Anyone remember paper dresses? They cost $1.25 and I had one. My mother considered it "school clothes." I was 12 and I couldn't bring my self to wear it to school even though I had nothing. It was called the "Paper Caper" and it was made out of a handi wipe material. Yeah, doesn't that chick with glasses look stylish?
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I am still looking for Capezio three hole, one strap Mary Janes on eBay, that's as close as I could find. The two strap one's were acceptable, but, not envied. I begged for these when I was 13, begged. I ask for them for Christmas and got a cheap plastic knock off that blistered my feet to hell and looked retarded. They also had a high clunky heel, which was not in and I had miles to walk to school. By the time I saved enough baby sitting money to buy a pair the next Summer, I went tripping back to school all proud and found out they were out. The next year I became a hippie. It was just easier. That was the same year I just moved out and left the house of cheap plastic shoes.
I am still looking for Capezio three hole, one strap Mary Janes on eBay, that's as close as I could find. The two strap one's were acceptable, but, not envied. I begged for these when I was 13, begged. I ask for them for Christmas and got a cheap plastic knock off that blistered my feet to hell and looked retarded. They also had a high clunky heel, which was not in and I had miles to walk to school. By the time I saved enough baby sitting money to buy a pair the next Summer, I went tripping back to school all proud and found out they were out. The next year I became a hippie. It was just easier. That was the same year I just moved out and left the house of cheap plastic shoes.
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HERE is a great retro fashion and fad site. It has all the important decades on it and it's greatly amusing.
What fashions do you remember that you HAD to have?
What fashions do you remember that you HAD to have?
40 comments:
God, you whine about everything. why don't you just kill yourself?
Ahhh, it is my revenge to live long and bitch.
I never got an orange Ralph Lauren Polo sweater. I had one IZOD shirt and like a half dozen of the cheap knock-off polo style shirts that had a fox on them. They came from J.C. Penney and were technically acceptable but proved that your family was lower middle class and not willing to take on a second job to keep you clothed. To this day I am still obsessed with Ralph Lauren.
Jeez, anon 5:06. Nice comment. Why do you even come here? Go away. No one is twisting your arm to check in. Gawd.
The shoes are fug, sorry. But they are. I wouldnt have wanted them, even back then Pat. Sorry. I did however want a Yellow Pages paper dress and didnt get one! I was really mad about that for a long time. Jumpers were my life as a child. School & summer ones too. They must have been all there was to buy. My clothes mostly came from rummage sales, church basement sales & Goodwill. Now, I shop at Goodwill all the time. Amazing stuff in there. I usually snag me some Anne Klein, White House Black Market, Banana Republic,only the designer stuff items there. I know the fabrics, I only pull out the good stuff. Its all about knowing. My daughter is amazed at my Goodwill skills. haha
Gawd, what people throw out! wow!!!
rox
OMG Tonya! How about the new RL shirts that have the gigantic polo player on them? Hideous. It takes up the entire left side of the shirt! Who would even think thats attractive or will make others envy you? Yuck! Tacky and bad taste. Terrible design. Don't obsess about RL! Learn to like something more tasteful. RL has lost it's edge, IMHO.
rox
Ralph Lauren makes some pretty nice casuals.
I am a great good will shopper too. I can spot vintage lables by glancing at fabrics on a rack of shit. I get a kick out of old Chanel. Pre-Lagerfeld, baa.
I had real crap clothes too, in school. People would say mean things, like white trash. So, yeah, they (the cool stuff) were burned in my memory and I think alot of people can relate to my anguish over them and the feeling that you weren't even worth a pair of decent shoes.
I always tell Lis if she needs something for school to just ask me. All she's ask for, so far, is a pink back pack. And crocs, which she's not allowed to wear to school.
Does anyone remember the Buffy line from Family Affair? I had the blue and yellow ladder dress.
And remember the danskin body suits and pants? That was pretty much my elementary school uniform, that and jumpers with tights.
Love jumpers and tights on little girls!
Tonya,
I had to use my babysitting money for IZOD's in highschool. I had lots, and Top Siders too.
