In the photo below, Rich has painted band names onto his jeans with bleach! He’s also wearing the classic 80s Alien helmet. Though tomboys were present in the media and culture in the 1950s and early 60s, from Scout Finch to Gidget, it was a time of telling women who’d been liberated by WWII to return to their restrictive gender roles. Rosie the Riveters had shown their muscles in rolled-up shirtsleeves, but traded them for highly feminine 50s fashions, traded working outside the home to the new role of homemaker. After World War I, the flapper movement took hold, offering more masculine, corset- free clothes for liberated women. World War II promoted Rosie the Riveters. During each war, economic times were tight, and women filled men’s roles while they went off to fight: War begat feminism. And often the children of feminists were raised as tomboys. The dungaree started to transcend the realms of manual labour when they were worn by Hollywood royalty, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and even Judy Garland, turning the overall into a desirable garment. That ideology permeated the consumer marketplace. Sears catalogs in the 1970s marketed many styles of clothes to both boys and girls, offering almost no pink toddler clothing. There were boys’-to-girls’ size conversion charts: How much clearer could the message be that little girls could reach over the line into the land of boys?

In America in the 1890s, Levi Strauss invented the first pair of denim overalls, intended to be worn as protective workwear. This style was similar to the dungri workwear worn by Indian farm and ship workers, but made from a more robust denim earning the brand the tagline ‘never rip, never tear.’ Today, so much of childhood is divided into pink and blue; there are even “girl” LEGO Friends and “boy” LEGO helicopter sets. So why were so many girls dressed like boys, and encouraged to play with and like them, when I was a kid? Why were the 1970s a tomboy heyday?Then came sexism and the sexual revolution. With the rise of the counterculture came the questioning and rejection of gender roles. For adult women, claiming to have been a tomboy meant renouncing the restrictive expectations of their childhoods. Some 78 percent of college-aged women in the 1970s said they’d been tomboys growing up, because it expressed their feminism. It was a way of saying they were above the low bar society held them to, and always had been. The dungaree was first brought to light in 17 th century India where the cloth used for making cheap, robust working clothes was called ‘Dungri,’ the Hindi name of the Indian village which produced this hardwearing fabric. By default when the English bought the cloth to make workwear trousers they took the name ‘Dungri’ and added a British twist naming the fabric, ‘dungaree. ‘

It's impossible to mention great dungaree look without mentioning Dexys Midnight Runners. Taking inspiration from the working class of Ireland they described their style as an, ‘off the farm look.’ Layered with knitwearand belted at the waist, the ‘farm look’ can be pretty cool. Baby boomers, the first generation raised with highly gendered young kids’ clothes, the first real taste of the pink/blue divide, now became members of the procreating counter-culture, poised to reject the gender stratification that had been imposed on them. Some partook of “nonsexist parenting,” the idea that girls deserved parity with boys and access to their worlds. Raising daughters to reject gender roles meant deliberately rearing a generation of tomboys. As a style that has well and truly stood the test of time, we think that dungarees make a great addition to anyone’s wardrobe. They’re so easy to dress up or down, and it is this versatility that makes them ideal for transeasonal dressing - pair them with your favourite vintage tee in the warmer months, or layer over a chunky jumper when it’s colder outside!Throughout that period, skinhead fashion was popular too, often featuring a double denim look with smart Ben Sherman shirt or Fred Perry and Doc Martens. For a smarter occasion they’d wear tonic suits, with DM shoes, and fishnet tights (for skin girls, not boys!). Here are more big hairdos from the Alcoholic Rats ladies, who demonstrate that cable knits were big in the 80s too! Blue hair and blue eyeliner – a great combo!

During the First and Second World Wars dungarees started to transition into a unisex item of clothing as more and more women began working in factories to aid the war effort. By the late 1940s, dungarees were beginning to be considered a fashionable item rather than just workwear, with stars like Judy Garland even sporting them on the silver screen! Dungarees as Fashionable Items Buying wardrobe staples now and keeping them for years is something that we believe in wholeheartedly at Joanie, which is why all of the dungaree styles that we design are made with a hint of stretch for comfort and to ensure that you get the most wear out of them! Dungarees were the uniform of 17th century sailors and other manual workers due to their utilitarian design and durable denim material. Throughout the 20th century, the overalls became a retro fashion statement.As we often didn’t have waterproofs, on a wet rally we would improvise with bin liners! The photo below was taken at Great Yarmouth in 1984, where our tent flooded and we had the prospect of a 200 mile ride home in pouring rain. I think the expression on Sarah’s face says it all! Toys followed the same pattern. Less than 2 percent of the toys in those catalogs were marketed to a specific gender in the seventies. There were lots of toy ads showing girls as doctors and pilots (though not with boys as ballet dancers and nurses). Science- and domestic-themed toys were sold in many colors, with images of boys and girls in ads working and playing together.