Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Fashion

At 65, I don’t find fashion of much interest, but then I never did. I get a fashion magazine – I never ordered it – it just comes. Clearly, some computer out there has my birthdate off by about 30 years. Nonetheless, I must confess to occasionally thumbing through it before it goes into the recycling pile. The last issue they seem to be wearing a lot of short dark socks – whatever!
In most of us, I guess there is a herd instinct. We don’t want to stand out in a crowd, but rather be one of the herd members. Any analogies to sheep are purely intentional. For me, that is my only goal with fashion – I don’t want people to stare at me on the street and say – ‘get a load of that!”

Thinking back about fashion, I remember my first grade teacher had a long skinny skirt. Before then I have never thought about it one way or the other. When our teachers were wearing straight skirts, we girls were wearing plaid “school dresses” with little puffed sleeves and white socks rolled down.

Before elementary school was over, skirts got full and petticoats started being made of scratchy fabric. Girls wore their cardigan sweaters turned around backwards with little fake collars. Some had furry pom poms hanging down. I never really had a poodle skirt, as I was just a bit too young, but they sure were popular with the older girls.

By junior high, the full skirts and petticoats mercifully were gone, and we were in very tailored pleated plaid skirts with long fuzzy sweaters and oxford cloth blouses with Peter Pan collars. We wore our socks straight up and clip-on bows in our hair.

When I arrived in high school, we went from pleats to heather tone A-lines and from sweaters to blazers with emblems of nothing in particular on the pocket. We wore stiff- starched oxford cloth skirts with button-down collars. By senior year we had ditched our white cotton socks for hose with our loafers. How sophisticated we were!

My mother made my freshman wardrobe. She was a wonderful seamstress and I was very fashionable – but, of course, my mother (nor I) had no real idea what the other girls were wearing. The school had strict rules – no slacks and jeans were a major conduct breach. Mostly we wore the same stuff as in high school, but in spring out came the floral print Villager dresses with Peter Pan collars, pleated fronts, straw belts and beads. Having blazers in navy, red, and beige was a wardrobe essential. A London Fog trenchcoat was obligatory for going to the dining hall in one’s nightgown or out the car for a forgotten item – even in the hottest weather. Technically it met the dress code and we always wore them buttoned up.

By the time I started graduate school in 1968, something had changed and slacks were now OK on campus. Some of the undergrads were not even wearing school, except to class where they were still required. I didn’t get caught up in the whole Hippie dress thing. About the “Hippiest” thing I did wear cut off knee length jeans, though we would buy them pre-cut to avoid that sloppy threads hanging down look. Never to class, of course. This was still the South!

When I started my career in education, the rule was “no slacks.” We tried to wear dresses, rather than blazers and skirts so we wouldn’t be mistaken for the students. No more socks – we were professionals. My mother made me tailored dresses, but I still would wear a blazer and skirt when I felt I could get away with it.

As a young married woman, I tried to look sophisticated, but usually fell short of the mark. Fortunately, my mother kept my wardrobe flowing with new additions, and my beloved blazers and skirts were OK – until we moved to California. But when I lived in Illinois, I learned to wear a wig and wear high heel boots. Lipstick got pale and eye makeup got strange.

Enter polyester – the fabric we loved to hate. In California in the early 70s it was jeans and T-shirts or what we later started to call “fat’ polyester. The earliest polyester had a plastic feel about it – very thick and impossible to wrinkle. It was the fabric of the future. No more ironing (nobody objected to that!). Polyester just went with the whole 70s thing with disco, glimmer balls and the like. I hated that whole period.

About the time we left Southern California in 1976 and came east, Preppy was back. We never called it Preppy, but it was the look I had grown up with. I was thrilled to wear blazers and leather jackets again. Plaid was in again and so was its companion, oxford cloth- though now perma-pressed. Polyester became progressively more refined. It was sometimes indistinguishable except by touch from natural fabrics.

At some point in the 1990s I stopped worrying about things like dress length or even what other people except my immediate colleagues were wearing. I bought what they had in the stores that fit my overweight body. Before Women’s sizes, life after size 16 was definitely limited. My mother was no longer around to sew for me and I had to find clothes I could wear.

In the 2000s my mid-aged and beyond colleagues and I discovered that the secret to getting by in the world was slacks in black, white and beige in a variety of styles. Blouses could be solid colored knit tops and jackets could be bright colors – plaids, florals, anything goes! With black dress and jacket you can go anywhere – mostly especially Washington, DC, the city that appears to be in continual mourning.

What is next – I don’t know and I don’t really care that much. But I know for sure I will not be wearing what those people in the fashion magazine are wearing! Well, maybe the dark socks – but never with a feather skirt and baggy sweater! There are limits ---