What Goes Around...

Remember the old saying, "What goes around comes around?"

Back in the 1940s and '50s my mother used to say, "If you keep anything long enough it comes back in style."

She was sort of right.

In the 1800s and early 1900s women wore long dresses with full skirts and tried to make their waists look as small as possible.  Only "women of ill repute" would let much of their bodies show.

Then in the 1920s women wore much shorter dresses with no waistlines at all. When those clothes came into fashion they probably horrified older ladies.

And girls couldn't wear pants except as underwear. Later those became acceptable, but only in casual circumstances. In the 1940s we'd change into our jeans or pedal pushers for play, but always wore skirts or dresses to school and women wore those to work.

In the 1950s when I was a teenager it again became fashionable to wear longer, full skirts and wide, "cinch belts" to make waistlines look as small as possible. And girdles, though less restrictive than corsets, were the norm.

Then in the '60s mini skirts became the fashion, and women began wearing slacks and pant suits for dressy occasions.

Today girls and women aren't required to follow the latest fashions and we can wear pretty much anything we want. Our grandmothers and great grandmothers would be horrified to see how lots of young women dress now, but I have seen some girls wearing full skirts and wide belts.

I wonder if styles will cycle again and we'll be expected to wear long dresses soon.  I hope women don't go back to wearing corsets!