between the ages of 13 and 14 and a half, Jo has graduated from liberty bodice to vest / camisole.

In Goes to it, Daisy, Gwensi and Beth, who are 12ish, remove their frocks when crawling through the hedge tunnel and end up:

Quote:
‘We’re in our Liberties and our knicks,’ Gwensi reminded her simply.


That's mid-1939, right? And of course, Tom ends up in her liberty bodice and knickers in Rosalie, when Daisy sends her into the hedge. She's also about 12, I think.

In 1947, and Three Go we have:

Quote:
And here is Clemency still in knickers and liberty bodice


Clem's older than the others - isn't she 13 or 14 at this point? I'd always thought of her as a rather mature girl, physically, too. Don't know why Laughing

I think that's the last mention... Now I need to search for vests!!
#42:  Author: Celia, Location: Derbyshire PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 7:10 pm
    —
Returning to liberty bodices... I wore them until I was about eight I
think. The rubber buttons were a nightmare when getting ready for PE
and the other thing I remember was that suspenders were fixed to the
bottom edge... to hold up our nice lisle stockings! We also wore thick
bottle green 'gym knickers' which reached half way to our knees,(always , not just for PE)
My grandmother wore similar garments to the end of her days only in artificial silk. No probs if her skirt blew over her head then... voluminous
wasn't the word for them. I went to secondary school in 1951 and we
weren't allowed to wear petticoats even under our Summer frocks. We
were however expected to wear panama hats and suitable gloves all the
way to school and all the way home (we didn't of course, but were in serious trouble if caught) and were forbidden to eat in the street in school uniform at any time of year.
#43:  Author: Elder in Ontario, Location: Ontario, Canada PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 7:19 pm
    —
Celia wrote:
Quote:

....and the other thing I remember was that suspenders were fixed to the
bottom edge... to hold up our nice lisle stockings!


Oh dear, I remember those only too well in my first years in secondary school - about the same time as you, Celia - and especially how easily the bottom buttons designed to hold the suspenders came off. Being somewhat idle about stitching them on again, I once reaped the ultimate indignity when the last button (which was holding *all* the suspender loops) came off, and my 'nice lisle stockings' started to fall down in full view of everyone!!! Embarassed Embarassed

Thank goodness we finally graduated to suspender belts!!
#44:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:01 pm
    —
I remember wondering vaguely what 'cellular vests' were - they struck me as rather scientific-sounding, like something you grew in a petrie dish in a lab! - but given that M and S still sells them, I assume it's simply some particular kind of cotton. Which is a pity really, as I rather enjoyed the idea that Joey and Elisaveta were wearing magic uber-scientific underwear, which helped them escape from 'Cosimo and his jackal'.
#45:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2008 8:56 pm
    —
*is firmly going to ignore M&S on this one*

That's genius.
#46:  Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 8:55 am
    —
Sunglass wrote:
I remember wondering vaguely what 'cellular vests' were - they struck me as rather scientific-sounding, like something you grew in a petrie dish in a lab! - but given that M and S still sells them, I assume it's simply some particular kind of cotton. Which is a pity really, as I rather enjoyed the idea that Joey and Elisaveta were wearing magic uber-scientific underwear, which helped them escape from 'Cosimo and his jackal'.


Laughing

I rather wondered what they were, too. I think I kind of assumed in my own head that they were made of something like Aertex.

Maybe they were string vests? I quite like the idea of unravelling a string vest to make a rope...

Very Happy
#47:  Author: Kate, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Tue May 06, 2008 9:12 am
    —
I think Aertex is a type of cellular cotton. It's an open weave with a sort of 'bumpy' cell-patterned effect - very light but warm, like thermal underwear, basically. It's mostly baby blankets when you google though - something like this.
#48:  Author: alicat, Location: Wiltshire PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:34 pm
    —
I remember cellular vests, they were thicker cotton, sort of double knit, you wore them in winter - one way you knew summer was coming was when you were allowed to just wear thin ones.

Gym knickers - awful things - ours did have a hankie pocket in. Made of horrid baggy sort of thick cotton and you wore them OVER normal knickers.

I always wondered how the CS coped with changing for PE when they did all their dressing in modesty behind the cubby curtains - did they have little cubicles? I can still remember the awfulness of the first PE lesson at secondary school when we all stripped in the communal changing room and you suddenly realised the size of your boobs/type of bra/style and colour of knickers were being assessed in litte sideways glances by people you'd know fro only 2/3 days......and as for swimming lessons - I was traumatised by being one of the v few in my year to have boobs of a reasonable size and hairy bits down there as well as under my arms....too shaming!
#49:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:45 pm
    —
What I've always vaguely wondered, given that there's no mention of showers, is how girls washed after a games lesson? It would seem quite a hassle to have to go up to dormitories and bathrooms during the day - and isn't there a rule about being there in the daytime, anyway, which would suggest there is no to and fro after games lessons? Does Gaudenz hose the girls down in the garden or something, or do they simply wash faces and hands in the Splasheries and change their clothes? And if they change somewhere other than their cubicles, where?

My fairly grim school didn't have showers or changing rooms, so we just stayed sweaty and went back to class, but at least we were day girls and could take a shower at home later on...?
#50:  Author: Catherine, Location: Newcastle upon Tyne PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 3:36 pm
    —
Sunglass wrote:
Does Gaudenz hose the girls down in the garden or something?


rofl rofl

I went to two different private schools and was expected to wear school knickers at both. In my first, they were navy blue or grey and I remember when I was 7, we had a teacher who would check all our uniform for name tapes - including the inside of our knickers! She wasn't happy if you weren't wearing school knickers - think she sent people to stand in the corner!

In my second school, we were expected to wear bottle green knickers all the way through to Sixth Form but most of us stopped at the start of Lower Fifth ... which could be a problem when it came to Games! Our Games Kit was a sweater, aertex shirt and grey skirt with either green knickers or green shorts underneath ... or just the tops and knickers or shorts. If you forgot your shorts and were wearing your own knickers, it could be embarrassing! The Games teachers used to enjoy pointing out that we should be wearing green knickers and then it wouldn't matter!

