by Rose Madeline Mula

As the old fogey I suppose I must accept that I am at this stage of my life, I have often been very critical of the lifestyle and fashions of today. You know — things like brand new, (expensive!) jeans with ragged holes, multiple tattoos, face and body piercings, purple dreadlocks, everyone clutching a cell phone in one hand and a water bottle in the other every waking moment... What are they thinking? I ask myself. But then it occurs to me that considering some of the customs and styles of my youth, today’s generation might very well ask, what were we thinking?

Poodle skirt from the 1950s, Wikimedia Commons; A poodle skirt & matching collar in the permanent collection of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

One such example is the dead animal my mother draped around her shoulders — well, the sanitized, dressed skin of a dead animal, better known as a fur piece. A fur coat was bad enough, but this creature (formerly a fox) had a face, glass eyes, and a mouth that opened and clasped onto its tail, securing it around Mom’s neck. It was her pride and joy, a status symbol of the times, which in later years was replaced by a mink stole — a necessity in every fashionable matron’s wardrobe.

Completing the sartorial costume at all times were a hat (usually adorned with a small veil and feathers or artificial flowers, depending on the season) and gloves, preferably fine kid leather in fall and winter and white cotton in spring and summer. Fortunately, those accessories disappeared into oblivion long ago. I can’t remember when I last wore gloves or a hat (except for warmth or protection from the elements).

I also can’t remember the last time I wore frilly, voluminous petticoats that propped up impossibly full dresses. Yes, these may have been ridiculous — but I think far preferable to today’s skirts and dresses that are stretched so tightly across tummies and tushies that they produce a series of unsightly horizontal wrinkles that have somehow become an accepted fashion statement instead of an abomination to be banished by a steam iron. And it’s amazing how women manage to sit while their torsos are bound in those impossibly tight, short frocks. (“Frocks.” Now that’s a word that really dates me.)

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