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 I Remember Wearing . .
What My Aunt Wore All of my mother's sisters were dark-haired and dark-eyed, but only one of my aunts, Betty, had a really olive complexion. She was also the only one who had the nerve to wear brown. Everyone else in the family avoided it; they seemed to think it made them look darker, maybe less "American." The dress itself was brown with white polka-dots, a white collar, and a V neck that showed just enough bosom to distract the eye from her even more generous hips-but I'm saying this now, as hindsight. What I remember is that the dress rustled, that it was always accompanied by a perfume that had a spicy and slightly animal scent, that something about that dress always bedazzled me and made me a little envious, even when Betty had only stopped by to sit with me for an hour while my mother went to the doctor or the drug store.
What I Wouldn't Wear My mother bought clothes for herself, my sister, and me. She usually had a good eye for her own clothes, but my sister and I were often at the mercy of her moods. One day I came home from school to find a new dress laid out on my bed--her way of introducing a new item. I knew her mood must have been dark. The dress was a sturdy brown corduroy--so sturdy, in fact, that (as I found when I tested it ) the skirt could stand by itself, although the top lopped over. It had bunchy puffed sleeves and a heavy, double-thickness collar; two tucks that tapered inward from shoulder to waist; a shirred inset between the tucks, a bunchy gathered waist covered with a double-thickness sash. The whole thing was nicely finished with a row of brass brads down each of those heavy tucks on the bodice. I wore it once, because I knew my mother wanted me to, but I could hardly move in it, and I couldn't put my arms down to my sides unless I really made an effort. I shoved it back in the closet, where I hoped she wouldn't notice it. But after a couple of weeks, when it became obvious that I hadn't chosen the brown corduroy dress of my own free will, she said plaintively, "Don't you like it?" Whenever she said that, I'd wear it--once--and wait until she said it again. Only summer brought relief from that dress. Unfortunately, she had bought it with plenty of length, so that I could wear it more than one year. The next fall it came out again. But that fall I was taking viola lessons, and my death-grip stance with the viola tucked under my chin was grinding the lower edge into my collar bone. I wore the dress once a week, faithfully, on Wednesdays all through winter. The double-thick collar cushioned the viola, and my mother was happy.
I Wanted to Wear . . . It was out of the question to wear my mother's clothes, or even covet them, because by the time I was ten I had outgrown her. Not her shoes, though. Platform shoes were in style, and she and my aunts all wore them to look taller. And of all the sisters, my mother had the nicest platform shoes, dark red alligator with ankle straps. They fit me--I had tried them on when she wasn't looking. But I knew better than to ask. The day came when I had girlfriend's birthday party to go to and no decent shoes, just a pair of scuffed oxfords. Another aunt, Grace, saw me gaze longingly at those red alligator ankle-strap platform shoes, exactly as I intended her to, and turned to my mother and said "Dotty, how about . . ." exactly as I had hoped she would. And my mother let me wear her elegant platform shoes to the party, with bobby socks and an old, much-worn party dress. I thought I looked sophisticated; I can only guess that my girlfriend's mother, and maybe my girlfriend as well, thought I looked weird.
Clothing That Just Didn't Work I now have freakishly narrow feet, and I order shoes from catalogues. It's a guessing game. To fit and be comfortable, the shoes need to be even narrower than usual at the heel and have flexible soles, or they simply flip off my feet as I walk. My latest failure is a pair of navy dress shoes in the newer "klunky" style, with squared toes and thick heels. They don't bend, they're narrow enough to hurt but not to stay on, and if I wear them outside, I lose them at every street corner.
Clothing Other People Are Wearing Some women these days catch their hair back with clips that look like a tortoiseshell version of the black metal squeeze-clips people use for thick documents. Women with heavy, straight or almost-straight hair, shoulder-length or longer, look great in them. My hair is fine and lofts with the slightest breeze. I'm itching to try one, but I know that like all the fancy barrettes I've ever tried, it would gather my hair into an unimposing cluster of wisps.
