I guess it was some sort of New England thing that never quite made it across Long Island Sound......thank heaven
Granted, I went to a prep high school and I guess the dress code was the stereotypical preppy attire: dress slacks and shirts, sometimes a tie, but mostly with just a sweater. (Hell, we graduated in white dinner jackets and black tuxedo pants instead of caps and gowns.
) But sweaters like that were all over the '70s TV shows. In fact, the coat sweaters were pretty much the coolest sweaters you could wear because David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser wore them on Starsky and Hutch. (They did for coat sweaters what Miami Vice's Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas did for pastel sport jackets and t-shirts in the '80s.
)
If you ask me, I think it was more a case that your crowd was just tragically unhip.