Nowhere did the youth culture of the 1920's flourish more than on college and university campuses. Groups and societies came to symbolize youth culture and membership was made known by certain fads and behaviors. These fads and behaviors quickly made their way across the nation through magazines, movies, and advertising that emphasized the "collegiate fashions" and lifestyles, creating a mass culture and a big business.
New styles of clothing also played an important role in the culture. A "flapper line" of styles and sizes was brought out and had a certain meaning. As a UCLA newspaper stated, the college style spelled out "debonair smartness- an individual trimness that is particularly the insignia of the young man of today. " The male attire consisted of loose flannel slacks worn with sports jackets and often with brightly colored cavarts. Two types of sports coats were especially popular; the blazer with a crest, or badge-like decoration, making a reference to the symbols of membership, and the modified Norfolk jacket with pleats down each side and a belt at the back. The men also sported one of the best-selling overcoats of the time- the belted gabardine Burberry trench coat, the camel-hair polo coat, the knee-length, velvet- collared chesterfield, or the raccoon coat. The women often wore a bobbed hairstyle, considerable makeup, a falling waist-line, and rolled socks. Although not everyone of the time was influenced by this fad, the youth was strongly affected.
As Judith Baughman writes in her American Decades: 1920-1929, Americans wanted to act "collegian" and became obsessed with what the collegiate culture was doing, wearing, smoking, singing and dancing. Another fad that distinguished the "college man" was that of pipe smoking. The pipe a man smoked began to describe something about his character. Advertisements in University of Michigan publications, as well as magazines and catalogs, began to define masculinity with pipe smoking and pipes. The collegiate youth took to this fad quickly and completely. It became another gender defining experience, separating the men from the women even more.