In first year (Upper 3/Year 7), we had (communal) showers after Games and to our utter humiliation, the teacher would take our towels off us before we went in and be waiting to hand them back when we came out! Embarassed We didn't have showers in any other year either but got changed back into uniform in the locker rooms ... which would reak to high heaven at times!!

We didn't have showers after swimming either, though we only did that for the first 3 years of Senior School, and if it was our 'time of the month' we were told just to tell the Games teachers and not to worry about a note! I was always far too embarrassed and just hid! Embarassed They were the type to sit and gossip about how 'so and so' had started now etc. etc. And then they would say that if we got caught out, we could go and ask them for something. I never heard of anybody who ever did!!

I'd always assumed the CS girls got changed in the Splasheries - unless there was a changing room attached to the Gym - and had hot baths at night. Wasn't there some suggestion there may have been showers towards the end of the series though? Didn't Prudence Dawbarn get drenched by one during a game ... in Adrienne possibly?

Last edited by Catherine on Wed May 07, 2008 9:29 pm; edited 1 time in total
#51:  Author: evelyn38, Location: Rochester Kent PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 5:40 pm
    —
Quote:
Does Gaudenz hose the girls down in the garden or something, or do they simply wash faces and hands in the Splasheries and change their clothes? And if they change somewhere other than their cubicles, where?


I'm too lazy to go look up the reference but I am sure that there are a number of gym lessons/games where the girls just change their shoes and then go and do whatever they are doing.

The communal showers I had at secondary school (1970's) were ghastly but my son (14) does not have the option and can get wet and muddy playing rugby first thing, and then stay like it all day. I send him in with a towel to wipe the worst of it off, but it seems really unpleasant to me. He genarally has a bath when he comes in from school on those days - which shows it must be bad if he washes voluntarily.

I have n't worked out whether this is a time, facilities or child protection issue, but I suspect its a bit of all of them. Sad
#52:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 7:21 pm
    —
evelyn38 wrote:


I'm too lazy to go look up the reference but I am sure that there are a number of gym lessons/games where the girls just change their shoes and then go and do whatever they are doing.


This sounds right, though fairly unpleasant by our standards in the heat of a Swiss summer term. At least they changed (and presumably washed) before prep...

Though I can't think of many EBD references to sweat - most of the CS books being from the era where women were held to glow rather than glisten - apart from various novices on their first ramble, like Theodora being rescued by Mary-Lou's eau de cologne ice. (Though I'm not entirely sure what this is - like a kind of roll-on deodorant stick designed to cool you down?) and even those kinds of reference don't get beyond mopping one's hot face and talking about being 'boiling'. Presumably it was training for adulthood, when propriety still took precidence over comfort - like Joey wearing a tweed suit to go ona long trip to visit Phoebe Wychcote at the San in a midsummer heatwave, presumably because a respectable doctor's wife does not travel in a cotton frock.

Though some of the above comments about doing gym in gym knickers are making me think I am extremely uptight! Those of you who did this must find this push to encourage teenage girls to be more active by allowing them to design trendy games kit a bit wet...
#53:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2008 8:54 pm
    —
evelyn38 wrote:


The communal showers I had at secondary school (1970's) were ghastly but my son (14) does not have the option and can get wet and muddy playing rugby first thing, and then stay like it all day. I send him in with a towel to wipe the worst of it off, but it seems really unpleasant to me. He genarally has a bath when he comes in from school on those days - which shows it must be bad if he washes voluntarily.

I have n't worked out whether this is a time, facilities or child protection issue, but I suspect its a bit of all of them. Sad


We didn't have showers - well, they were there but we didn't use them, except very quickly after swimming to wash off the chlorine. We mainly didn't have time as our lessons were only an hour long (upped from 55 mins). I do remember the time I twisted my knee in rugby and sick bay could only provide a piece of wet tissue as all their ice packs were missing - I used it to clean off the mud! Otherwise, we just washed off the visible bits and left the rest...
#54:  Author: LauraMcC, Location: St Andrews or Kinross PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 3:59 pm
    —
Nobody ever washed at all at my school after P.E., and if you'd seen the rather disgusting looking showers you'd know why! I don't remember it being that big an issue, nobody smelt much afterwards, as far as I remember. After bswimming we were supposed to wash the chlorine off afterwards, but only the conscientious few did. I was certainly in too much of a hurry to leave the building to bother washing myself. There was a movement among P.E. teachers when I was in early senior school, to get us to shower, but I don't think that it was too successful - at least among the girls! I dropped physical sport after 2nd year (I took up shooting instead, much m,ore civilised), so I don't know what happened after that.
#55:  Author: Kate, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 5:52 pm
    —
We didn't shower after PE either. And we never got to go swimming - did your schools have swimming pools? If so, colour me jealous!
#56:  Author: Rosalin, Location: Swansea PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 6:38 pm
    —
We didn't shower either. I think the gym had a shower opening off the changing room, but we wouldn't have had time to use it, even if it had occured to us to do so. We just got changed and used some body spray.
#57:  Author: Sarah_L, Location: Leeds PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:42 pm
    —
I remember the body spray! Our changing rooms absolutely stunk of dewberry deodorant after every PE lesson. We never used the showers either, though they did exist. I don't really remember it being a problem, and we certainly wouldn't have had time to use the showers anyway (our lessons were probably about 50 mins, including changing time).
#58:  Author: Fi, Location: Somerset PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 9:23 pm
    —
Sarah_L wrote:
Our changing rooms absolutely stunk of dewberry deodorant after every PE lesson.

Ours too! Laughing

We never used the showers after PE either. They did exist but the changing rooms were too small so the shower area was used for changing space. We had 50min lessons and there wouldn't have been time for all 60 odd girls to get through the 5 or so showers and still have time to actually play some sport anyway.

