My foster mom Nell had a number of quaint sayings, but one that stuck with me was a dismissal of someone’s style.
She was the child of immigrants from Czechoslovakia – a country that was split in two and no longer exists. Nell was a Slav, and how that differs from a Czech I have no idea but she was proud of her heritage. I remember her crying when Russian tanks rolled into Prague in 1968. She was always truthful and meant no disrespect, but she would say hippies looked just like they’d “gotten off a boat.” That meant they looked bedraggled and sloppy and maybe she didn’t want me wearing bell bottoms? She would also steer clear of schmatas.
Nell was certainly NOT a fashionista or a critic. I’m pretty sure she suffered from agoraphobia since she never learned how to drive and rarely left her tiny home in Victory Gardens. Whenever she did leave the house, say to vote, Nell would carefully apply lipstick and powder, and that was that! She was a ‘curvy’ lady who wore a uniform of ‘house dresses.’ Never heard of a house dress? It’s simply an ill-fitting shift with short sleeves that snaps or buttons down the entire front and was made in cotton or a blend of fabrics with a pattern of colorful floral posies.
“The house dress style came from the modest, yet liberating “Mother Hubbard dress” as first envisioned after artist, Kate Greenaway, illustrated her nursery rhyme books showing women and girls in smock dresses in the 1880s. These dresses let women be fully covered, yet had no structure and did not require a corset, bustle, or complicated underskirts like other fashions of the 19th century. It was the Victorian fight between fashion and purpose embodied in garment form.“
https://dustyoldthing.com/house-dress-history/
I was thinking about Nell the other day shopping with my sister. I’d pulled something off the rack and a young salesgirl said, “You could wear it as a duster!”
Brilliant! But who wears dusters anyway? I suppose artsy types might throw one on like an apron; wildly colorful patterns easily camouflage paint and/or cooking experiments. A duster is just a new name for a house dress, only you wear it completely open with an outfit underneath. In the 50s and 60s women wore house dresses all the time, like girdles. You know girdles were simply reframed as Spanx, just another tortuous contraption to mold a woman’s body in the male perspective. The whole point of a house dress was to liberate us from whale bone corsets and other nonsense in the same way yoga pants have freed us from zippers.
Living in Nashville I’ll often see a tall, young woman on the street in cowgirl boots, short shorts and a diaphanous duster covering her ensemble. It’s quite the Lewk for those who can pull it off. But trust me, like ripped jeans, a woman of a certain age should avoid such trends, unless you’re Cher.
I’ve come to take a more Buddhist look at style. The Flapper used to tell me that everyone has a story, and she had quite the saga. But she never complained or whined, even though she was widowed and disabled. She dyed her hair blonde and did her nails and went to work. She had to wear two inch heels all the time because one leg was shorter after her accident, and she didn’t want to limp. She told me you have to suffer to be beautiful – but maybe she meant if you’re too beautiful you will always suffer.
I grew up with two very different mothers, in a generation of extreme social change. One would cling to the past while the other embraced the future. I like to think I was lucky in that sense, I never had to follow a certain set of female standards. I was a tomboy who loved riding my bike more than anything. After wearing Catholic school and camp uniforms for years, I developed my own style eventually – a mix of Coastal Grandma today with a dash of French reprobate.
Below there is but one duster in the mix!
MountainMornings 