Learn to 'make do'!

{1965}

In reading a post on Jezebel (last Monday), one of the authors wrote about an explosive episode from this season of Mad Men. She wondered why Peggy does not bother to purchase a new, updated wardrobe. To those of you who are younger (or older and just plain forgot), people did not turn around and buy a new wardrobe (or whatever they wanted) on a whim, like we are accustomed to doing now. Many women were skilled in sewing for themselves, at home. Certain types of working women, went out and purchased "nice" clothes on a seasonal basis. I do not know how many stories my mother has told me about certain expensive outfits she purchased for events she had to attend (Her wardrobe was amazing. It could not be passed down for my sisters and I are much taller than she is). We, the people, didn't buy new things all of the time. Not for those of us who grew up upper middle class or below that. Hand-me-downs were a common thing too. I don't know how many hand-me-down dresses I inherited that were from the sixties when I was little in the seventies.

A great many people wore they same styles past there prime. When I was a child, there were several schoolteachers in my elementary school who dressed like it was 1968 and it was 1980. They did not do this to be 'kitsch' like some of us do now. One teacher was Miss Spaulding. She wore color-blocked, polyester pant suits, false eyelashes, square-toed patent leather shoes, and huge hairpieces. She frightened me. Looking back, her out of step style must have made a bit of an impression on me.

As for the television program - Mad Men - it is going into a favorite visual period for me — the middle to late nineteen-sixties. So sharp…and I don't have to spend a dime!

{fall of 1964}

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