The boys had larger changing rooms and had to use the showers as they were usually filthy after playing rugby and football in the mud. We used to play hockey on the astroturf so mud was only really an issue for us on cross country days. This was always on the last lesson in the day so we used to get on the bus in our games kit and shower when we got home.
#59:  Author: Clare, Location: Liverpool PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 10:20 pm
    —
Sunglass wrote:
Theodora being rescued by Mary-Lou's eau de cologne ice. (Though I'm not entirely sure what this is - like a kind of roll-on deodorant stick designed to cool you down?)


It does look a bit like a deodorant stick which does have the effect of cooling you down. I bought some last year when I saw it in the chemist because I had always wondered what it was like!

Re: PE lessons - we weren't allowed to use spray in the changing rooms, so the door into the PE block was always wreathed in clouds of deodorant as we all escaped PE with our spray! Having said that I loved PE in school, but hated the showers. I perfected the art of showering with a towl/underwear on. Other people did not look so convincing and the teacher threatened to remove the curtains and said she would stand and watch us shower if necessary. From year 9 on the showers didn't work for some reason, so we got out of the weekly ritual humiliation.
#60:  Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2008 10:45 pm
    —
We had showers, but no-one ever used them, even after swimming. There just wasn't time - the PE teachers seemed to take the view that their lessons should be as long as everyone else's and hardly allowed us any time for getting changed, so we always used to end up being late for the next lesson and getting moaned at like it was our fault!

It was even worse when PE was the last lesson of the day: sometimes we ended up having to get the bus home in Aertex blouses and short gym skirts, which really wasn't ideal Rolling Eyes .

Ah, those "body scents" ... I remember some that came in black cans (were they called "Sixth Sense" or something like that?), and the dewberry ones from The Body Shop.
#61:  Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:21 am
    —
We were forced to use the (communal) showers after PE (PE teacher went round checking) and I hated it, it took me so long to get dry. I finally sussed out that if I kept very quiet, it took me so long to dress that I was ready at the same time as everyone else, and our very fierce PE mistress either really didn't notice, or was so fed up with waiting for me that she ignored it (I now suspect the latter!). PE was the only lesson I ever skived, I used to hide in the cloakroom. As I was Head Girl at the time, this was not good Shocked Wink .
#62:  Author: Lisa_T, Location: Belfast PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 1:51 am
    —
I only really had one year to endure the possibility of showers. In the fifth and sixth we had all of Wednesday pm for Games (because we did many fun things. I am not being sarcastic) and the senior staff decided that it would really be much easier all round if we were permitted to go back to dormitory to change. Niiiice. And then getting back from riding just in time for afternoon tea (which our lovely carestaff/matron usually left in the sixth form block's own private kitchens) and a bath or shower.

I wish I could turn the clock back.


On second thought, I think not. Laughing Laughing
#63:  Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:48 am
    —
To get back to the CS there would be no question of showers or washing after games and PE. In the early books they probably wouldn't change either as the gym tunics were worn for free movement in drill, games etc. In Tyrol they had special breeches etc for climbing in winter, tweed skirts and white jumpers for summer, tennis frocks, silk tops and knickers for rowing, but nothing ever mentioned for games and gym. In fact I can't think of any description of a PE kit anywhere.
#64:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 11:26 am
    —
It's an interesting point, actually - I know less than nothing about the history of school uniforms, but is it fair to say that the idea of uniforms - the gymslip or gym dress or gym tunic - came about as a garment girls could move about freely in at a time when girls' clothes were far more restrictive? So that what I tend to think of as 'school uniform' - I spent my teens in a royal blue gymslip and tie, which I can now hardly bear to think about - was originally introduced specifically for gym and games purposes, even though we don't necessarily make that connection now any more, because we have very different ideas about suitable wear for sport?

Which is a roundabout way of saying that this of course makes sense of the CS girls not having a separate games kit, because (at least in the early years), the brown tunics they wore every day were essentially games kit. Which I suppose also makes sense in relation to them changing for the evening - I was thinking of this vaguely in relation to the middle- and upper-class habits of changing for dinner which would still have been in vogue in the early years of the CS, but if the original brown tunics were thought of as a sensible kind of work-clothes, deisgned for freedom of movement etc, then they are only actually putting on 'real clothes' for the part of the day when no physical activity would take place...
#65:  Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 11:38 am
    —
Due to acute boredom at work I've just looked this up! Apparently gymslips were first introduced at a London college for female PE teachers, and were worn by female athletes from the 1880s to the 1920s, i.e. at a time when everyday female clothing would have been very restrictive. From c. 1900 onward they became a common part of the uniform for girls at British schools.
#66:  Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 11:42 am
    —
In The Abbey Girls Go Back to School there is shock! horror! and bemusement when the girls are told that the students of the school wear their gymslips going to and from the college. And on their first evening, they see one of the students in the garden after dinner still wearing her gymslip, and there follows about a chapter of giggling, shaking their head in disbelief and gasps that she is 'all legs'. Laughing
#67:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:08 pm
    —
That's interesting, and makes a lot of sense in ways I hadn't thought of before in relation to the CS. Also explains more clearly to me the excitement some of the girls feel putting on their uniform for the first time - in the early days especially, it would feel nothing like a girl's ordinary clothes, and would be physically signing you up to a different and freer way of being a girl. It also explains to me why in some of the books - though don't remember which - the girls are told to get into school uniform before going for a ramble, which always sounded odd to me, but now makes more sense. (Rambles were often on Sunday, so presumably they would have been wearing their 'proper' Sunday dresses and hats to church.)

And of course, blazers were originally unfussy, durable sports coats also, which is why they're wearing them too. And the durable gym knickers (to go back to the original point) are part of this kind of 'rational' freer dress too. Even if it all sounds bulky and uncomfortable to us now, with our fleecees and breathable fabrics and wicking, and our sense that PE kit and school uniform are two entirely different things.
#68:  Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:25 pm
    —
And is it New Abbey Girls where Joy is mortified to be caught out wearing her tunic when some guests come to visit the Abbey? She hides and ends up creeping back to the Hall to change - getting caught in the process.

