When did women in American start wearing dungarees?
In the 50s? Maybe- if she was working on a farm. Women in the cities wore dresses and skirts. (And slips and girdles and stockings.) In 1960, in NYC, there was a 3 foot snow fall – a lot of snow for NYC. The women at Brooklyn College petitioned the Dean of Women to allow them to wear slacks. (Slacks, not jeans or “pants”.) The Dean relented to the point that women students were allowed to wear slacks under their skirts, but they had to remove them in the vestibules of the buildings, and put them back on in the vestibules. Rosie the Riveter didn’t attend Brooklyn College. Times were very different then. Seeing a woman in pants in the 50s would have been only slightly less strange than seeing a man in a skirt today. (Women also smoothed their skirts when sitting – something you seldom see today. It’s a device sometimes used in time travel novels – she sits without smoothing her skirt, she’s from the future [of the 40s or 50s].) Beach wear and informal wear was different – but a decent wo
that it was in the early 50s. I remember wearing dungarees rolled up into a large cuff and a man-tailered white shirt outside the dungarees (not tucked in) when I was 12 or 13 years old. I remember slacks for women becoming popular around the same time. We always wore skirts or dresses to school and in the late 50s to work in an office. Slacks or dungarees were NOT an option at the time. Pant suits were not worn by women until the mid-sixties and it felt strange wearing them at first. I remember a friend wearing one to a party at my house – she walked in and ran straight in to the bathroom – she was that self-conscious about it !
