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!

Hemlines, Etc.

Back in the historic days of my youth hemlines were important.

"What are hemlines?" some of you may ask.

Well, back then women and girls wore dresses and skirts for work, school, social occasions and even shopping trips to cities. Jeans, slacks, pedal pushers, and the like were reserved for things like playtime, picnics, and working in the garden.

And the proper length of the skirts, or hemline, was determined every year by the fashion industry and shown in all the women's magazines and department store windows. Any girl or woman whose dress was too long or short would be embarrassed to be seen in public.

No, I'm not kidding. It actually was socially unacceptable to wear clothes that were out of style. I'm not just talking about school girls making fun of somebody who didn't have what the popular kids did. Even adults looked down on anyone who had clothing that was too long or short.

It's hard for people now to understand what that was like. The closest example I can give is to say it was sort of like being politically incorrect today.

And women and girls who went to church on Easter Sunday, which included nearly everyone who wasn't Jewish or a member of another religion, wore a new dress that day. And, of course, ladies always wore hats to church so they'd have a new one of those on Easter, too.

My mother and everyone I knew would be horrified to know that I plan to wear slacks to church on Easter Sunday, and I won't even wear a hat. How shameful! ;-)

What Goes Around Comes Around

In the olden days when my grandmothers were young, women wore long dresses with full skirts, long sleeves, and corsets to make their waists as small as possible. (And how did they stand cooking over fires on hot days dressed like that?) Men usually wore suits and ties unless they were doing physical work, and most had beards and mustaches.

In the 1920s the 'modern' generation wore dresses with shorter skirts and no waistlines. Men became clean shaven and women cut their hair short and got permanent waves. That was my mother's generation.

When I was a kid we went back to full skirts with petticoats and wide belts. While our fashionable clothes weren't as long and restrictive as those in our grandparents' day, we valued the old fashioned look. Things worn in the previous century like cowboy gear and coonskin hats also became popular. For a while, some boys even wore Mohawk hairdos, though most had crew cuts and lots of girls still got perms.

Then came the hippie generation with men growing long hair and facial hair again. For the first time (probably because of mini skirts) women and girls could wear pants to work and school. Some styles imitated things from other cultures.

Today the grunge look is in, and my grandparents would be horrified to see the body parts freely displayed in public by both sexes.

But all things change and I'm guessing that the new generation will swing the other way.

While spiked hair is not uncommon and I've seen a few young teens wearing wide belts and full skirts, that doesn't mean they'll go back to clothes like we had in the 1950s. I doubt that women will ever return to wearing skirts and dresses all the time, but perhaps the kind worn in the middle ages will become popular when they want to dress nicely. Maybe clothing will imitate a sci-fi or fantasy world. Or perhaps togas, sarongs or kimonos will become the norm.

It will be interesting to see what's in style ten or 15 years from now, but it's certain to be different from what young people wear today..