The subtext is that a ~20 year old girl of her class should not be wearing such an indecent garment unless she is actually participating in a sport or sporting activity.

Later on in the Abbey series there is outrage when it's suggested the seniors swap their gymmers for skirts and blouses...
#69:  Author: Catherine, Location: Newcastle upon Tyne PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:44 pm
    —
Thinking about PE in terms of staff ... what did they wear? I believe there's a mention of Hilary Burn in a gymslip or tunic but what about in the later years? I don't remember a mention of what Peggy Burnett wore or what the rest of the staff wore for lacrosse, hockey etc. Presumably they would have worn sensible underwear for Games teaching at least... or perhaps not ...!
#70:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 12:54 pm
    —
There's some mention of one of the (probably later?) games mistresses looking 'trig' in well-cut shorts, I think. But I like the notion of mistresses and girls matching in gymslips! Though how anyone could do apparatus work in even a fairly short skirt, I can't think. Although to be honest the idea of leaping over a horse clad in anything sounds highly unlikely to me. As someone who had two or three periods a month to get out of PE.
#71:  Author: CBW, Location: Kent PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 1:14 pm
    —
Using Joyce Grenfell in both The Happiest Days of Your Life and the Fist St Trinnians film she wore a gymslip similar to the girls school uniforms for games.

The girls themselves wore what lookes a little like airtex tops tucked into baggy gym knickers. The school they were playing wear what looked like standard cotton dresses.

Given the time that they were made, they can probably be relied on as an indication of acuracy. (sixth form and uniform extremes aside)
#72:  Author: abbeybufo, Location: in a world of her own PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 1:42 pm
    —
Our gym/games mistresses at school [1960s] wore 'games shorts' of a similar style to our uniform ones - which were something akin to a divided skirt that came to just above the knee. Ours had to be grey - which I always thought was odd, as our uniform colour for everything else was navy Confused - but they wore green, maroon & blue respectively [there were 3 of them] which I now think must have been their training college colours? [Anyone know enough about these PT colleges to be able to ID which they might have been to?]
#73:  Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 1:43 pm
    —
In 'Dulcie Captains the School' there are illustrations of a gym lesson and a hockey match.

What surprised me was that the uniform for gym was the same as for every day, and the same for the hockey match, including the shoes. I would have thought that the shoes they wore then, with a slightly high heel would have been absolutely unsuitable for gym, given the nature of some of the exercises the girls were doing.
#74:  Author: Travellers Joy, Location: Middle of Nowhere PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 2:05 pm
    —
In Wrong, we have:

Quote:
The courts on which the Middles played were situated at the far end of the big garden. There were four of them and three practice-stands at one side as well. Miss Burn, looking very trig and smart in her well-cut shorts and college blazer, was waiting for them and two prefects were chatting with her.

This is the first mention of shorts in use in the School itself. (Earlier mentions are home/holiday related only.) The girls may have been wearing shorts for gym themselves in Wrong as well, but gymwear for the girls isn't actually mentioned until Changes. And then in Ruey, we get:

Quote:
“I know that; but the present generation seems to be revolting against gym tunics and shirts and after all, it isn’t even as if they wore them for gym, these days,” Miss Annersley pointed out.

Peggy Burnett, who had been sitting ruminating, looked up. “I can see the point. They wear shirts and shorts for their gym and games, so there really is no point in hanging on to gymmers for lessons—except that for so long those have been the accepted uniform in schools. But if we’re giving those up, what are we having in exchange?”
#75:  Author: Tor, Location: London PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 4:22 pm
    —
It's interesting to think about gym-slips as practical clothes, freeing up girls from their more restricting clothes, like Sunglass says.

Particularly when you think on the current school uniform trends. The introduction of gym-slips must have been fairly revolutionary in it's day, but now the hall mark of establishment and respectability. You can't help thinking the proponents of the gym-slip would today be backing the (rather sensible in my view) tracksuit style uniforms for primary schools... and some senior schools that I've seen.

I like to imagine a modern CS in switzerland with high performance gore-tex as the uniform fabric of choice, easily coping with every unexpected storm and emergency. And judging by Joey's excitement over interchangeable hat bands, I am sure shed be a fan of convertible trousers.
#76:  Author: evelyn38, Location: Rochester Kent PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 4:28 pm
    —
interesting this - I'd never really questioned why they were called gymslips, which they were even when I went to school (late 60's/70's), though by that time we had separate kit for PE or games - polo shirts and little pleated skirts usually.

But now it all makes sense if you see gym slips as a more workmanlike sort of attire than the "ladylike" dresses worn in the evening and on Sunday, and one which was worn for both lessons and exercise.

What a lot you can learn from a discussion about underwear !! Shocked
#77:  Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2008 9:10 pm
    —
I was born in 1953 and never wore a liberty-bodice; I did, however, have to wear a vest all the time, even in summer, until I finally managed to persuade my mother that "nobody else" ever wore a vest!

I do remember that we always wore two pairs of pants; white "linings" went next to your skin, and then either navy-blue school uniform pants (which had long legs that went down your thighs and my mother called "Mother-doesn't-trust-mes") or a pair that had been made specially to match your cotton frock. Our school uniform was a white shirt with navy tie, gym-tunic and jersey; in summer it was a blue cotton frock of designated pattern and material. I don't remember whether our frocks had matching pants - I rather think they did.

At secondary school, we wore skirts and blouses, and one's underwear was very much one's own affair. We had brown knickers for gym, but the ethos was you took them with you, and changed into them along with the aertex shirt we also wore. Said aertex was also worn for outdoor games, but this time teamed with vile fawn culotte-type shorts that rubbed and chapped your legs in below-zero temperatures (no such niceties as trackies for us!). No showers at all - they were installed but were never used - and only three baths a week, but we were conscientious about using deodorant.