Sorry, I like this thread....Polo is not out. It is classy and timeless. As with all lines, you can find some ugly stuff, and I agree about the polos with the big pony.
You can't go wrong with a pair of chinos and a polo, IMO.
I SOOO wanted jelly shoes and stirrup leggings when i was little!! haha.. gotta love the 90's :P
Hang Ten! I envied the girls that got Hang Ten. Never had any tho. I wanted & did get Plushbottom jeans several times. They were lower than the low rise jeans now. Almost obscene. Clogs & Plushbottoms, my CPO jacket & shag haircut! I was cool! 1972! Hellz yea. I wore crap as kid but when I was a teenager I really didnt. I worked & got what I wanted & made sure grandma knew what to get me for x-mas. She never got me something that I didnt specifically request. She was cool like that.
rox
Oh, the Buffy look! I was older when that was on, but, I remember the look. I thought Sissy had good hair.
Corina, I still love stirup leggings! I bought Casey jellies in every color, she was so cute in them and at every night at bedtime we'd say "Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite..but, if they do, hit em with a shoe, right in the belly with a big old jelly!" She still remembers that.
I had to have a pair of feather earings. I think maybe Cher started that. One of my brothers bought me a pair for Christmas. How sweet is that? I'm gonna call that turd bucket right now.
aw that's cute! Mommy never bought me them cause she knew I wouldn't be comfortable in them. I got knock off jellies and she was right! I was a mary-jane and keds kinda preschooler. In elementary school it was all about the sandals! Then it was heels, now it's flip flops..
School clothing. That's a scary subject for me. We had enough money for clothes (walmart kind, but we weren't very "fad" oriented in school). But with my OCD I would only wear 2 dresses. I rotated them everyother day. I'd wear a strapless dress with a non-matching sweater over it every day. With each new school year I'd choose 2 dresses i liked. People made comments about how i never wore pants, and probably made fun of me behind my back, but I had my group of friends so I didn't care what anyone else thought.
Later on, in my middle school days though i was made fun of for not wearing a bra. they were uncomfortable and i barely needed one! ugh.. but i caved. Now my clothes oriented OCD-ness is that I can't wash my clothes. I wear them until they start to smell then throw them out. I also have "house clothes". They are really ratty and gross, and are what I wear day to day in the house so i don't gross out my "outside clothes".
God, I just wish I was normal once in a while, haha! :)
LOL at "normal"..only the trolls are normal, haven't you heard? I'm weird about my work clothes. I hang them up and never wear them anywhere but work and when I have to wash them, they don't seem "good" anymore. Good thing I don't work every day.
White knee high go-go boots. Laces up the front and a little pocket on the side top where you could put your lunch money. Brown leather oxfords were what my mother thought was appropriate. That and the cateye glasses she made me wear for years until my geek status was completely and firmly established. Not only was it obvious how cheap my mother was, but how totally out of touch she was with anything little girls "needed".
"Being normal is vastly overrated" ~ Quote from Disney's Halloweentown
:P
I loved that site you mentioned. I saw the 'smocking' subheading and that brought back a memory. I'm one of those people who hates seams and tags and anything made with any percentage of wool etc. I tolerate it much better now, but when I was a kid, I couldn't consentrate on anything but how itchy/uncomfortable/irritated my skin was. I had this dress with smocking my mother made me wear and she wouldn't hear any of my complaining about how it made me itch. It had some kind of netting inside it to fortify the smocking and that drove. me. crazy. So when she wasn't looking I stuck a pair of underwear - clean ones from my dresser drawer - in between my chest and the dress. Sadly the gotchies fell out at school and were found leering at everyone from the music room floor where we had had an assembly. An announcement was made for the owners of the offending garment to claim them. AS IF! Then I got to thinking that my mother would require an accounting of why I was down a pair of panties. So I snuck back to grab them and was caught red handed. I think it was a set up. Naturally I was labeled a pervert for what reason I can't imagine because even if they were the pair I wore on my butt that day, who's to say they didn't just fall off and I was too embarassed to admit it? Does that make an 8 year old a pervert? Man people back then were so uptight. Makes me cringe with discomfort even now. Then I laugh. Yeah good times. Fun times.
clarabel, you have my sympathy. Why didn't they understand they iportance back then? But, those cat eye glasses are back in. I keep looking for a real pair that fits.
