Swede’s PhotographsGood morning. 🕊️🕊️🕊️
3 February 2026
Do you remember how, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, bell‑bottom trousers were just about the only thing you could buy? Even suits came with bell‑bottoms. Some brands tried to soften it by calling them “flares,” but everyone knew what they were. That was simply the way of things. Thinking about it now, I can almost hear a Bee Gees tune drifting in from somewhere. And then, almost overnight, the whole bell‑bottom craze went quiet and vanished. At least that’s how it felt to me. I was a soldier then and mostly lived in uniforms, but I owned a few pieces of civilian clothing. Looking back, the fad was here for a moment and then—poof—gone.
In the 1990s I went to a semi‑formal gathering of Sergeants Major at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The post straddles the Tennessee–Kentucky line, though the post office sits on the Kentucky side. But back to fashion. At that gathering, old suits emerged from closets, and suddenly there they were again: bell‑bottom trousers, wide‑collar shirts, even platform shoes. Small platforms, thankfully—not the kind with goldfish swimming in the soles. It was the natural result of a room full of middle‑aged men who rarely wore civilian clothes, especially the dress‑up kind. They simply reached for whatever was hanging in the closet, unaware that the world had moved on.
Over the decades, bell‑bottoms have resurfaced now and then in women’s fashion, only to fade again. I suppose the fad could return in full force someday. That’s up to the new generations.
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” — Henry David Thoreau
“The years teach much which the days never know.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” — George Orwell
#photo #photography #wildlife #nature #bird #birds #birding #RockPigeons #RockDoves #pigeons #doves #morning #fashion #bellbottoms
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