Director of Libraries Toni Vahlsing writes this week about a dress code from the late 1960s, another find from her summer research in the AFS Archives Room:

An amazing treatise written about the student dress code was sent to parents before the 1969-70 school year. One can only imagine how difficult it would have been to write a dress code in the late 1960s when skirt lengths were moving upward at a fast pace.

The authors of this document spent an entire page on the problems associated with creating a dress code before getting down to business, and then they really mean business. The authors wrote: “We hope that those who do not see these as reasonable limits withdraw before the opening of school.”

Girls were asked to wear skirts, dresses or jumpers. “Pants and play-clothes are not to be worn as school dress.”  Boys were to wear “tailored slacks and a business shirt and tie with sweater or sport jacket.”

In 1969-1970, AFS was a school in transition. The Upper School had just moved to a new building and boys were being added to the student body, one grade at a time. As of 1969-70, the oldest boys were in 7th grade and were considered in Upper School.

How surprising that dress codes have changed that much in 50 years. And isn’t it interesting that the difficulties in creating them have not?