Gretta Warner
January 19, 2016
SFL 280-Dynamics of Clothing
Nature of Fashion
I interviewed my mother and
grandmother about fashion back when they were in high school and college. It
was interesting to ask them questions and be taken back to their era of when
they were the most fashionable. My mother, unknown to me, defined herself as a
fashion leader when she was a late teenager and in the beginning of her
twenties. Her friends were very stylish and that increased her draw to the
fashion industry. When my mother was younger she would look up to the high
class for her fashion inspiration. She would read magazines and follow treading
styles. During our interview, she said, “I was the first in my friend group to
adopt a lot of different fashions. I bought some boy pants (501’s) because I
saw it in a magazine and it took me almost a month to finally wear them because
no one else had. I was the first one to do it and soon after everyone else
followed my lead.”
My grandmother is a different story.
On a scale from 1 to 10 she rated herself a 3! She said that she has never been
into fashion, and even at her most fashionable time in life she didn’t really
care much about it. But fashion back in the 50’s was very different. They never
really cared about what other people wore where she grew up. Clothing was
either made by hand or ordered out of the catalog. The catalogs they got were
the only fashion statements that they would have seen.
When I asked my mom about how
fashion had changed, she laughed and expressed the hilarious fact that the
styles that were “in” when she was younger are now coming back into style. Some
of the styles that were cool when my mom was at her high point in fashion were
pegged pants, big shirts with writing on them, pants that were made of thick
materials, and hand painted clothing. My mother expressed how the type of
clothing you wore defined what you were like when she was in high school and
college. The clothes and style that you showed told everything about you
including the music you listened to and the media you followed.
Some of the things that my grandma said were in style when she
was in high school were saddle oxfords, tight sweaters, pointy bras, poodle
skirts, gabardine slacks (nothing tight-body image wasn’t that important),
pinafore dresses, and jumpers dresses. She also talked about how they would
always wear lighter colors in the spring and summer and darker colors in the
winter. They were never allowed to wear
pants when she was young. And finally when she was a senior in high school,
they could wear pants to school once a week.
Asking both my mother and
grandmother about how fashion affected friends and family was very interesting.
My mother did not feel like when she was at her high fashion point, that it
really affected her family. She said that no one really cared how she dressed
(unless it was inappropriate) ,and that it seemed normal because she bought her
own clothes. But her friends on the other hand, were definitely fashionable and
the type of styles you wore affected who you dated and who you ended up
marrying.
My grandmother felt that we learn to
appreciate fashion through our families. And because her mother was never into
fashion, she never really got into it. But now that media has become accessible
to everyone, most people really get into fashion and therefore care about what
they wear and what other people think. My grandma decided that, yes there were
times when you were jealous of what someone was wearing. But because you never could
go out and just buy clothes from a store, you never actually really copied
anyone’s style. Both my mother and grandmother talked about how there are big
stores now that are able to create their own fashions for cheap, like H&M
and Forever 21. Back in my mothers and grandmothers generation there we less
options to choose from.
The last question I asked my mother and grandmother was how
their rating of fashion has changed for them over the years. Both of them said
that they decrease on the fashion scale, focusing more on comfort and use of
clothing. It is interesting because I feel like as we get older, we lose our
ability of staying with fashion. My mother has stopped being a fashion leader,
and now is in the majority of accepting fashion, and my grandmother is
definitely a fashion lager, or not even on the fashion scale anymore.
After interviewing my mother and
grandmother, I have come to see myself in both of their views on fashion, more
on the side of my mother. I would not
consider myself a fashion leader, but I am not a 3 on a scale from 1 to 10, 10
being a fashion leader, I’m more like a 7. I am more like my grandmother by the
fact that I look more to by peers for fashion ideas than looking up to the high
class, like my mother did. After I finished these interviews, I definitely feel
like I am able to understand and connect with my mother and grandmother better.
Doing these interviews has helped me to appreciate the time that I live in, and
learn from the past generations of my mother and grandmother.