OMG Frimmy. What a horror story, you must have been horrified. Geez. Wool and other itchy stuff was so nasty. All day long you were fucking with something that hurt or itched or bagged or pinched. Sigh. Clothes are a lot more comfortable now. I don't know why people put up with that for so long.
Remember those stupid pants women wore with little belly shirts that matched? 60's. The pants ALWAYS cut into their stomachs above the navel and looked like torture.
I love Walmart clothing for the simple fact that they stamp their labels on the inside of their clothing instead of sewing tags in. That's what my fashion sense has come to but I don't care anymore. I have uniforms for work - four sets - and I don't much care about what I wear when I'm not there cuz I'm either alseep, lounging in my house or yard or at work. I don't need a designer wardrobe for that. Had one. Don't care to have one again.
Frimmy said, "An announcement was made for the owners of the offending garment to claim them. AS IF!"
LMAO!!!!!!
I think I would have taken a beating for the missing underwear from my mother. Or told her I had an accident in them in school and put them in the trash. SOMETHING!
Not about clothes - but getting "caught" in school for something - I brought a jar with baby powder in it from home for after PE. Some retarded girl who had a locker next to mine, reported that I had some white powder in a jar in my locker. I was pulled out of class and sent to the principles office while they brought in the drug sniffing dogs - and they even sent the baby powder to a lab to be tested. I was mortified at the time, but looking back - that was pretty damned funny.
I HAD TO HAVE a pair of white go-go boots in the 6th grade. I got them for Christmas.
God, we never had any say in what we got. I had these ugly high chunck heel men's shoes in 7th grade. Don't know where my parents dug them up. The jr. high I went to was 3 stories. Coming down one day, I twisted my ankle from having worn those chunky heels, and preceded to slip down a whole flight of stairs. Dropped all my papers and books, since we didn't have backpacks/book bags then. All these people staring at me. I still have a lump on my lower leg from twisting that ankle. I HATE HATE HATE double knit polyester. When you are heavy, and perhaps not as hygenic as you should have been taught to be, let me tell you, THAT SHIT STINKS! When I was in ROTC, we had to go to the Military Ball every year. When I was a freshman, my granny took me to the fabirc store, had me pick out the pattern, and the material, and made me a formal dress out of taffetta. She embrodered it for me too. I miss my clogs from then. Also when I got to jr. high, it was the first year girls were allowed to wear jeans to school. The year before, the whole school had a walk-out because girls still had to wear dresses or dress pants. Never really got any jeans though, had to wear clothes my mom made or made over. But again, my granny made me an outfit going by a picture I saw in the LAne Bryant catalog. Wore that outfit out. And, the glasses Public Aid would pay for, are the black horned rim type that are popular now. That was the last pair of plastic frames in that style I will ever wear ever.I still wear wire frames.
When I was in school, girls weren't allowed to wear any kind of pants or jeans. Gowd, I'm old.
Corina, even better than wire frames are the frameless glasses. They're pretty expensive - I paid about $500 for mine - but it's like you're not wearing glasses at all. I used to feel like I was looking through a wall at other people with my glasses, but I love these things.
I wore contacts for many years, but it seems they don't make the ones that suit me anymore and so I've gotten lazy with the glasses. But "frameless" are great.
Anon 5:06 -if you could whine and bitch as artfully and as humorously as DD, you'd be busy on your own blog, instead of being a nasty little troll on other peoples.
i totally wanted awesome thigh high black boots.....
still do.......
i wore hand me downs of various ages,types, and conditions that i tried to change around and fix up to look like the poupular kids clothes. i used babysitting money for makeup and cheap knock-off shoes, etc ....suffered greatly until i gave up and embraced my nerdiness. i was never one of "them" and now i wonder why i ever wanted to be!!
it still astonishes me how my parents never got it about clothes proclaiming social status and just about everything else about a person during the school years....
i brought my kids up as a single parent, but i have made sure my kids always are always resonably fashionable, even if it is a yard sale or bargain rack buy. i really work at it. some of the other kids are so cruel. i am not about to have my child's self-esteem damaged because i don't care enough to provide them with the things they need to fit in.
my worst wardrobe malfunction was having my secretly purchased boob enhancers float out of my bathing suit in the neighborhood pool on a crowded Saturday. my friends? laughed and pointed at me as the cute college boy lifeguard fished them out and asked loudly who they belonged to!!
went to another pool after that for sure!!
