"Show us your fancy pants!"
Those ruffle bottomed underwear put on small girls when I was small, along with the short fluffy dresses, were apparently a source of public amusement. When it was just aunts and female cousins, I have some memory of not minding at all. Up to a certain age, and I wonder now if that didn't coincide with the end of diapers. I do have some very early memories, so I wouldn't put it past me. The sort of underpants to cover those pads, seems possible. Having a fluffy butt, and flipping my skirt up to get it out of the way of the bustle-thing (with lace.)
I hated the short dresses, longed for the long skirts, full and swirly. Then the 60s came along in earnest, and that vanished as a possibility. I don't really understand why little girls were put in such silly short dresses. Cold legs and careful embarrassment all the time. My craving for dignity and elegance shot to pieces with pale pink nylon net ungenerously applied.
Smocked bodices were another weird thing, not bad as such, but incomprehensible as an ideal for me. Shaping technique? Texture sort of thing? Dunno, never seemed especially pretty or useful. A curiosity mostly.
These days, I think of clothes as basic covering in pleasant colors. Three new t-shirts, all gotten as premiums*, are of a very soft cheese-cloth material. They won't last long, but I love how buttery and light they are. The rest are all very sturdy Carhart shirts, mens. Long way from baby frills.
*A fiber internet company, a gift from the community gardens for the tour, and the museum/library trivia night win.
7 comments:
I never see cheesecloth here. I love it for summer clothes.
What about the vast ruffled net petticoats of the 60s? Before your time of course, but baby embarrassment for teenagers.
(o)
ER
This is more of a knit version of it, very soft, but thin.
RR
THAT Is what I wanted to wear! But it was out of fashion by the time I was old enough. Which may not say much about my taste as a kid, but there you go.
As I am grinding through my early 40s I am noticing a growing fondness I am developing for wearing fashionable clothes. I do not add to my slowly growing collection of apparel with any meaningful frequency, but perhaps once or twice a year I'll add one or two bits.
A large part of this is that where I work in the city, the building across from mine is a higher end shopping mall with 'haute-couture' shops and well known brand names. I have to pass through that mall to get to a food court where I eat lunch once or twice a week.
At my own work place the dress code is very lax as even the CEO wears jeans and a t-shirt on some days. But walking on the streets of my city I often see both men and women very fashionably dressed, and I just like how they look when 'dressed up'.
I don't mean to be wearing stuffy clothes, but rather, remarkable yet comfortable clothes.
You did well to miss them. And the hooped versions were even worse. When you sat down they flipped up at the front, and when you bent down ....well, you get the picture (and so did everyone else!).
RR,
I feel better already. Although the bell bottomed pants would catch on the heel of my shoe when I stooped down, and pull me backward as I tried to stand up. A fashion that unaccountably returned a while back, to my consternation.
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