One interesting anachronism - on the laundry-lists, one's bras were referred to as "BBs", which apparently stood for "Bust Bodice". We all _said_ bra, of course, and most people just scrawled "Bra" in their laundry lists! It was certainly referred to as a bra in the official clothes-list (3 bras, if worn, 3 vests, if worn.....).
#78:  Author: Bethannie, Location: West Midlands, England PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 3:55 pm
    —
Well! This thread has certainly revived memories for me - some of which I think I've been deliberately repressing!
Oh how I remember those regulation navy blue school knickers! We wore them over our own knickers and things used to get very warm and itchy in summer!
Vests were worn all year round- thin in summer, woolly in winter; plus a full slip/petticoat as well. No liberty bodice though - and I started school in 1966.
We had regulation hair-ribbon as well at school - they had to be a certain width and navy. Every girl with hair below the shoulder had to wear her hair in one or two plaits - no simple bunches/pigtails allowed.
I never had a problem with the term gym-slip. I thought it referred to gymnasium as an alternative name for a high school or grammar school. So the gym slip was the gymnasium uniform. Now I'm wondering if this was just my German background?
#79:  Author: RroseSelavy, Location: Oxford, UK PostPosted: Mon May 12, 2008 8:10 pm
    —
Oh my goodness, the mention of dewberry bodyspray immediately took me right back to school...

We were made to have showers after games, the teacher checked your name off on the register when she saw you go in and out. In fact, in year 7 when we just had a comunal shower room, she even stood at the door to watch everyone and make sure they washed. This was only 15 years ago, but I doubt she'd be allowed to do that these days Shocked
#80:  Author: Luisa, Location: Warks PostPosted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:32 pm
    —
Apologies to any games mistresses here, but what is it with these creatures? At school in the 70s we had a sadistic **** who also enjoyed taking towels off us, commenting on physical imperfections (and who at the age of 13 or so didn't have any?) and generally giving us enough hang ups to keep an outpatient unit going for decades.
And that's before you start me on navy blue gym knickers, with one's name embroidered across them. And if you were my mother, the embroidery wasn't exactly fetching....
#81:  Author: Kate, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Tue May 13, 2008 9:52 pm
    —
Luisa wrote:
Apologies to any games mistresses here, but what is it with these creatures? At school in the 70s we had a sadistic **** who also enjoyed taking towels off us, commenting on physical imperfections (and who at the age of 13 or so didn't have any?) and generally giving us enough hang ups to keep an outpatient unit going for decades.


Shocked Shocked Oh my God...!
#82:  Author: Catherine, Location: Newcastle upon Tyne PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2008 10:30 am
    —
Kate wrote:
Luisa wrote:
Apologies to any games mistresses here, but what is it with these creatures? At school in the 70s we had a sadistic **** who also enjoyed taking towels off us, commenting on physical imperfections (and who at the age of 13 or so didn't have any?) and generally giving us enough hang ups to keep an outpatient unit going for decades.


Shocked Shocked Oh my God...!



*echoes Kate*


And your name embroidered across your gym knickers?!! Shocked How embarrassing!
#83:  Author: Shander, Location: New Scotland in Latin PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2008 4:09 pm
    —
Oh my! Shocked
I'm suddenly very grateful for having gone to a public (government) school.
The only year we had a games uniform was my first year in highschool, and that was simply a t-shirst and shorts with the shcool name on them.
Our knickers were our own business.
And thankfully, we were only required to take it that one year in highschool, and so I dropped it with thanksgiving.
#84:  Author: Kate, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2008 7:11 pm
    —
We wore tracksuit bottoms (any kind so long as they were black) and a polo shirt (white). We also didn't have to change; we just wore them into school on the day we had PE. We were supposed to change back afterwards, but we never did. I'm quite traumatised by the knickers references - and even the shorts references! I do not do shorts, unless I am somewhere where it is over 30 degrees.
#85:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Wed May 14, 2008 9:07 pm
    —
In the lower school (stricter on uniform) we were only allowed tracksuit bottoms when the PE staff deemed it cold enough. The upper school were rather more flexible on the issue, but I always wore shorts! I like shorts. I'd've worn them to my exam this arvo, if I hadn't been afraid of being chilly in the room by 5pm!
#86:  Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2008 10:39 am
    —
Shander wrote:
Our knickers were our own business.


I think that in every school your "linings", that you wore underneath your official school knickers (whether they were worn all the time or only for PE), were considered your own affair, although if you were a boarder you had to have them marked with a Cash's Name Tape with your name and house laundry-mark.

But in the 1950s there wasn't really much choice - everything was white cotton! Nylon came in in the 1960s, and after everybody promptly got thrush, a quick return to cotton - but in the wider range of colours and styles that nylon had introduced.
#87:  Author: Emerence, Location: Australia PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2008 5:01 am
    —
I remember having to wear navy blue outer undies over my normal undies at some stage during the early 90s, but I can't remember if they were for actual school or whether they were for a sports team I was in.

In high school (only bout 10 years ago) we changed out of our normal school uniforms for P.E. You could wear whatever sports clothing you wanted - there wasn't a school sports uniform for regular P.E. classes. If you forgot your sports clothes that day, you'd have to participate in whatever aspects of the regular uniform you'd turned up to school in! I remember some of the forgetful boys getting their grey trousers in a right mess during muddier days! And a poor girl sweating away in her winter uniform during karate.

The students who were specialising in sport had their own school sports kit to wear - shirt and shorts. Some of them wore it for regular P.E. lessons too.

Afterwards we could shower in the separate girl/boy changing rooms if we wanted. We were all very thankful that the cubicles had solid dividers with curtains to close off in front! There were a couple of toilet cubicles too for the girls who were on their rags. I don't know how girls in communal changing rooms cope with that!
#88:  Author: Bethannie, Location: West Midlands, England PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:52 am
    —
I am soooo grateful that I was excused games/PE at school on medical grounds from the age of 11.

