70’s Fashion: From Cool To Ghastly, Here’s The Truth About ’70s Trends

5. Silk Shirts

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You have everything that was bad about ’70s fashion rolled right here into one item: the ’70s silk shirt. Actually, for most people they weren’t really silk (that was expensive) and were instead made of sweat-inducing polyester. With the garish prints and the long-pointed collars, and basically made to be worn open a few buttons down, these were grotesque. I’m not sure anyone who wore them looks back on these nostalgically, and they’ve become somewhat of a running joke.

6. Bell-Sleeve Shirts

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Yeah, I know, you may actually think these look pretty cool now, and a lot of people did then, too. While silk shirts with pointy collars were for the late ’70s disco crowd, bell-sleeved shirts were for the early ’70s jeans, beads, and chukka boots group. They actually did look pretty cool, I guess and were often worn with bell-bottom jeans. Usually, these shirts had a two or three-button cuff that was longer than a man’s traditional one-button cuff, a concession to style, I suppose because there was no real reason for it otherwise. The downside of these shirts was that they snagged on things a lot and often that meant they ripped pretty easily — which is probably why they weren’t around all that long.

7. Wide Ties

Maybe everything that was bad about the ’70s wasn’t actually rolled into that silk shirt after all — there’s some left over here. Ties were as wide as five inches, and being the ’70s, they were usually polyester.  I said above I preferred ’80s fashion a lot more, and one reason was they moved back to a medium-width tie first, then they went really narrow. Wide ties were not a good look, and good riddance on this one also. I can’t understand why anyone would have liked this look at all.

8. The Three-Hole Leather Belt

I never understood the need to complicate something as simple as a man’s one-hole leather belt, but I guess a lot of things are done in the name of fashion that in reality aren’t all that practical. These days I have trouble getting one post in the hole to put my belt on, but in the ’70s, we had three to insert.  These were all the rage in the ’70s, and while they weren’t very practical I have to admit they looked pretty good with those bell-bottom jeans.