On The, er, Runway…
Fun ‘ensemble’ review from the mid-sixties.
Photo By Author
I remember in high school how much fun it was to sport penny loafers.
They used to be called Bass Weejuns which is still one of the major brand names for those classic brown, coin slot loafers every teenager and twenty something used to have. Still have. You slip those babies on back then and there was no denying it. I was in the game. The girls seemed to dig them.
The Bass Weejuns, penny loafer, has been around since the mid-thirties and Bass the company has provided shoes aside from everyday wear to sports people and military applications.
For the ‘rich’ kids, often only Florsheim loafers would do. These days, name brands like Myrqvist, Velasco, Sedago rule. Florsheims are still here but don’t seem to control that top slot anymore. These high-quality numbers could, for whatever reason, polish up to a blinding glare.
In high school it was the thing to do spit polishing. Literally you’d take a hanky and spit on it, dip the moistened hanky into a round tin of brown Shinola and gently, persistently apply it to the loafers in a tight, circular motion. I learned this technique from the seniors.
As a freshman, I had to spit polish loafers for several of the seniors in my dorm. Of course, they first had to teach me how to do it. The polish supposedly is like they do in the Marines when they do the whole dress uniform thing. The shine was incredible. You had to see it to believe it. A regular shoeshine didn’t come close. And, yes, there was such a thing as screwing up the results with either too much spit or too much Shinola! God’s truth.
The seniors taught me before I was done, I had to see my reflection off the shiny surface of the spit polished shoe. A spit polished shoe versus standard shoeshine far outshines the latter. A penny loafer, with a regular shine, lacked something, whereas the spit shine was noticed.
Most left the coin slot empty, others slipped a penny into the slot. Some swore that to put the coin into the leather pocket was less than cool. But the slot seemed to be made just for that. Thus, the name penny loafers.
The majority choose not to slip the coin in. But for many who did it was said they would insert coins reflecting their age of birth. I never cared. I wore loafers with or without coins.
Depending on if it was the weekend, I’d slip on the loafers without socks. Or on a school day I’d slip my loafers on with socks. Get this: socks could either be a solid blue or black or a thick white material, like a sport sock! Absolutely, baby, just the way it was. I’ve been waiting for the white socks to come back…
In the late sixties, a young man in his late teens likely owned a coveted pair of the iconic loafers. That, along with the then popular white Levis, he was ready to conquer the world. Goes without saying blue jeans were perfectly fine. There was that stretch of years where white seemed to rule. The shirt didn’t seem to matter all that much. This depended on the circle you ran around with. One could throw on a white T-shirt or a short-sleeved buttoned shirt. In cooler weather, the ultimate was to add a V-neck or turtle-neck sweater. If you really had the things going in your favor, then the sweater would’ve been cashmere.
Cashmere was, of course, pricier, so any sort of sweater worked fine. Then if it really got cold as it did in Michigan, you’d complete your ensemble (no, we never used that word), with the legendary white hot Navy Peacoat. This was the bona fide US Navies sailors’ dark blue, thick wool material, coat, huge black buttons often imprinted with an anchor. With the full collar turned up, you had everything going for you as you copied the current rock heart throbs.
Yes, in hindsight, this affinity for striking the right look all seems rather shallow now. But we were kids and at the time made all the sense in the world.
It was the loafers, though, that brought out all the other pieces of clothing one wore. Today, in fact, the penny loafer still sells hugely and can be worn with any type of clothing, from formal weddings to deck shoes, or a muddy game of touch football in the rain.
Me and my fellow students discovered that by melting ski wax onto the bottom of the soles of our loafers, we could literally ski down steep hills, ski poles and all! My school was near a local ski hill and we’d sneak out onto the place under the light of the moon and ski until we tired out.
Peacoats, the good ones, the authentic ones were found in thrift stores and Army surplus stores just off Main Street for five bucks. The kids who had more money from their folks could buy them at the upper shelf department stores, but they weren’t the genuine issue, and you could tell!
It all seems a bit to be a lot about nothing, but if you’d told me that back then around circa 1967 I would’ve laughed at you. It seems funny now as I look back at those days. Aside from funny, it shows how many of us yielded to the status quo, the popular consensus, the desire to fit in. Given this style of dress was for a particular segment of youth in those days, mid to late sixties.
Compared to so many truly harmful customs followed by today’s youth, what we did with our styles seems rather tame.
Not such a big surprise that after I graduated from High School in ’69 loafers have continued enjoying a growing popularity. But not for me. Point being that after I left High School that unbroken tradition was completely lost to me in favor of blue jeans, sneakers, t-shirts during my free times and work clothes and shoes when on the job.
In my closet, still sit my pair of second hand Florsheims I bought in the mid-eighties, not that long ago… Yeah, just wait until you’re seventy plus.
Some might say ‘hey man grow up. Grow up?’ What the hell for? Haha!