I remember the communal showers, all the girls would crowd in together, the games mistress would then check they were all in there and turn on the showers - sometimes hot sometimes cold depending on her mood. She would then stand by the entrance to ensure that noone snuck out. You couldn't take a towel in wioth you - it would have got soaked. When the mistress turned off the shower, you had to run to you space on the benches outside the showers, where you had left your towel and clothes and get changed in public.
#89:  Author: Tor, Location: London PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2008 10:32 am
    —
My school was a state school, but a grammar (and thus with pretensions of grandeur).

Our P.E. kit was rather complicated. We had:

A bright, grass green (like the grass in Oz, however) aertex shirt. Name to be embroidered on the front.

Royal blue gym knickers (thick high waisted knickers). Also with our names to be embroidered on them.

Royal blue netball skirt. Again, names to be embroidered on them (get the picture?!!)

[we could wear our skirts with gym knickers, or gym knickers on their own. Only a strange few opted for the latter).

White hockey socks with green stripes at the top. Name tapes were sufficient for this!!!)

Green jersey fabric jumper. Embroidered again

Green Jersey fabric tracksuit bottoms. Yep, name embroidery required.

Trainers (white)

Basically, you could skip the tracksuit bottoms, but that was it. The rest was mandatory. My mum could embroider a rather nice chain stitch, but some people's efforts were pretty hilarious, bless them.

Showers were present, but not working, and I think the school had given up on fixing them as no girl wanted to use them. We lived in fear of them being fixed. They were used for storing gym apparatus instead!

Sometimes I really wonder at my school - it really seemed to be aping the CS in quite a large way. One of our PE lesson was country dancing!!!
#90:  Author: Sarah_G-G, Location: Sheffield (termtime), ? any other time! PostPosted: Fri May 16, 2008 11:09 am
    —
I left school 6 years ago and we still had separate P.E kits at our normal comprehensive. Though possibly because of the area, our uniform was still very... specific. I didn't realise how unusual it now seems to be for girls to have to wear ties and blazers, for example, as I'm sure all th schools near me (Woking/ Guildford area) did, more or less. Thankfully we never had games knickers but we would get slips sent home if we forgot to bring the correct colour socks and would get a short detention if we forgot any part of the PE kit (including the wrong socks) 3 times Rolling Eyes In my school the girls got off pretty lightly with showers as they did exist, but nobody ever used them that I can remember and I can't remember the teachers ever forcing us to. I suspect they really couldn't be bothered! I'm not sure about dewberry body spray in my school, but I'm pretty sure we all came out smelling off a mixture of the entire range of Impulse body sprays Laughing The boys were forced to shower. They didn't talk about it. We all suspected this meant it was fairly traumatic.
#91:  Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:01 pm
    —
Tor wrote:
One of our PE lesson was country dancing!!!


We did Scottish dancing when it rained - the only form of sport I ever enjoyed! Years later, the games mistress said that it was a case of having to, as when you had 100+ girls and a relatively small hall in which to see tht they were exercised, there wasn't much choice.
#92:  Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:56 pm
    —
We actually wore sort of grecian tunics for gym/dance/games (including hockey). We made them in needlework in our first term and embroidered our names in chainstich on the front. We had to kneel on the floor to check they were the right length ... this was a Girls' Grammar School in the late Fifties to mid Sixties. And if we were caught not wearing the regulation navy knickers (normal uniform, not games - and yes, the games mistress did check) our Head commented on our record cards that we weren't amenable to discipline! We had to wear straw boaters or navy velour hats to and from school, as well. The great leaving ritual was to processs into town and chuck our boaters over the river bridge!

I have to say that all the (comprehensive) schools I've taught at have had strict, but sensible, uniform codes, both in general and for games.
#93:  Author: Shander, Location: New Scotland in Latin PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:24 am
    —
There was some talk of bringing uniforms in for government schools when I was in High School, but it didn't ever go thorugh.
In a way I think i would have missed the diversity. We had a lot of new immigrants to my school, so a lot of them were in some form of national dress.
I especially loved it in spring when the girls from India and Pakistan would start wearing their Salwar Kameez. They were every colour in the rainbow, and the embroidery on them was so pretty. It really brightened things up.
I often wanted to have a uniform when I was in school, but in retrospect, I don't think I'd give up the experience I had.
#94:  Author: Tiffany, Location: Is this a duck I see behind me? PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:29 pm
    —
We (state school, UK, 90s) had a PE uniform which had a horrible nylon netball skirt thing, under which you wore navy-blue knickers. And for anything that was ludicrous in a skirt, eg high-jump, we had to TAKE OFF THE SKIRT AND DO IT IN OUR KNICKERS. Ohhh the trauma. I don't know why we couldn't just wear shorts...
#95:  Author: LizzieC, Location: Canterbury, UK PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:30 pm
    —
Tiffany wrote:
We (state school, UK, 90s) had a PE uniform which had a horrible nylon netball skirt thing, under which you wore navy-blue knickers.


Snap - except ours were Royal Blue Neutral Interestingly, by the time I left in 2000 they were being phased out in favour of shorts. Thank goodness! Smile
#96:  Author: Theresa, Location: Brisbane, Australia PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:40 pm
    —
We had the netball skirt too, and bike pants to go underneath (royal blue also). Wore it every Wednesday, and when we had sport. I left in 2000 and by 2003 they had a complete revamp of the whole uniform. Not as nice now, as it doesn't have dresses.
#97:  Author: Rosie, Location: Land of Three-Quarters Sky PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 7:30 am
    —
We had royal-blue netball skirts too, with either knicker-style shorts or football-type shorts, depending on which outfitter your mother refused to patronise (my mother refused to go to the one in the town as she didn't feel he should be on the school governors!). When I first started in yr 7, we had to wear the skirts over the shorts for everything, bar gym and dance and possibly athletics. By the time I was in yr 9 or so, some girls (the proper show-off ones) wore their skirts but most stuck to shorts. We were supposed to wear them for school matches, esp netball and hockey, but I was in the rounders team and we didn't so much. Yrs 10 and 11 were too happy to see us doing PE at all to insist on skirts, and no one's mother was buying a new one by that point in our school careers!
#98:  Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 8:45 am
    —
My goodness! This thread has got long rather quickly Wink

We (I'm a year younger than the triplets so their experiences might have been similar) wore liberty bodices and woollen vests in winter and cotton vests in summer at Primary school. Liberty bodices had rubber buttons and could go through the wringer - they took ages to dry and there were no spin or tumble dryers in those days. I don't remember what we wore for PE at Junior School. It was just post war and clothes were still rationed so I suppose that made a difference.

