Chicago’s South Side, 1960– If you were a young, fashionable African American man, you were either a Gouster or an Ivy Leaguer. Gousters were old school, Ivy Leaguers were prep school. Ivy Leaguers wore starched button downs with cufflinks, v-necks & Brooks Brothers. Gousters dressed loose, like 1940s gangsters. Turned down collars, wide legs, wide ties, alpaca and mohair sweaters. Although little documentation exists of real-life Gousters, the style was revived in the 1975 film Cooley High, about life around Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Housing Projects.
![3600188553_d887f540a9_z](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/3600188553_d887f540a9_z.jpeg)
The northern facade of Cabrini-Green.
![cooley-high-4-teens](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/cooley-high-4-teens.jpeg)
above and below: photographs from Cooley High.
![gouster](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/gouster.jpeg)
![COOLEY HIGH, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Glynn Turman, 1975](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/4bd9d84d-3d3d-eb93-57e9-5b0658662f1e-cooley-high1.jpeg)
![tumblr_lp19675qq51qb9wbfo1_500](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/tumblr_lp19675qq51qb9wbfo1_500.jpeg)
![23415_14](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/23415_14.jpeg)
![aa_sun_19751001_p016-003](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/aa_sun_19751001_p016-003.jpeg)
httpv://youtu.be/6DKDuX4EHz0
![226732.1020](https://www.teenagefilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/226732.1020.jpeg)
images via Rhythm Shaker
Thanks for the tip @bryanmjohnson