The History of Fashion….Sort Of
When I was six, my mother ordered our school clothes from Sears Roebuck and Company catalog. I only remember one outfit. It was a black skirt with red and white reindeer and a white blouse. The skirt had rows of elastic at the waist. You didn’t try on clothing that was ordered from a catalog and seldom returned things, so whenever I wore that outfit it left a speckled pattern on the skin of my belly.
For the next several grades, it was back to the catalogs. We had Sears, Roebuck, and Company and one other that I think was called Marshalls’s. Eventually, J C Penney’s put out a catalog and we had one more. Catalogs were how America shopped. There wasn’t an internet and families sometimes had only one car, making them much less mobile.
We went to Nashville, Tennessee, once to visit relatives. My sister and I found a catalog aimed at women, showing what was called “house dresses.” House dresses were everyday clothing, not to be confused with outfits for church, weddings, and funerals. You could easily tell the difference, because dress outfits went with hats. Nothing said dress up like a hat. Down South, the catalog announced its offerings with the come on, “Hey, Gals! Look here!” Indiana born and bred, we rolled with giggles. We would have loved for someone to call our mother a “gal.” With her black hair and dark brown eyes, she would have cut them in two with a look.
In preparation for sixth grade, we actually went to a Sears’ store. Rows of clothing had never seemed so exciting. It was a real graduation from home sewn clothing and packages from a catalog company. I remember a brown and tan plaid dress with a bow at the throat. It is memorable because we changed schools at the end of the year and a girl at the new school had a strange question for me. We were playing jacks, a game I had only just learned, sitting on a cold tile schoolroom floor. She said, “Sandy, are you rich?” I assured her the contrary and she said, “Well, you just wear such nice clothes.” I found out later she had several siblings, and not being the oldest, her dresses were usually hand-me-downs. But I still looked at that dress differently after that.
Catalogs faded and malls became the “in” way to shop. They offered several stores in one place, including Sears and Penney’s from the catalog days. My first prom dress was on a mannequin at the mall. Not that style, the actual dress. I called for days asking if they had it off, yet. It was reserved for me, but the wait seemed interminable. It was light blue with three layers—the base was satin, the center was lace, and it was overlaid with sheer chiffon. It had satin bows at the waist and two thirds of the way down the floor length skirt. We were not yet pseudo sophisticates and did not know that having a dress everyone had seen in a mall window ruined the effect.
We were still shopping at malls when my children were growing up. Someone once asked my son why he never tried drugs. He replied, “It was too busy at my house to think about it! We had to go to the mall and get Heather pink hightops!” And, indeed, there was always something to see and do and be seen about at the mall.
Big box stores broke the mall’s hold, but only partially. It took the internet to shut them down. Now, we look at pictures. Since I am old, I long for days of touching the fabric and testing the fit, but that’s what Amazon-returns-at-Kohl’s is all about and I am catalog trained. It is still a dicey proposition, however, and I’ve purchased three sweaters that only managed one wearing, and then, they came apart. Oh, The Internet, Quality is not your name!
I am waiting for the day when I can make a virtual me and try the clothing on, at least. Short in height, long in the waist, my virtual Sandy would know before purchase that the dark blue lace outfit makes me look short and fat.
For now, I will have to settle for cash back, click coupons, and a pin, password, and Paypal. It isn’t perfect, but neither was an outfit that imprinted on the skin of my six year old belly.