Several months ago I mentioned in a blog post how people really dressed up to travel back in the 1960s. But I think this phenomenon warrants more exploration.
Here’s my mom (above, second from left) in 1962, wearing a typical early 1960s dress in front of the outdoor Buddha in Kamakura, Japan. It’s the late summer and must be quite hot. Still, most women didn’t wear jeans back then. Even the men in this photo are decked out in business casual.
It takes a certain refinement these days to go traipsing around Thailand in the summer in a form fitting dress like my mom wore back in 1965. Thailand is wicked hot and oppressively humid in the summers. Just looking at this photo makes me want to grab a tall glass of ice water.
Also in 1965, my grandma wore this warm-looking dress on a rickshaw in Macau. It looks like a light weight wool and probably not something I’d chose to wear in subtropical summers. But that was the fashion back then.
People even dressed up when participating in recreational activities. The photo above shows a group from my mom’s school in Nagoya, Japan engaged in a game of tug-o-war. The gentleman in the middle didn’t even take off his fedora.
Speaking of fedoras, my grandpa took his off for this photo in Taiwan during the summer of 1965. He and my mom are standing in front of a funky train they were about to board. (On a side note, my grandparents bought a cool rattan stool in Taiwan, not unlike the rattan with which this train was made. I now have the stool!)
So when did people stop dressing up when they traveled? I found photos of 1971 Hong Kong and people still wore 1960s fashions. But here in 1974, when my grandparents visited Penang, the casual 70s had already set in–at least for women.
Susan, I finally read this post today and noticed that your parents–in the Taiwan picture–are at a spot I visited this year at Chinese New Year! They tend to spell (Anglicize) names in a variety of ways in Taiwan. The spelling that I have is Wulai, not Ulai, but it is definitely the same spot. The trains now are just that–trains–but in miniature. I am going to post my pictures of the train and waterfall (and possibly a video) today.
I well remember the days of dressing up to travel. When we returned to the US around 1960, on leave, my sister and I wore starched matching dresses. Mine was the devil on my sunburnt skin!
Wow, thanks so much, Sarah!! I never ventured beyond Taipei and now regret it (just had a week there, though). That’s so wild you visited Wulai this year! (I’m not sure why it was Anglicized as Ulai then because that character is definitely pronounced as wu, but maybe the dialect softened the ‘w’; just like oolong tea vs. wulong tea!).
I’ll be on the lookout on FB for your photos. Can’t wait to see that train!