What We Wore Like most other high school kids, I burned time and energy trying to wear exactly what my friends wore. Mornings were almost a torture. I would stand in a cold closet, trying to call forth an inspired vision of myself--a self so correctly and indistinguishably dressed that I would be unnoticed, or, better yet, be distinguished as a person who looked more indistinguishably acceptable than anyone else. In four years, from freshman orientation to graduation, it never occurred to me that girls all across my suburban town (let alone the next town, or the next county, or the state) were putting themselves through the same devastating exercise. Spring and summer, we wore crinolines. From the waist to the hips, a crinoline was a half-slip with elastic at the top. From there down, it was a starchy ruffled hell that snagged nylons or rubbed the backs of legs raw. A crinoline had to be washed regularly, starched in blue liquid gunk, and ironed. If one crinoline wasn't enough to make a full skirt stand out like a lampshade, girls wore two or three--ideally, enough layers so that the wearer could barely squeeze herself, her skirt, and her crinolines into a lecture desk. I finally found a crinoline that never had to be starched and ironed--only washed and stood up to dry. From the hips down, it was made of nylon mesh that looked like, and felt like, the strings of a tennis racket. Body piercings, even ears, had yet to appear. Instead, we pierced our clothes with scatter pins. They were like post earrings, pushed through a blouse or sweater from the front and secured with a backing pushed onto the post from the underside. They came in pairs--we never wore less than two bees, owls, butterflies, or whatever--and were usually junk jewelry: gold-tone settings with pink or green glass "jewels." With only one post for an anchor, the pins left holes every time they were worn. The cheap ones left black marks as well. Sweaters were for fall and serious winter weather. Featherweight coats were for spring. After the coat season was over--a message we all received in much the same way geese receive the message to migrate--we wore shrugs. A shrug was about half a sweater: two sleeves held together by just enough back and front to make a short, skimpy bolero. Usually it fastened with a single button at the neck. Since shrugs ended short of the midriff, they didn't keep us warm. At best, they hid the goosebumps when we left our coats behind. None of us would have said that cinch belts had anything to do with
sex, but they did. Worn with a blouse and full skirt, a cinch belt was
supposed to make the waist look smaller--and the bustline look larger by
contrast. It was a strip of strong elastic, or fabric puckered and stitched
with strong elastic. The ends were attached to the two halves of a clasp
that met at the waist. None of us would admit what all of us knew--a cinch
belt
We wore ballerina flats for no good reason at all. They came in all colors, had paper-thin soles, and were almost impossible to keep on. Walking over a gravel parking lot or a hot summer sidewalk in those flats was torture; we wore them anyway. Walking in rain meant shipping whole puddles into our shoes and feeling and hearing them squelch for the rest of the day. We got passes to the washroom and squeezed the water out from under the insoles. Most girls bought the shoes a size or two smaller than their regular shoes, to make them stay on. Ballerinas cut low enough and worn snug enough to show "cleavage" between the big toe and second toe were highly prized and slightly naughty. With loafers in colder weather, bobby socks were a staple, but they were also a statement. In our high school, the girls most feared were the ones who ran with the "hoods," who wore long black straight skirts and pulled the cuffs of their socks all the way up. They were not to be messed with; their guys were not to be messed with. The politically correct style was to wear the cuffs rolled just to the top of the ankle bone. A triple fold was square. Girls who wore them that way were probably going to marry engineers or accountants. If they married at all. Maybe they'd just teach school. When I went to college, one state away, the first adjustment crisis
was socks. My freshman roommate, a large young woman from Topeka, took
one look at my rolled socks and said, "Hoody." I took a look at her triple-folds
and said, "Square." The girl down the hall, a minister's daughter from
an expensive suburb of St. Louis, sweetly informed us that she wore hers
the way all best-dressed students did: turned up to the hems of their
plaid skirts and secured by rubber bands, which were kept hidden by folding
down a half-inch border at the top. One of the girls upstairs let it be
known that her fat and puffy cuffs were padded out with sock falsies--foam-rubber
Diana
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