Senior School gym uniform was brown gymslips - to the knee - with aertex shirts. I also remember having to kneel down in a row while the length was checked.

School knickers were indeed passion killers. The elastic was not an integral part of the garment but a piece of elastic enclosed in a hem at the top and round the legs. Larger girls developed grooves in their legs and thin ones cut a hole in the hem and tied a knot in the elastic to keep them from falling down or flapping round the legs - and yes, we did tuck various bits of property up the legs! We wore ordinary white knickers under them, not just for comfort, but for hygiene - the took ages to dry and you normally had only two pairs so wore the outer knickers for several days.

The nuns tucked their skirts up at the side, leaving one skirt which didn't quite reach their ankles and was rather full. They also wore a lighter veil instead of the high wimpole the Ursulines usually wore. The effect, complete with boots, was quite startling.
#99:  Author: JayB, Location: SE England PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:22 am
    —
My mother was a schoolgirl during the war. She was evacuated from Kent to Staffordshire. She says her mother, evidently thinking Staffordshire was the Frozen North, sent her two pairs of fleecy lined navy knickers of the type described by patmac.

She'd never worn such a thing, and didn't intend to start. She took them apart and made them into a jacket which she wore for roller skating.

She therefore had a 'fleece' fifty or sixty years ahead of anyone else - but since she was a twelve year old girl who hadn't been trained by Mdlle, heaven knows what her sewing was like!

She says, looking back, she wonders what she must have looked like - but it was wartime and they had no money anyway, so she couldn't afford to be fussy.
#100:  Author: Theresa, Location: Brisbane, Australia PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:40 am
    —
patmac wrote:
Senior School gym uniform was brown gymslips - to the knee - with aertex shirts. I also remember having to kneel down in a row while the length was checked.


My mum is always telling me how, when she was in school in the 70's, the nuns were always making her kneel while they checked her dress and being frustrated when it was no further above the knee than the maximum number of inches -- she was so short that she could have a perfectly regulation skirt that barely covered her bum!

Conversely, when I was in high school the fashion was to wear the skirt as low on the hip, and therefore as long, as possible.
#101:  Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:58 am
    —
Theresa wrote:
Conversely, when I was in high school the fashion was to wear the skirt as low on the hip, and therefore as long, as possible.


Same here. The part of Ireland where I am from, all the girls' schools wear their uniform skirts very long - literally touching their toes in most cases.
#102:  Author: Billie, Location: The south of England. PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:15 am
    —
Until year 8, I had to wear green skirt and knickers for PE, then when I changed schools it was a red t-shirt and black shorts or black or navy tracksuit bottoms. All the same, by year 11, girls were wearing pretty much any vaguely sporty clothes for PE. I'm sure I remember someone wearing a luminous yellow t-shirt one PE lesson!
#103:  Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:15 am
    —
For some reason the fashion when I was at school was to wear really long jumpers - you could either wear the school's "own" jumper or else any plain black jumper, so people used to get really long plain black jumpers - so the jumpers would end up almost covering the skirts.

(Unless you were me and had "issues" about wearing anything short, in which case you ended up with a long jumper and a long skirt Laughing .)

I think EBD missed a trick with all this uniform stuff - I can just see someone like Mary-Lou checking that everyone had skirts the right length, suitably shiny shoes et al.
#104:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:38 am
    —
Only there's already quite a bit of emphasis in tidiness in school uniform etc - dormitory prefects interfering with Polly Winterton and Emerence's ideas of what constitutes an acceptable look - and customising your uniform suggests thinking about what you look like, or having a sense that unadorned CS uniform is somehow lacking - not the sign of a 'real' CS girl at all. Also, vanity is such a signal of a bad character in the CS world. The only people I can imagine varying the uniform are people like Betty Wynne-Davies and Elizabeth Arnett, who are both definitely still Bad Eggs when they are hanging about in headscarves and lipstick, or slacks, or whatever it is they do! Even Sybil, who is continually described as having been vain of her looks before the Josette accident, is never that I can remember accused of undue attention to what she wears (though she is pretty young still when the Josette accident 'reforms' her, isn't she?)

Also, let's not forget that many of EBD's favourite CS characters have an ability to 'settle' their uniforms with 'fingers that had something of a Frenchwoman's skill', whether or not they have ever passed through France. Not that I'm ever all that sure what that means. I can understand having an instinct for chic, but if it's only a matter of pulling a tunic over your head and making sure your blouse is buttoned and your tie knotted, then I don't see what the fuss is about!

Although I suppose (to get back to the original topic) that Thekla defiantly wearing frilly underwear to the Prefects' Evening is (kind of) customising her uniform...
#105:  Author: Theresa, Location: Brisbane, Australia PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:42 am
    —
Ah, but if the naughty middles were only committing outlandish uniform violations so their friends could set up elaborate pranks while the prefects were distracted...
#106:  Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 11:51 am
    —
Which book is it when one lot of Middles play a bunch of uniform-related tricks on another lot - there's lots of wiping blazers around the cat's bed, snapping shoelaces, and Cornelia having to go down to breakfast in a cardigan because someone snipped off all the buttons of her blazer? I remember being vaguely horrified at the notion that something as tiny as a snapped shoe lace earned you a 'smart rebuke' from Matron (has she got X-ray eyes???). In my Irish schooldays I was the opposite of what Theresa mentions above - my school's preferred unofficial look involved ducking frequent uniform inspections (including one mad religion teacher who used to hide in the shrubbery to do on the spot checks before assembly!)to wear your skirt as short as possible, over thick black tights and Doc lace-up shoes. For some reason this is one of the most visible regional differences in Ireland to this day - in some parts of the country, school skirts are underwear-revealingly short, in others, footpath-sweepingly long.

