When Bernie Franklin joined Messer and Opie, the moon landing was fresh in people's minds and trams still ran in Bridge Street. Richmond was heading to a premiership (over Carlton) and Shane Warne had just entered the world.
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Now 74, the extremely dapper Mr Franklin is a genuine institution in the city, and is celebrating an astonishing 50 years working for the venerable Ballarat outfitters.
Rumours of his pending retirement in a 2013 article in The Courier have failed to materialise. Mr Franklin is as enthusiastic about fashion and retail as he was when he entered the glass doors of the store in 1969, just after his 24th birthday.
In fact, as I interview him, he's fascinated by the vintage Messer and Opie suits I've brought in from the period when he began work.
He expertly flips over a lapel, savouring the worsted of a Kenloch tweed suit, the cut of an expensive Anthony Squires two-button black wool suit from 1970.
There was the double-breasted for many years, the DB; then the three-button front and then it came onto the two-button front. Now everything's slim. The young boys, they can't get their suits tight enough!
- Bernie Franklin
"All this clothing was from Yarra Falls, from Newcastle and of course in Warrnambool we had our own mills. All the fabrics came from these places in Australia; very little was imported. It was all made here."
Not that he's critical of the suits and fabrics available today. He credits Geoff Opie with understanding how the imported Chinese-made clothing would increase in quality, and praises Australian Wool Innovation and woolgrowers for the improvements in fleeces which go into our exported woolclip and come back as clothing.
"I said we couldn't be putting Chinese cloth into an Anthony Squires top-of-the-tree suit, and he said, 'Oh it will happen,' and sure enough..."
"The suits now are lovely, you can twist and turn them, they hold a crease. What the wool industry has done is fantastic."
Interviewed by the two Messer and two Opies running the the store at the time, Mr Franklin had already left his schooling at St Patrick's College earlier to work at Myers and had years of experience, including the much-sought skill of ticket-writing.
In those days, advertising was largely done in house, and sale signs and windows were painted by hand, a specialist skill which Mr Franklin loved - despite the fact it kept him busy.
"I prided myself in window-dressing displays," Mr Franklin says.
"I went to SMB to learn how to ticket-write in those days, and these days everything is computer-cut. All the signs I did - there's one around the corner says 'FITTING ROOM', it's still there - that's the last of my signs. I used to to do signs on the windows for their sales, all the ticket writing for the prices, you know, a pair of trousers or a suit - and I did all that and worked in the shop as well.
"I had a little room upstairs. They called it 'Bernie's Room', and they'd be: 'We just need a ticket, just need a ticket,' because it's a fairly big shop, and they used to own the shop next door, so there were always tickets required for each department. We had school and college wear too, and I was always up there. I'd just wash out the brushes and someone would come in with another message."
Franklin found himself working in many of the retail stores in Ballarat before settling on Messer and Opie. Among them were Myers, Merrett-Hassett's sports store and Roy Bracks menswear - "so I knew a little bit about retail before I came in the door here," Mr Franklin says.
The suits now are lovely, you can twist and turn them, they hold a crease. What the wool industry has done is fantastic.
- Bernie Franklin
Australia is changing in 1969, and even a conservative town like Ballarat is seeing fashion shifting. Hair gets longer as skirts rise; ties, when they are worn, are wider and brighter. Shorts and walk socks appear.
"Now there are no more cuffs, no more pleats, no more three-button suits," Mr Franklin says.
"There was the double-breasted for many years, the DB; then the three-button front and then it came onto the two-button front. Now everything's slim. The young boys, they can't get their suits tight enough!"
Of course the history of fashion is that evolution. When the Messers and Opies first opened their store in 1935, having a suit made was still common, and 'off-the-rack' was still a relatively new idea.
"That bespoke - we used to have our own tailors here, up in the workroom upstairs, just around from my little ticket-writing office," Mr Franklin recalls.
"There was a chap up there, Gerald Quinn. He would have made suits. He's a long way passed on. There was Aldo, from Italy. He was very good, he did all the alterations. We still have our own tailors now, but they don't do the bespoke work, they don't make the clothing. We have to have that, because we sell hundreds of suits here and there are always legs to be shortened, sleeves; waists taken in or let out."
"All the suits are shaped now. You can't have an older gentlemen come in and want pleats and cuffs...and he doesn't want that, either. He wants his suits with skinny legs and shaped, too."
Working for one store for half a century gives a person a particular insight into the qualities which enable it to survive and thrive, and for Mr Franklin the contribution of the Messer and Opie owners - many of whom are now in their 90s - was paramount.
"There was no satellite shopping then," Franklin says.
"The closest things were Lindsay's in town here, and Venture. Everything was in the city. But the big thing was the tram running down the centre of Bridge Street; traffic either side; parking either side. It was a hive of activity. I believe the trams were fantastic for Ballarat, up the main street. The owners were wonderful people, it's not a wonder they were here for as long as they were. We had people coming from all around Victoria: famous footballers and farmers.
"And people came for the little man tapping on the window."
The 'little man' was a mechanical shop display, made in Germany early in the 20th Century, which tapped repeatedly on the shop glass to attract customers.
"All the ads we did, 3BA or The Courier, it was 'Come To Where The Little Man Tap, Tap, Taps On The Window.' I looked inside him once, he was made of papier-mache and had 1909/1910/1911 on the mechanism, a little flywheel that went around and hit a rotor to raise and lower his arm. That was a massive identity for Bridge Mall. When Charles and Di came here, they decked him out as a Beefeater!"
Mr Franklin says he supported the creation of Bridge Mall 40 years ago, and was a Mall Committee member - but now is the time to open the street to traffic again.
"I think it would make it like Pakington Street in Geelong. It should be open."