Jackets/Coats
 

Okay, so my initiating chapter is thinking of switching our jackets.

Jackets are BIG on my alma mater's campus. BIG BIG BIG. They are the baseball (or bowling) kinda jackets - ugly as sin. But we like em.

We have YELLOW...
ZTAs have BLUE

Every other sorority has white. (DZ had pink a long time ago)

Well, the girls are thinking of changing. I say GOOD... (unlike other alums) They wanted a darker blue coat... not yellow.

I am now suggesting getting a different style. A thicker jacket that can be worn more into the winter (which starts in August... lol... good ol Clarion!)

Does anyone know of a good Greek friendly retailer that makes a thicker jacket? Our Tri Sigs have thicker pullovers... lined with fleece. Any ideas on where to get such a thing?

Let me know if ya do!

Thanks!

Ali I just pmed you, LOL.

There used to be a place in Slippery Rock that made nice heavy corduroy ones but they are a PIA to clean. They might have something down by IUP too. I'd def try going there before you go online because they'd probably think you mean crossing jackets and it's a totally different thing.

You might want to look at swim wear companies too, they often sell warmer parkas for teams.

Re: Jackets/Coats
 

Have you tried asking them? I'm sure they would be willing to help you out. If that is something you like. If not, the company may have something you do.

These things should have gone out at the same time that those old blazers with the crest sewn to them did.

Dude, it's a PA thing. We realize no one else gets it, but we really don't care. :p

You could also try Palumbo out of Pittsburgh, they make the IUP marching band coats/jackets. I'm not sure how many you need for an order.

i know it wasn't in clarion where it's cold ALL THE TIME (i'm from western PA and have friends up there..so i know)
but i did go to school for 3 years in northern NJ.

We had the pullover jackets that are lined. you can get them from greek101, or most every greek site.

www.greek101.com
www.alphabetgreek.com
www.greekcreations.com
www.designergreek.com
www.greekgear.com
www.somethinggreek.com

they aren't super warm in the winter time though. but i usually wore a fleece vest under it and i was fine. but i mean it depends on what is important to you. most of us just wore our regular winter jackets cuz it was way too cold sometimes. and some of my friends from other chapters had scarves, gloves and hats with their letters to show chapter pride.

PA love!

Paraphanalia store
 

My parents own a Greek Paraphanalia store in Norfolk, VA. The store is M&M Greek Embroidery. 757-490-3400. Greekmore@aol.com
I hope this helps!

As Far As Blazers, Yes, I have a Coat of Arms on Mine and Damn Proud of it.

Buying Blazers, Try Haband.com


They are very reasonable in price. But Getting Crests is up to you to have them sewed on.

With The New Diometrics for Sritching I may be able to give some INFO!

It would depend if they are still working to do it and the more You order, the better the deal.

PM Me and I will give You the INFO!

For the lining of the pull overs I was thinking more of a thicker fleece type lining...

hmm...

its so funny how the alums are getting so mad at the undergrads for wanting new coats.

I dont really care what they do!

I was vaguely bummed when we went from red to white...mainly because everyone and their pet goldfish had white and I liked being different. But if that's what they wanted and they were going to wear them and get the letters out (and also, if they were washing them, not me) I was fine with it.

Do you guys have a picture of your jackets/coats. I'd love to see them. If not do they have block letters on them or do they just have them embroidered.

Ill find some pictures - or take some.

They're I guess a baseball style jacket?

Yellow...

On the back baseball style writing - Phi Sigma Sigma in the tail of the a in Sigma - it says "Clarion University" on the 'butt' it says Phi Sigs.

On the sleeve you can get your number.

On the wearer's left chest is your name, on the right its greek letters.

They're pretty ugly - but we love em!

Introducing Big Yellow...
 

Thank you to my beautiful green rocking chair for being a model for this display...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...li/byfront.jpg
Front - note the name on your left... letters on your right. Gamma Gamma, our chapter on the right sleeve. The left sleeve could have your 'number' if you wanted it to. Phi Sigma Sigma nationally frowns on numbers - just to let ya know! (mine is 499 though)

On my collar is a pickle pin and a ketchup pin - from Heinz - go Pittsburgh. When your collar is up we call that 'Elvis' - its a no-no. You look like a nerd. (note that even though you might think we look like nerds in these coats - we dont on our campus - EVERYONE has them - Us, DZ, ZTA, Tri Sigma, DPhiE, TPA, AST... Ask 33girl - ASA had them too. If your sorority was at our school - they'd have em. No one is above 'the jacket'.