Funny you should mention the frameless, Anon., been leaning that way for my new glasses when they are due. I also wanted the white go-go boots because my friend Rita Yates had them, as well as the "hip hugger" bell bottoms and belly shirts that looked good on her. ah well, such is life. I tried to make sure my son just have clothes; where we lived, the fancy stuff would have just been stolen. I do admit to not being very good at keeping up his clothes. I feel bad about that. A lot of stuff that I wasn't taught to do at a young age, is hard to make myself do now.
Pat, you're not the only one that wasn't allowed to wear pants to school. And boys weren't allowed to wear jeans or sweatshirts, either. Shorter skirts were coming in style when I was in high school, SO I would leave the house with a knee length skirt on & by the time I got to school it was several inches shorter.
In grade school, all I had were several jumpers my mother made & hand me downs from my sister. Had five outfits every year. One for each day of the week. In Jr Hi, it got a little better because with my sister being five years older she wasn't outgrowning her clothes as fast. Our mother made everything we wore from first grade on. She was a decent sewer, but all I ever wanted was a store bought outfit like the other kids. By the time I was in High school, at least I could convience her which patterns to buy, but she always bought the material. First year I was in college she would send me care packages with 4-6 new 'little wool shift dresses'. My roommate would be so jel-us. This was the roomie that got all her clothes from the best department stores in Pittsburgh. And I was jel-us. She had SIX winter coats. I had two. One was a real winter jacket and the other was really a spring wool dress coat that my mother added extra lining too.
When I got my first real job, I would go shopping every payday and buy myself a new outfit. The Village store was next door to where I worked - always went in to ckeck out what was on sale each week. Oh, and bought myself a pair of kick ass black pantent leather knee high boots.
Ralph Lauren is still OK as far as I'm concerned. I also remember that we had sweaters with our initials embroidered in the middle. For some reason we called them "Garland sweaters."
Fiona,
I remember top siders! I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you had a trapper keeper!
Oh I would love to get my hands on a paper dress. Its so mod fashion. Specially the warhol one.
I love vintage bohemian fashion. I use to be the Carry bradshaw in school and college. Until life just stopped and other things like bills came more important than clothing and etc.
Speaking of school... it wasn't a place to learn and socialize. School became a battle ground for me and I had to use my wits and stubborn determination just to get through every single day. There was no room in my head for learning... I was too busy just trying to survive the name-calling, hair pulling dehumanizing experience of life in the public school system.
As bad as my home life was I'd have to say that the experiences I had throughout my years in the school environment is what really fucked me up. I'm 50-something now and it's taken all these years to get my head on straight. Looking back I don't blame the kids... I blame their parents and how they brought them up.
I never had fashinable clothes but it wouldn't have made any difference. Once you're labeled an outcast nothing is going to change that.
The perils of school fashion never change and there's always a reason for kids to pick on you no matter what.
The one thing I desperately wanted I never got. It still bothers me. I was even consistent about it and asked for it every year for 3 years. Every birthday, Christmas, everything. I finally got a knock off but would never wear it because it made me cry to look at it.
I just wanted to look normal and fit in. It wasn't really about lables, maybe I should write about it. Therapy. Maybe I should post a pic, then you'd see. Some of you know.
I had all the "good clothes" but still got picked on. My parents wouldn't let me skip any grades but I had a special curriculum that sent me to upper level classes with older kids 2 days a week. I also looked extremely young for my age which didn't help and wore kids clothes while everyone else had fashionable teen clothes. Oh well. It balances out in the end.
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