Fashions as I Remember Them

As I was donning my jeans and T-shirt for my day’s activities this morning, I got to thinking how fashions have changed since I was a child. When I was born in the roaring twenties, hems had just started to rise from centuries of wearing them floorlength. Skirts in the '20s were narrow. I don’t think hems rose above the knee at that time, and by the ‘30s they were back down to mid calf, with more volume in the skirts. It took more than 20 years for all women to abandon the styles of earlier days.

Back in those days, women had to wear skirts or be considered a hussy. Even little girls had to wear dresses for all their waking hours after they grew beyond the toddler stage. I grew up in Connecticut, and went to a one-room school for seven years. I walked about a mile to get there. In the winter I wore a snowsuit; a bulky combination of pants and jacket made of a heavy material in a style that ballooned at the ankles. I wore a cotton dress under the jacket tucked into the snowpants. On my feet I wore black canvas galoshes that were fastened with metal buckles. They didn’t do a very good job of keeping my feet dry. After hiking through the snow to reach school, the pants came off leaving me and all the other similarly dressed little girls, to shiver in our flimsy cotton dresses, while our galoshes dried behind the wood burning stove. When I reached high school, and had to walk three miles to get there, my father got permission from the principal for me to wear my tailor-made jodhpurs under my ski pants. I waterproof ski boots with them. That was ever so much more comfortable and sure made more sense.

But ‘sense’ has never been a big factor in women’s fashions. An exception was during the years of World War II. Hems went up to the knee, and narrow skirts came back in style to save material. Almost everything was rationed in those days. But as soon as the war was over, down again went the hems, and big swinging skirts became the rage. I loved those styles! I think my all-time favorite dress was a dark green one

 with white polka dots and a wide swinging pleated skirt. It was a great dress to dance in because it flared so nicely. It came with a little jacket, and I wore brown and white pumps with it.

In those days, before the war, and for some years after it, a well-dressed woman never went out without matching accessories. Gloves and hats were always worn, and shoes and purses had to match each other in color. Almost any costume could be dressed up with a scarf fastened with a pretty pin. It seemed to be very important to follow the fashion designer's dictates that usually made headlines when their new styles came out once a year. But there was at least one designer who kept almost standard styles. The one I liked was the Shelton Stroller, a dress that appeared on the scene when nylon did. They were pretty, good for all occasions, and almost indestructible. I usually had at least two of them in my closet.

I’ve never had much money to spend on clothes, and back when I cared about fashions, my husband managed the purse strings. But at least once a year, when we were doing our regular Friday night window shopping at department stores, he would say, "Let’s go in and look around". We would look over the goods, and eventually we would get to the dress department. I’d ask if we could afford a new dress for me, and he would say "OK". I would model a series of dresses brought to me by a saleswoman as he sat and made complimentary remarks. Usually I would get down to deciding between two dresses, and almost always he would make my heart soar when he said, "Why don’t you take both of them." He could be a sweetheart!

I think it was in the late ‘60s that women started wearing pantsuits. Employers still tried to dictate what female employees wore, but after the Hippy revolution, their power faded fast. Pants suits were so much more comfortable than dresses, and they were a lot more modest to wear sitting at a desk. Of course when the teeny-bopper styles came in with hems up to panty lines, all the rules went out the window. Too many older and out-of-shape women thought they had to stay in style, and they looked awfully inappropriate revealing their flaws in such skimpy styles.

In my opinion, that was the end of attractive, stylish clothes, and the fun of adding accessories. Ragged blue jeans became the rage all over the world, and it seems the style will last forever. (I've always thought it was dishonest to wear jeans that you didn't wear out yourself by hard work.) The trend for formal dresses once again is toward sexy clothes that reveal as much skin as one can get away with. There is no more mystery about women’s bodies. I guess designers still offer new styles, and I notice that right now the style for daytime wear is to look as if you dressed in the dark; pulled whatever you could reach out of your closet, and adding it in layers no matter what the color or style. Even current hairstyles look as if each woman cut her own hair by feel without a mirror. That’s OK with me, because I am taking advantage of it. I’m saving money by cutting my own hair, and I cut the back by feel. I don’t have to look at the back, and when I do a particularly bad job, I put on my cowboy hat. Living way out here at a horse camp, I figure I can get away with that. I wear a lot of beige clothes so people won’t notice  me as I blend in with the scenery.

Life goes on, and I suppose there are still young people who are thrilled by new styles. But it seems to me, the goal is no longer for females to look pretty. Fashions are just to cover up the body enough to avoid being arrested, and for the shock value of tattoos, and pierced body parts. I suppose teenagers still think they can shock their parents, but after all we’ve been through, it’s not likely. I’m more apt to be shocked if youngsters all suddenly became very thoughtful and polite, dressed modestly, and saved their money.