Note the way its buttoned too - this is a no-no as well. Always button all buttons

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...ali/byback.jpg

The back. Self explanitory. Your butt patch kinda lets on when you joined. As well as the buttons on the front. If they're both yellow - you're old.

Depending on where you get yours says whether or not you have 'letters' on the back. We dont, Tri Sigma doesnt, ZTA doesnt - DZ used to not. (ZTAs says 'Zetas' Tri Sigma is 'Tri Sigma')
AST, DZ (new), TPA, DPhiE have letters.

Our jackets are yellow, ZTA is powder blue, DZ was pink... now white.

Everyone else has white.

As one of my education professors said:
I always think we only have three sororities... those yellow ones, those blue ones and that big white jacket sorority. They have the most members. There used to be a pink one, but they're gone.

So yea, jackets are a 'status' symbol on campus. Being a colored jacket gets you noticed... "oh I like that yellow sorority...' We also happen to live in a big yellow house with blue letters... coincidence though!

I hope that clues you in on the ways of PA...

Your post remind me of a time that I was talking to my neighbor about greek life because her son is in college. I told her I'm a DPhiE, and she said, "You had the yellow jackets."

One of my sisters had a white jacket with a front similar to yours and our crest on the back. It was a wool jacket so it was warm for the winter. I thought it looked cool. :cool:

I'd like to make a quick disclaimer.

What you see in this thread does not apply to every school in PA. I've never seen one of those jackets at Penn State ever.

That's because Penn State is a slice of the Midwest plopped down in the middle of PA. LOL, but that's been said MANY times before.

Oh and Ali, tell them to make sure they get bright blue or royal blue NOT NAVY. APO got navy ones and well, how do I say this, they were megafug.

Thanks so much for the pictures and the explanation. I love to learn about greek culture in other parts of the country. They may be ugly(not saying yours is ugly) but what a great way to look unified(sp) on campus and also great for PR. Thanks again.

We had jackets just like those when I was a collegian. Of course, that was 20 years ago. It was awesome because each group had their own color: Tri Sigma= purple with white trim, Alpha Xi Delta= Dark blue with yellow trim, Sigma Kappa- Maroon with lavendar trim, and Alpha Gams were yellow with red trim. When I was going through recruitment I would get sooooooooooo excited when I saw a yellow coat walking across the street! "Oh my gaw, there's an Alpha Gam!". In fact, I used to sit in my boyfriend's dorm room and stare out the window, watching for the yellow coats.

I'm not sure which year they got rid of them. Probably the year after I wasn't an advisor anymore..lol. Us old alumnae fought those young girls about the tradition of the yellow coat. Now though, they all have different stuff, nobody has anything the same and they don't even use our colors. What kind of branding is that?

Those coats were especially great during the Grease recruitment skit

And, by the way, my coat still hangs in my closet today, the coat closet, so I see it every time I open the door. Our sister-mother's used to give them to us on Initiation Day and it was so special. So, I have my coat, embroidered name and all. Those coats are great.

Dee

Matching?
 

I am actually surprised that sororities still wear jackets like that, no offense, but they seem very 80's.
Every school that I have known of in Jersey wear the basic lined windbreaker type jackets with the front pouches. Unique Impressions was the best place to get them.

No particular color was really associated with any org, except I do remember that DPhiE always had black jackets with purple letters and gold trim. Every other org usually pick their own fabrics for their letters, the way you would for a shirt. It's rare to see an org (at least in the tri state are here) that all have matching jackets.

Re: Matching?
 

You say that like the 80's were a bad thing? LOL We couldn't wear pull over jackets because they would get stuck on our big hair.

Those jackets were awesome. In Michigan, we could only wear wind breakers for a week or two out of the school year. We pretty much go from no coats to winter coats. These jackets were warm enough, with a turtle neck and sweater, to get away with during most of the winter! You had to haul out the heavy duty parka in January, but most of the school year, those nice jackets with the quilted linings were perfect!

