Poland Is A Gem In Europe

It was 'cool' to buy vintage clothes for years in Ireland and the UK - also army and navy surplus was a big thing. We all had combat jackets as we called them, and reefer jackets (sailors' jackets). Most of the combat jackets seemed to come from the Red Army!! Mine was from China - that was all they had in my size on the day :) Back in the 60s and 70s in London the very cool guys and girls wore sailors' trousers because the flares were super-wide - and the Mods bought original Edwardian shirts with detachable collars and gentlemen's hacking jackets.

Oh yes, and I'd forgotten, wearing your grandfather's old overcoat and maybe his hat was a thing with the guys in art college. I wore my grandad's old silk ties as belts.


Actually some people in Poland deliberately scour the secondhand shops for designer label stuff at rock bottom prices and then sell it online at a profit.

This would be unthinkable in Poland.

That wasn't the case in Poland - after the fall of communism there weren't many shops with clothes, let alone affordable ones and Poland was going through though times economically, so buying at secondhand shops was simply a necessity for many people. The situation changed over the years and so the perception of those shops changed too. And during communist times it was a whole different story - there was a problem with buying any clothes at all, so women often sew clothes for themselves and their family...


I can understand reefer jackets, but what those "combat jackets" looked like? 🤔


That's very possible - if I'm to be honest I don't have the time to go through all those heaps of clothes in secondhand shops - I never could find anything that I would like and just wasted a lot of time... and shopping for clothes/shoes for a woman is time-consuming enough already, so... ;D 😭

Ah, so you mean those were real military uniforms/clothes?

Army Surplus stores?

Yes, real. They still exist nowadays but aren't as popular as they once were.

That's right. Army surplus literally means stuff they don't need anymore. Some if it was pretty worn out but sometimes it was virtually brand new. Probably over-ordered or something like that, so 'surplus' to requirements. The officers' coats were super quality. They weren't that popular with the girls, but the boys loved them. I think for us girls they were too similar to the gabardine coats we had to wear as part of our school uniforms. Anyway a coat of that quality or the RAF flying jackets from leather would cost a small fortune normally but it was almost for peanuts in the army surplus shops.

silvermans.co.uk/products/rm-navy-blue-overcoat-new

emuseum.aberdeencity.gov.uk/objects/41941/navy-school-raincoat

We hated the gabardine coats. They were made of wool, lined with silk and waterproof and looking back now, I can see that they were very high quality and well cut, much nicer than the one in the photo. They had a detachable hood which most of us either removed or lost. It was considered deeply uncool to close the coat or tie the belt, we all had our belts tied at the back and wore the coat open even in the lashing rain. I remember once when we went to the local church for a school mass, some girl had her belt dangling down loose and during the service, the girls in the row behind tied her belt to the seat so that when she stood up - well, she couldn't basically 😂

Another thing was that because the coats were identical and very few people bothered to sew their name tapes into them, people were also taking the wrong coat at home time. They'd rush into the cloakroom and grab the coat from their peg, but somebody might have hung theirs in the wrong place and lo and behold you were wondering why the sleeves were up around your elbows or hanging down to your knees. There was also a weird phenomenon of random coats turning up around the place with no obvious owner and a girl would be sent round the classes by the head nun with the 'is anyone missing their coat?' query. This was always a great excuse for a few minutes nonsense while people took a look at the coat at close quarters 'just in case'. Happy days!

As I remember, they used to have a lot of coats with West German flags on the arm.

There's a nice one in my town. It sells some unsavoury memorabilia as well but occasionally has nice coats .

That's right! I remember the German stuff.

That's cool, I can imagine boys loving such stuff :)


Some boys during my teen years would wear military-looking jackets with those flags - I remember that I wondered why German flags... 🤔


Oh, btw, I've remembered something... I think my mother once did find a dress from one of the famous brands (Italian I think) in a secondhand shop and she gave it to me - it was a black dress with pockets of sorts. I didn't wear it though, because it looked kind of "sporty" to me, as far as I remember and I didn't like such style at that time. 🤔 I think it's possible that I still have it somewhere - I'll have to look for it one day... :)

As far as I remember, all these military jackets were called "moro" in those days. Everyone had some "moro".

I've been inspired to start a Polish fashion thread, let's have fun!

https://polishforums.com/life/clothes-fashion-style-whenever-88538/