What did I wear when I was young? I think I should start this by coming up with the way we were dressed from the beginning (when we were born.) In those days the first thing a baby wore, after he or she was bathed, was a diaper made of birds-eye cotton material. Often the material was bought by the yard and hemmed on the sewing machine. The baby was then dressed in an undershirt with a band around the tummy to cover the umbilical cord; a kimono, usually made of flannel. Next the baby was wrapped in a blanket that was folded up like an envelope. Finally, the baby was given to mama.
Boys and girls were dressed almost alike except the way the diaper was worn. Boys had blue trimmings and girls, pink. When girls were dressed to go someplace, they wore very long underskirts and dresses. I am not sure at what point the boys were dressed in boy clothes, maybe four to six months. They wore little booties to keep their little toes warm and then, on down the line, socks and soft-soled shoes were okay until they began to want to stand, then semi hard-soles until they learned to take steps and were ready for hard soles.
Back up to the diaper stage: Babies always wore rubber pants over the diaper, for obvious reasons! When babies had to go; they went. After potty training was over, boys and girls dressed differently. We girls had pretty little dresses, slips and bloomers; boys wore shirts and pants and suits.
By the time I started to school we girls always wore dresses, long stockings held up by supporters (a sort of "harness" put on over the shoulder and fastened to the top of the stockings). Dresses came below the knees. Shoes had shoelaces by then, I believe, but I can remember buttoning my shoes with a buttonhook at some point in time. We had muffs to put our hands in plus mittens and scarves and hoods that came down over our ears. When it was muddy, we wore overshoes with buckles; 2 or 4 or even 6! We had coats of various materials. Mine were hand-me-downs quite often through the years; I just took it in stride as they were new to me.
I should mention long-legged underwear that we had to wear in winter. How I hated to have to wear them as the long stockings underneath made our legs look kinda lumpy. So when the weather started warming toward the last of April I (we) would roll our underwear legs up above our knees and pull the stockings up (by this time we were wearing garters instead of supporters) and suffer for "beauty’s sake” until we almost reached home, then go through the process of re-dressing so mom or dad wouldn’t catch on to what we'd done. Think of that: Was that silly or what?!
I should mention the types of materials that our clothing was made of. For women and girls dresses: Cotton, gingham, voile, rayon, wool, silk, chiffon, velvet. For trimming: Rick-rack, binding trim, ribbon, lace, etc. Our shoes changed styles from high top to slippers, pumps, high heels. Patent leather was popular at one time.
The men and boys wore, for everyday, mostly blue bib overalls, blue chambray shirts and shoes with leather laces. Some wore white shirts and dress pants. At one time bell bottom pants were in style when Chauncey was in high school. He liked to go with the flow, so he got a pair. As soon as he got home he went straight to his room and changed into everyday clothes.
Dad wore celluloid collars for a long time. I think someone in the family still has his collar box! I recall a dress that he bought mom to surprise her. It was light brown and was trimmed with little beads. I think it was silk. We did our own "dry" cleaning, but I'm not sure what we used. Could it have been gasoline?
Howard used to pay we little kids a few pennies to polish his shoes. Janice gave me some of her hand me downs.
I remodeled clothes a lot so it wouldn't look like I was wearing the same things too long.
When I left home to go to business school mom took me to Pete Stingley's general store and bought me two new dresses and a few things.
I saw a Kodak picture of Raymond in his first long pants looking so darned proud. Alice always liked to look nice and still does, but she had to do without too. We had to hand wash some of our clothes after school so we'd have clean ones for the next day.
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