OMG.

I'm embarrassed to say baseball jackets are a WI thing too. Well at least until the APhis started the windbreaker trend on my campus then EVERYONE followed suit including the sports teams. But heck, we gave the local sports-shop guy good advertising too running around in our burgundy windbreakers with the big-ass Alpha Phi letters on the back. He hung two of them in the window of his shop across the street from the union and had a stampede.

We wore them every day, everywhere. We'd get them two sizes too big and wear them over our parkas in January. You Michiganders have no imagination.:D

HAHA! Word.

no brown helmet, though
 

wouldn't it be nice to send Tom Earp a pair of brown tights,
those with the feet?
he would look good modeling pink tights, too
just a thought.

Amen!

I know at Slippery Rock all the sororities had them as Shelia mentioned...Delta Zeta wore pink, Phi Sigs were blue (a nice shade not navy..they actually looked nice), Tri Sigs wore white with purple, ASAs wore white with red trim but the letters on the back had all four colors..they were the bomb but I'm biased, AOII had white with red as well I think..I dont' remember what hte Alpha Xi Deltas wore, I think KDs wore white with green trim, ASTs wore white with green and yellow trim...I'm an AI and this might be lame but I still want one. I wanna show off my letters..I'm proud of them and I think it's a great display of solidarity for the chapters and greek life as a whole...that's my two cents...
hugs to all
Jamie

PS check out greek life at SRU..if you look in the pictures for the individual chapters, the girls are still wearing those jackets...at least I noticed the Phi Sigs and ASTs were!
http://www.sru.edu/pages/9413.asp

Heh, so the midwest is the fashion superior of someone.

I miss seeing these things everyday! I was so privileged to get my pass down. I wore it almost everyday while I had it. ANYWAY! They found a new place to order them so a lot of the older girls and new alumnae have them. I hope they keep ordering them because they're a great PR tool. haha Just thought id keep y'all updated.and Ali, I didn't know you were a Gamma Gamma alumna! <3

PR, as in public relations? Wearing our letters has a public relations effect but is that the first thing that comes to mind when some Greeks wear their letters?

/just curious

Same goes for Pitt and Bucknell.

At a school with a very small %age of Greeks, which this is, making people aware that you exist is pretty much essential to survival.

We do have a special "jacket ritual" that we do at every meeting, to make sure our jackets are purified to begin the week. It makes them kind of like Superman's cape, no harm can befall us when we have them on and they've been properly purified, nor will we veer in any way shape or form from our ideals. When the weather gets too warm to wear them though, we're kind of screwed. Thankfully Clarion only has 12.689 warm days during the year.

True statement.

At Penn State Behrend, we had jackets (the pullovers with front pockets and a light fleece-type lining) and jerseys, which everyone received at initiation. Each sorority’s jackets and jerseys were their “main” color… AST = Green, ASA = Red, TPA = Blue. Before I joined, I remember thinking “Oh, there are the red ones..” or “Those green ones always eat lunch together..” and many (if not all) of my sisters will admit to thinking the same thing. When on a campus where people don’t even know what being Greek is all about, where the majority of the people who join never had any intention of doing so when coming to college, and where chapters can be as small as 10 members, I think it definitely helps.

Our campus greeks had always worn the thicker, baseball-style jackets. In the very early 90s our chapter ordered yellow half-zip pullovers from LL Bean with our letters embroidered in blue on the front pocket (I don't think there existed all these different vendors from which to order items back then). Now most of the groups wear zipper fleeces with letters or very stylized designs on them -- and any color goes -- they may not necessarily be the sorority's colors.

Clarion!!!! <3 I am from nearby there & my mom is an alum :)
I feel very connected to Clarion.

Apparently minus PSU. I really wish jackets were big here. I love my AGD friend's jacket. She goes to Gannon and they seem to be common there too apparently?
I want one.

[QUOTE=nittanygirl;2037335]Clarion!!!! <3 I am from nearby there & my mom is an alum :)
I feel very connected to Clarion.


What town are you from? Im from Clearfield.

[QUOTE=Phisigshawna10;2037959]........