If you were raised in the 1950’s, you watched Father Knows Best, The Donna Reed Show, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and I Love Lucy. With role models like Jane Wyatt and Donna Reed and an ambition to be like either Loretta Young or Holly Golightly, I’m not sure how I turned into a cross between Ethel Mertz and the well-remembered “Mama” with more than a dash of Tessie O’Shea.
If you were married in 1970, you were given numerous fondue pots and avocado green small appliances. Your major appliances might have been avocado green, too, but mine were all second hand and white – not a bad thing when the avocado green phase mercifully passed. Couldn’t afford the ghastly 70’s wallpapers either but I did have an orange shag rug which, like many of my furniture, draperies and clothing, ended up on a high school stage. When anything went missing, you might never get it back but you knew where it was. In her teens, my daughter wore many of the clothes I’d worn at the same age, scavenged from the drama club’s costume storage.
I’ve survived poodle skirts, Calypso, Ivy League, madras plaid, mini skirts, pant suits, polyester double knits and leisure suits, bell bottoms . . . some of those more than once! I’ve worn garter belts and girdles, cotton lisle and seamed nylon stockings, crinolines and sack dresses. I remember reversible, knife pleated, long plaid woolen skirts and Ben Casey blouses (but never had either). Is it any wonder that I’ve lost touch with fashion trends?
I’ve made apron, dirndl skirt and pincuchion in grade school home economics, maternity and baby clothes, designer samples, tailored coats and men’s wear, Stretch and Sew knitwear (and what ever happened to their lovely 100% cotton knits?) and store samples from Vogue designer patterns. Now I make “fibre art” and wear clothes from Value Village which I sometimes cobble together into “new looks” (or at least something that fits my sprawling bulk).
I don’t know what made me choose the photo I uploaded for my “avatar” here but I may be searching for the answer to how that shy little red-headed girl in a shirred cotton bathing suit got here, more than fifty years later, to another beach in another century.
Anonymous
