The clothes we wore

The clothes our parents wore were for us the statement of how an adult should dress, at least in the 1950s. Our mothers wore gloves and hats, often of matching colors. For Easter a woman might get a new

Easter bonnet. My mother wore sundresses with wide skirts, calf length and this was for the era the height of elegance. In the 1950s our mothers wore A line skirts, often pleated skirts, and carried handbags, wore scarves and had wide belts to show off a narrow waistline.

Our parents were born in the 1920s. At that time the long skirts of the 1900s had been shortened. In the roaring twenties skirts were ankle length, flapper skirts and even knee length. In the 1950s circle skirts became popular.
Imagine their surprise then when my cohort in the 1960s adopted the mini skirt.

Men wore hats, not the top hats of the earlier eras but fedora hats to be seen as serious business people. They wore dark suits, and their ties were often narrow with stirpes and solids. Their shoes were often Oxford or two tone saddle shoes or penny loafers. For my dad, shining the shoes was an important ritual to look good and feel good about life. Downtown you could even sit and get your shoeshine done .

So those were the styles we were watching as we grew up. For a time we likely imitated them and then as teens do, changed them.

It is interesting to study fashion shifts. Dress length is one. Another is what to reveal to seem sexy. In the 1920s if a woman showed her ankles she was considered daring. In other eras a low cut top was considered daring. Shorts varied in length over the eras and my cohort wore short shorts while a generation later the Bermuda length was more popular. What socks a person wore also was a marker for age. My mother wore nylon stockings from the war era and in that era some even had seams. She was even familiar with that type that only comes up to the hip and you have to attach it with hooks from a belt higher up. Pantihose were a novelty, a one piece solution invented in 1953. My sister and I got used to wearing leggings in winter and pantihose in warm weather and the taboo really was to not wear any stockings. It was a surprise to me that a generation after mine, kids often wore no socks in their shoes and wore bare legs under dresses.

Shoe styles also change. My mother’s generation wore high heels and around the house flat shoes. My cohort changed. My sister and I in the 1950s wore practical shoes our parents put us in. We had lace up shoes, saddle shoes and often wore ankle socks. Boys wore Oxxfords for special . A common shoe style for girls was buckled dress shoes with a closed toe, and one strap going at the front with a buckle. Some called these Mary Janes.

The point is that we did not as little kids have the range of running shoes kids got a generation later. I did not wear sandals though I guess others did. A marker for my cohort however seems to have been an insistence on stockings. People now joke about seniors when they wear sandals with socks.

Another fashion shift was in shoe bulk. My cohort was taught that a lady had dainty feet. The idea was to make the leg looks svelte and shapely and kind of finished off with a subtle shoe. It was kind of a shock to discover a generation later, in my own kids in the 1980s that the trend was for girls to have shoes that looked heavy, even boot-like with big heels.

This means that how people dressed was a lot based on the clothing industry and what we were told was modern.

When I was a teen, knee socks were common. A generation later people laughed at us for wearing them.

Boots were practical in the 1950s, and having big rubber boots for gardening did not embarrass our parents because hey were needed. We had our own little rubber boots to splash around puddles with too. But imagine the surprise of our parents after 1964 when we teens wanted gogo boots, tall knee high boots with heels.

Our mothers wore sweater sets, one under and then a buttoned one over, left open.

My sister and I were very lucky that our mother liked to sew. She made most of our clothes, often tops and skirts to match. One set I particularly loved was pink. There were interchangeable options of the pink stripe top and plain pink skirt, or the plain top and striped skirt or all the variations. My I felt so clever.

One style was the poodle skirt with felt appliqued patterns.Another was the polka dot skirt. Peter Pan collars on blouses were common and I remember imitating styles I saw on TV. There was a Dr. Kildare top of the 1960s with buttons on the shoulder and a stand up collar. TV heroes inspired style.

People often allude to the ‘greaser’ style of the 1950s where teenage boys wore cuffed blue jeans, faux leather jackets, slicked back their hair and wore white T shirts. However my cohort was too young for that. In the fifties we were little kids.

By the time the 60s came our aspirations were different. We wore the cardigan sweater sets our mothers liked and flat shoes but in 1965 the A line shift dress became popular . In 1968 we were wearng tie- dyed tops and peasant blouses, fringed overalls and bell bottom jeans. Some of us liked the loose tropical pattern muumuu dresses in the 1960s.

1955 – Velcro is invented

1958 – Spandex

1959- pantihose

1965 – Kevlar synthetic fabric – Du Pont

1970 – Ultrasuede