FITTING IN: Four Generations of College Life...

FITTING IN: Four Generations of College Life by Barbara A. Schreier (Chicago Historical Society/The Sewall Company: $12.95, illustrated). Issued in conjunction with an exhibit staged by the Chicago Historical Society, “Fitting In” documents the college fashions of four generations: the 1890s, the 1920s, 1940s and 1960s. Although Schreier mentions such male fads as “plus-four” knickers and Oxford bags, most of the book is devoted to women’s clothes, including the comments of a turn-of-the-century Wellesley freshman who complained that during rainy weather, many girls wore skirts so short, they came above their shoe-tops. Significantly, the women of the ‘20s, with their short hair, short skirts and rebellious attitudes, seem less remote than do their comformist descendants of the ‘40s, who described themselves as out to earn the “MRS” degree. The chapter devoted to the anti-Establishment, anti-fashion denims, tie-dyes and beads of the ‘60s is guaranteed to leave any Baby Boomer who remembers that decade feeling very old.