I don’t know about you but Memorial Day weekend always brings about feelings of nostalgia. I start to think back to summers of the past and before I know it I’m firing up the DVD player for my annual playing of the movie, Jaws (a must to start the summer season!) and thinking of the golden summers spent on the beaches of Rhode Island. And clamcakes. Lots of clamcakes. That is why today is the perfect time to welcome Rachel for her thoughts on how fashion has played a role in her life from the time she was a pre-teen to now.
I have to admit I always loved playing with dolls when I was young and loved dressing them up and making their hair pretty with bows and such. This transferred over to an obsession for fashion in my life. When I got old enough to get a job at fifteen and a half I jumped on the chance to work after school and weekends just so I would have enough money to buy clothes of my own choosing. My mother hated to shop so the clothes I usually received were from my dad; you can only imagine what I looked like. He did have good taste in men’s clothes but he was always a year behind in the women’s fashions because he was also a very frugal man and it needed to be on sale. As you can imagine he also dressed me in very modest apparel, which I am not saying is bad, but I am talking librarian modest here. No offense to librarians intended, I was a pre-teen and teenage girl.
It was the seventies and there was a wide range of fashion going on in the beginning of the seventies. We were transitioning from the hippy generation of the sixties so there were still a lot of flower children running around, there were a lot of the go-go dancer boots, there were bell bottoms that sat low on the hips with huge belt buckles, and there were the disco clothes. Skirt lengths varied from mini, midi, and maxi. We were the now generation, trying every style out there. We also loved our jumpsuits, men and women alike. Ah, the seventies. At some point and time in that era we started to pull in the reigns a bit and get it all together but we were big into everyone’s freedom to choose, even when those choices were a little iffy. We in the disco group prided ourselves on our sense of style, we were on the cutting edge, just ask John Travolta.
The hair styles were in transition as well. In the early seventies it was actually a blessing to have straight hair; I am not really sure what the girls with naturally curly hair did. The majority of girl’s hair styles then were parted down the middle and straight, sometimes sporting a headband. It may have been different in other parts of the country but at the time I started working and buying fashion I was living in Florida. This brought on a further style choice unique to the beach areas and areas of intense heat. We wore hot pants, bikinis, and halter tops (much to the chagrin of my mom I might add, she hated halter tops). I was a small framed girl and not well endowed in the chest area so I could wear these styles and did not think I was flaunting anything because in my opinion I had nothing to flaunt. Young girls are often clueless when it comes to skin exposure. I recall a time when I ran into a local Seven-Eleven (a gas station/store) on the beach. There was an elderly woman in there and she took just one look at me and said, “Jail Bait”. I did not have a clue what she meant at the time but I will have to agree with her now. What were wethinking? We were not thinking, we were free spirits!
When I had kids my fashion world changed. My kids were big into comfort, not fashion and so I had to learn to adapt. Thankfully becoming a mom has taught me the value of relaxing my fashion dos and don’ts and enjoying the styles my children put together. They may not always match, but they have a fashion style of their own that I have grown to love.
Rachel is an ex-babysitting pro as well as a professional writer and blogger. She is a graduate from Iowa State University and currently writes for http://www.babysitting.net/ . She welcomes questions/comments which can be sent to rachelthomas.author @ gmail.com.
