Fashion & Accessories 1969
h.i.s
The Weatherall isn't just for hanging around.
FROM THE PRINTED PAGEOriginal ad copy
OCR transcription from the archived page. Scanning and reading-order errors may remain.
The Weatherall isn't just for hanging around. Wear it when you: search for edible mushrooms. sit in an expensive seat at the hockey game. sit under a tree and play some Dylan songs. quarterback a touch football team. take an heiress slumming. tune up your carburetor before the race at Lime Rock. go see “The Graduate” for the third time. browse through a Honda showroom. run out of clean shirts. wait in line for tickets to the Richie Havens concert. have another beer with the boys. have another beer with the girls. clean the windows in your dorm. grill a frankfurter in a state park. hunt for moose. study the igneous intrusions on a geology field trip. buy a pipe. umpire a girls' softball game. pick up a few bucks caddying. wax your Honda. aren't getting heat from the radiator. paint protest signs. visit a sick pal. visit a healthy girl. practice your graffiti. play your flügelhorn on the lawn. pick up your pizza, it's getting cold. buy some new love beads. have your wisdom tooth extracted. make your own underground movie. call your mother. take a bus you never took before. enter a Chinese handball tournament. watch the baton twirlers practice. look for Alice's Restaurant. catch frogs for your bio lab. fall asleep at a Warhol movie. mow the lawn for your girlfriend's father. hitchhike to San Francisco. hitchhike to New York. have a coed tug-of-war. sell subscriptions to the East Village Other. sell subscriptions to the National Review. play hit the penny. borrow the girl next door (forget the sugar). send your photo to a model agency. ride a white stallion. go to a victory rally for anyone. meet with your guidance counselor. meet with your guru. meet with your interior decorator. meet with your shrink. visit grandma. take your first solo flight. jog around the sorority house. go star gazing with a friend. start a stickball game. build a better mousetrap. shop for octagonal sunglasses. get a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and find yourself a thou. visit an Indian reservation. hunt nightcrawlers. drive a cab. build a treehouse. give your car a psychedelic paint job. get in shape for the 1972 Olympics. greet tourists at the airport. take two and hit to right. just hang around. h.i.s THE WEATHERALL JACKET COMES AND GOES IN 12 COLORS. DACRON & COTTON POPLIN. TALON ZIPPER. ABOUT $13. HIGHER IN THE WEST. AVAILABLE IN BOYS' SIZES, TOO. FOR RETAILERS, WRITE h.i.s, 16 EAST 34TH STREET, N.Y., N.Y. 10016. ALSO AVAILABLE IN CANADA.
Commentary
The headline denies the obvious use of a jacket—“hanging around”—and then spends almost the whole page inventing alternatives. I count not features but occasions: hockey, hitchhiking, laboratory frogs, a Warhol movie, a stalled radiator, protest signs, and a visit to grandma. The young man at left is almost still; the list supplies all the motion. A jacket that appears plain in the photograph becomes a companion to an implausibly full calendar.
The list is more than a set of activities. It moves between campus, street, romance, errands and work, refusing to settle on one type of wearer. “Sell subscriptions to the East Village Other” sits near “sell subscriptions to the National Review”; “meet with your guru” sits near “meet with your shrink.” The juxtaposition lets the product cross social groups without declaring a political or cultural allegiance. The small practical line at bottom does the product work the big text avoids: twelve colors, Dacron and cotton poplin, a Talon zipper, about $13, and boys’ sizes. The price is qualified as higher in the West.
Several errands have become date stamps. Tickets require waiting in line, a concert is named, and a shop address is supplied for retailers. The list’s pace suggests abundant free time even as it includes odd jobs and chores. A current brand might show dozens of activities in short videos or ask customers to supply their own. Here one print page holds the entire imagined social world, leaving the reader to find a line that sounds like them.
For a beginning copywriter, the force comes from repetition without sameness. Every line silently completes “Wear it when you,” but the verbs keep changing: “search,” “sit,” “hitchhike,” “meet,” “build.” The joke at the end—“just hang around”—returns to the headline after the list has earned it. Repetition can sustain attention when each new item adds a distinct scene, tone or social clue.
The label h.i.s belonged to the Henry I. Siegel apparel business, which expanded from workwear into sportswear and jeans; a brand history traces its origins to 1923. The h.i.s name remains in clothing, particularly jeans, though this scan alone cannot establish continuity of the Weatherall jacket.
The underlying promise—that one adaptable garment can fit many parts of a life—still makes sense. The named newspapers, performers, shops and $13 price give this particular version its 1969 texture; the breadth of uses remains the copy’s durable idea.