Matching Dresses $#%?!
When I was little…well, I’ve always been little…when I was young, my Grandmother Nellie sewed several sets of matching dresses for my sister and me. To any young parents out there – This is NOT okay!
I was a tomboy so didn’t like dresses in the first place and when I finally managed, after several years, to grow out of the first dress that I hated, I had to wear the exact same dress again handed down from my sister.
I’ve been thinking about clothes a lot this week because I’ve crossed paths with two unique individuals that I can’t quite get out of my head. The first one was at the shoe repair shop. I walked in to see a slightly stooped old man behind a tall counter wearing a threadbare white button down shirt. At the end of our conversation he walked out from behind the counter where I discovered he was wearing a pair of tight leather pants with a lace up crotch. Hmmmm.
The next guy was at the coffee shop. I stood behind what I could only assume to be a teenager – grey baggy hooded sweatshirt pulled over his head, extra-large/extra-baggy blue nylon shorts, orange banded white sport socks pulled up to just below the knee and brightly colored leather high top sneakers. He bobbed his head to the rap music I could hear booming from his earbuds. He turned around after he ordered his coffee and I was face to face with a 75-year-old man. Hmmmm.
Evidently, these two guys found a look that worked for them and they decided to stick with it – FOREVER!
I’m looking at the picture above and realize that right now I’m probably not much taller than my sister was in this picture and since both dresses had 10 inch hems (notice the rick rack used to disguise the lengthening process) maybe I could still rock this look. Hmmmm.
P.S. – More Trauma. These are the kind of memories this picture brings up for me. Those wavy curls of mine were formed by an uncomfortable night sleeping on pink foam hair curlers.
Torture Device #1
Followed by a scratchy petticoat.
Torture Device #2
And the most humiliating of all…ruffled underpants.
Torture Device #3
CRAZIE TOWN 
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I haven’t had time to read the whole post yet but the first line cracked me up. Way to go. A word for all us short people!
Karin,
You mean us “Vertically Challenged” people.
I LOVED my petticoats! I wore two at a time.
My mom made dresses for me when I was young, and I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t grateful. I really wanted the store-bought ones that everyone else wore. When I was in junior high, I sewed some of my own clothes, and I didn’t like those either…as much as I enjoyed sewing, and didn’t like the way anything came out.
As far as curlers, I remember the pink foam AND the wire stickery ones. I tried them all. Remember soup cans, anyone?
Julianne,
Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you’re someone my Grandmother Nellie would have loved to dress!
Yes, perhaps at the time. Now you’d be hard pressed to find me in a dress or even a skirt. Jeans and a turtleneck are more my style at this point. Sometimes I’ll even go out on a limb and wear a pair of corduroys. Somehow I just can’t make myself dress up. Just too much effort.
Julie T,
How funny because now I love to wear skirts and dresses. Still no frilly things though and I HATE curlers of any kind.
Soup cans? We used beer cans.
Candle wax on petticoats?? Yikes. We starched ours with sugar water and dried them standing up. Although wax and sugar probably react about the same on hot summer days.
Janet,
All that work for petticoats? No wonder my mom never made me wear them. They were reserved for the horrible visits to Grandmother. Ugh.
What memories! At least your curlers were “soft!” Mine were “rag curlers,” which were anything but soft? And the curling iron singed my hair—I can still smell it. Thanks for triggering these memorable events. Keep it up! Phyllis
Thanks Phyllis. It’s always nice to hear someone was tortured more than me. 🙂
You can start the line, but I’m not buyin’! Honey, at least you had foam curlers. I’m so old, that we slept on ones with stiff nylon brushes inside that poked out through your hair and made a pin cushion out of your skull! Don’t dis the petticoat. Your momma probably spent hours layin’ those dang things on the floor on newspapers and melting candle wax on them to make them flounce like they did! As for the ruffeled pants–never had any of those but I did put them on my oldest toddler in the 60’s!
Sally,
Grandmother tried those stiff nylon brushes but my hair was so fine it took hours to get them out of my hair. Of course she was so gentle the whole time…NOT!
I’m thinking of starting a line of Crazie Clothes. What do you think?
Ruffled underpants. No way! I didn’t know those were real. I’m glad to see your fashion sense was not permanently scarred by that CrazieTown attire.