Welcome to the latest edition of Looks from Books, which aims to prove that you can look smart, while still being book-smart, too. Fashion inspiration can be found between the pages of your favorite stories, on well-designed book covers, and in your favorite characters… if you read closely enough.

CF readers, you asked, and we answered! In the comments section for our last post — for the novel The Bell Jar— we heard the call for an article based on S. E. Hinton‘s high-school classic, The Outsiders, so we quickly raided our bookshelves for the title, and found an enthralling depiction of mid-20th-century class clashes, and a legacy of fearless and edgy fashion to go along! Read on to learn more:

The Outsiders book cover via Amazon

Table of Contents

Inside Cover: A Little Bit of Background

The Outsiders is an iconic 1967 novel written by then-sixteen-year-old S. E. Hinton. The story follows the tumultuous life of a kid named Ponyboy growing up in a small Midwestern town, dealing with class relations, warring gangs, and one tragic night that turns his whole world upside down.

The conflict in The Outsiders is driven by the tense relations between Ponyboy’s crowd, the “greasers” (a.k.a the kids from the lower social strata of their small Midwestern town) and the “Socs” (pronounced “SOSH-es,” an abbreviations of “socials”) described by Ponyboy as the “jet set, the West-side rich kids.” Ultimately, tensions come to a head and the two groups engage in gang warfare, with winners determined by who can wreak the most damage.

However, this wasn’t just a topic of fiction for the young author; it was her reality. She later admitted that writing the novel was her way of dealing with problems that she couldn’t immediately face or change during that time. Just as S. E. Hinton found writing The Outsiders therapeutic, so, too have the millions of teenage readers who found sympathy and solace in her story.