1960 NFL Enterprises Catalogue: Adult Apparel
This is the second in a series about the 1960 NFL Enterprises Catalogue. The first story covering Roy Rogers' role and Youth Apparel is here.
If you attend a football game today from the youth level to the NFL, the expectation is that many fans will arrive at the game wearing team gear. That was not the case in 1960, when NFL Enterprises published its first catalogue of licensed NFL and team products, the bulk of which were youth or adult clothing items. (The youth items were covered yesterday.)
In 1960, people attending college and NFL games often wore suits or dresses. As a society, Americans dressed more formally in almost all settings than they do today, since we had not yet entered the more casual and athletic style of dress that dominates many circles today. The clothing options included in the 1960 NFL Enterprises catalogue reflect the differences in fashion over the last 65 years and the recognition that this was the NFL's first time out of the gate. With limited exceptions, such as Champion, brands had little experience selling logoed sports gear to the general public. They were breaking new ground, so some of their choices may not have made sense, but who could predict the direction things might go?
An excellent example of a clothing line from the catalogue that likely did not sell well is NFL-logoed adult pajamas. The only adult men I ever saw in pajamas were those who appeared on television or the movies. Real men did not wear pajamas, and they certainly did not wear pajamas emblazoned with the Packers logo, at least not in my neighborhood. Perhaps a few encouraged their best girl to wear their favorite team's pajamas, but I'm guessing it was not a common fantasy.
I can accept that some men wore NFL-logoed underwear, but they did not openly hang them in the locker room while talking to their teammate wearing a matching pair.
On a more practical level, they also offered team jackets, rain gear, and shirts. None were particularly exciting, yet these are the items that sold and now every person in the stadium has 2025 versions of these items.
The last group of adult attire takes us back to the introductory paragraph, which mentioned that people dressed more formally in the late 1950s and early 1960s. An early page in the catalog has a section, How Football Changed, distinguishing the lunch pail NFL crowd from the mink coat college crowd.
The NFL was not being entirely hyperbolic there, as seen in the image of Queen Elizabeth attending a University of Maryland game in 1957.
If you were attending an NFL game or party and planned to wear a suit, then the belts, neckties, bolo ties, and other accoutrements might make sense, but otherwise...
The last item to mention is the NFL and team sport coats they had on offer. Interestingly, these were available only to season ticket holders, so they weren't as exclusive as the sport coats Pro Football Hall of Fame members began receiving a few years later. Still, they were the best thing going in 1960.
We'll conclude the series with a story about the Booze and Butts offerings featured in the 1960 NFL Enterprises catalogue.
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Amazing. Simply amazing. What a different world!