Last edited by Sunglass on Fri May 23, 2008 12:46 pm; edited 1 time in total
#107:  Author: Billie, Location: The south of England. PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 12:27 pm
    —
At one school, the fashion was for girls to wear really baggy blouses and their ties worn really small, the long thin end stuffed inside the buttons. Then I changed schools and the fashion changed to tailored blouses with the knot of the tie worn very low. I think in the case of the first, we were about twelve or thirteen, wearing baggy blouses to hide the fact that we hadn't all developed very much. When we were a bit older, the tighter blouses showed off what we *did* have by that point.

Wearing school jumpers was never very popular, probably because, in the first school, they were pond-water green machine-knitted ones. We were campaigning all through year 7 and 8 to be allowed to wear sweatshirts instead. In the second school, the uniform *was* sweatshirts, but no one wore those either. Strange.
#108:  Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:25 pm
    —
In junior high and high school, our "gym suits" were one piece navy affairs, sort of a combination of shorts and short-sleeved blouse with an elasticated waistline. They snapped up the front, had surnames across the back, and were supposed to be washed once a week. In elementary school, we just wore shorts under the uniform -- no changing, but "gym" at that point was little more than calisthenics and the odd game of dodge-ball.

Elementary school skirts (in a K-8th grade system) were to the middle of the knee. Any shorter and you'd be subjected to a public hem-ripping, and have to wear dangling threads for the rest of the day. It was quite a shock to move to a school without uniforms, where mini-skirts were "in." I never did feel comfortable in the things.
#109:  Author: Catherine, Location: Newcastle upon Tyne PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 2:44 pm
    —
Sunglass wrote:
Which book is it when one lot of Middles play a bunch of uniform-related tricks on another lot - there's lots of wiping blazers around the cat's bed, snapping shoelaces, and Cornelia having to go down to breakfast in a cardigan because someone snipped off all the buttons of her blazer? I remember being vaguely horrified at the notion that something as tiny as a snapped shoe lace earned you a 'smart rebuke' from Matron (has she got X-ray eyes???)


I think it was Rivals or Eustacia.
#110:  Author: Fi, Location: Somerset PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:33 pm
    —
I think it was in Eustacia because the perpetrators left Eustacia out of the trick due to an agreement that she was to be ignored. This was in response to her making Bill hurt her foot and holding up the group at the Stubai glacier there-by causing Robin to fret and make herself ill.

Like the blizzard had nothing to do with it Rolling Eyes
#111:  Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Sat May 24, 2008 8:51 pm
    —
Róisín wrote:
Theresa wrote:
Conversely, when I was in high school the fashion was to wear the skirt as low on the hip, and therefore as long, as possible.


Same here. The part of Ireland where I am from, all the girls' schools wear their uniform skirts very long - literally touching their toes in most cases.


Whereas in the 1960s we used to roll the waistband of our skirts over to make them as "mini" as possible. My daughter, a quarter of a century later, wondered how her headmistress had known that some girls were doing that and had not just outgrown their skirts. I pointed out that she (the headmistress) had probably done the exact same thing when she was at school!
#112:  Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 12:09 am
    —
Mrs Redboots wrote:
Róisín wrote:
Theresa wrote:
Conversely, when I was in high school the fashion was to wear the skirt as low on the hip, and therefore as long, as possible.


Same here. The part of Ireland where I am from, all the girls' schools wear their uniform skirts very long - literally touching their toes in most cases.


Whereas in the 1960s we used to roll the waistband of our skirts over to make them as "mini" as possible. My daughter, a quarter of a century later, wondered how her headmistress had known that some girls were doing that and had not just outgrown their skirts. I pointed out that she (the headmistress) had probably done the exact same thing when she was at school!


Oh it wasn't a 1990s thing - just a regional fashion. Schools in the county next to us did exactly the same as you describe there (rolling up their waistband to make the skirt more mini) - I thought it looked horrible - you could see the bunching at the waist Laughing
#113:  Author: Tor, Location: London PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 3:15 pm
    —
my school was definitely one for rolling up the skirts. It was considered desperately uncool to have a long skirt.

My mother, being sensible, bought mine at just on the knee length (some girls had very long skirts that they could grow into... they really developed a roll at the waist when adjusting the height!). I liked it that length, having a early teens hatred of my legs. However, on our first form assembly in year seven, I was taken aside by the form and told I HAD to roll it up or everyone would think we were really uncool.

Don't you just love teenage girls???

So... I got in huff, and right before walking on to say my lines, I said "Oh fine, then! i will!" Did a quick couple of turns at the waist band and marched right out on stage.

I said my lines to a crowd of 800 tittering girls. It wasn't till afterwards that my form teacher took me to one side and mentioned that perhaps wearing my skirt a little longer might be beneficial that I realised why. Several equally kind girls told me throughout the day that they liked my knickers. Embarassed Embarassed Embarassed

I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes if I dream of it, or groan out loud in the street if the memory resurfaces. The worst of it was, I didn't need to be cured of skirt rolling-up, as I didn't like it anyway!!!!!!
#114:  Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 4:21 pm
    —
Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing

Sorry Tor - but that's hilarious - I'm surprised you didn't run out of the School and vow never to return! rofl
#115:  Author: Tor, Location: London PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 6:10 pm
    —
Well, you see Lesley, when you are me, that is just one of many, many, many equally embarrassing moments.

I wont say you get used to it, but you certainly become resigned.
Laughing
#116:  Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent PostPosted: Sun May 25, 2008 6:53 pm
    —
Tor wrote:
Well, you see Lesley, when you are me, that is just one of many, many, many equally embarrassing moments.

I wont say you get used to it, but you certainly become resigned.
Laughing


Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing


(((((Tor)))))
The CBB -> Anything Else


output generated using printer-friendly topic mod. All times are GMT + 1 Hour

Page 1 of 1

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group