ANON POST: Two 1950s college questions, clothing and ethnicity-related

[kutsuwamushi]

My MC is a young man in his late teens, attending a college that's basically an expy of NYU/Columbia University in the mid-50s. (I'm kind of operating on vague Comics Time here, so apologies for the vagueness of that date!) He's attending on a scholarship, hailing from a (fictional) country in Eastern Europe

Comments

[13chapters]

My first thought is that frankly, it would be unusual to mistake a Romani person for a Jewish person. There are multiple groups of Romani, and I'm definitely not an expert on their ethnography, but at least in the Balkans where I've spent a lot of time, the Romani have a heritage that really obviously originates in the Indian subcontinent. While there are Indian Jews, that doesn't seem to be an obvious leap.

[duckodeath]

Actually, it doesn't seem so far-fetched to me.

My mom and dad lived in India for a year in 1970. For part of that time, they lived in New Delhi with a Indian family. At the time, my mom had very long curly hair and often wore Indian clothes. My mom has always enjoyed telling the story of how the family's mother "complimented" her on her obvious Aryan (in the original, non-fascist sense of the word) background because she looked so Indian. My mom is Jewish with, as far as anyone knows, an exclusively Eastern European background!

[13chapters]

Okay, I'm just saying that if a Romani person was in New York, most people would probably not assume they were Jewish unless they looked somewhat different from your average Romani person. Which is definitely not impossible, but it depends on how the author wants to take the story.

[donald_r_oddy]

Really it's down to skin colouring. There are white skinned Roma and brown skinned Roma. The white skinned ones could be mistaken for Jews or might just be assumed to be white while the brown skinned ones would be mistaken for Indians/Pakistanis. There is often an incorrect assumption that because Roma are Europeans (and have been for centuries) they must be white or nearly so.

As far as clothing goes he'll wear what most men of the period wear - a grey suit, white shirt, collar and tie. The only thing which would make him stand out is if he wears an earring.

[dorsetgirl]

I can't help with the clothes, but you should probably think about the fact that most of Eastern Europe was behind the Iron Curtain for many years. How does your - presumably underprivileged or marginalised - Romani guy have the freedom, not to mention the money, to travel to America?

Also, google tells me that "expy" means expressway, which doesn't seem to fit? *puzzled*

[beccastareyes]

TVtropes has a more sensical definition. Basically an expy is someone/thing similar to Famous Thing/Character, but not a direct copy/parody to give more freedom to change details.

A bit like how Metropolis and Gotham City owe a lot to New York City, but exist in DC canon as New-York-like cities, rather than being NYC.

[dorsetgirl]

*silence*

*after a while, a stirring in the distance*

*DG emerges, bleary-eyed and exhausted, from the pit TV Tropes hell*

Er, thanks for the link!

[nessataleweaver]

*sympathetic look* tvtropes is always a mix of infodump-wonder and vertigo, isn't it? My first visit, I had NO idea what the place was - I was just trying to find out why everyone on tumblr/livejournal kept talking about 'tropes'! I clicked the link, and came out of it roughly six hours later.

I still have to ration myself to two-hour visits, although they're normally more like four, and if I get into the fanfic sections...

[51stcenturyfox]

The 50s tended to be a conformist time, so I could see the character sticking to the Ivy style stuff that was seen on a lot of campuses at the time if he was eager to conform. He would have probably owned a sack suit or sack-cut blazer.

Some things that could set him apart (if he's trying to fit in and isn't sort of into Kerouac and hating conformity) is maybe having shirts that don't fit well around the neck, cheaper fabric, maybe other people have cuffed pants and he doesn't, or the cuffs are wrong - all of those little things that stand out when people are in a milieu of richer people. He could wear a tweed blazer when it's too warm for it, or wool when the other guys are in hopsack because he can only afford one good jacket. His hair could be different than the typical cut - slightly too long, unruly.

These guys can be very helpful with clothing questions: http://www.askandyaboutclothes.com/forum/

[benbenberi]

Just to note that, although it is quite a high-level place today, NYU in the 50s (& at least through the 70s) was not at all in the same category as Columbia, socially or academically -- it was a school that mostly served the local (NY metro) population, heavily commuter-oriented, not particularly selective or exclusive, not terribly expensive. It had a lot of separate buildings scattered around but not a true campus, and not a lot of dorms (I'm not certain there were any, back then).

[lolmac]

The key distinction between richer/poorer will be the quality of the clothes, which directly reflects the cost. The richer you are, the better the cut, the better the materials, the better the fit. Also, the richer you are, the better care of your clothing you can afford to take

[corvideye]

R. e. wear on shirts: you might see yellowing or greying inside the collars and at the cuffs. Edges where layers of cloth are folded (cuffs, plackets) tend to wear through/ get threadbare sooner.