Finery and Frippery
Jan. 27th, 2007 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaFor most of my life, I paid as little attention to clothing as possible.
To some extent, this was a matter of self-protection. My mother genuinely cares very little about the appearance of clothing, hers or other people's, as long as it's comfortable and appropriate for the occasion. My parents were also very, very frugal when I was a child (indeed, they appear to have only stopped being quite so frugal since the little sibs hit adolescence). The upshot of this is that I did not get to choose my own clothing until I was about 12. Prior to that, the majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my four-years-older cousin, a non-trivial percentage of which were, in turn, hand-me-downs from her three-years-older sister. Both sisters were blond, and their mother not very choosy, so these were clothes that were usually in decidedly non-natural fabrics, in colors that didn't suit me, and in fashions about eight years out of date. I got mercilessly teased about these, of course. My mother didn't understand what I was complaining about, of course - they fit, didn't they? The rest of my clothes were things that my paternal grandmother purchased for me, being a woman of fashion herself, and perhaps slightly embarrassed to take me out in public in what my mother dressed me in; while these rarely fit my sense of myself either, they at least tended to be in colors that matched mine.
This finally ended a couple of years after puberty, when the hand-me-downs no longer even came close to fitting; after that, my parents began letting me order an item or two whenever they sent off to Land's End or L.L. Bean for something. I typically chose things in colors I knew would match without any work, which meant black whenever possible, blue when it wasn't, and occasionally white or purple for contrast. The few things I purchased for myself out of my own money were t-shirts for various bands, events, or organizations; I could get by for a week on my MOB shirts alone. After college, I picked up a few things in batik prints from World Market, mostly sarongs and caftans, but still did very little clothes shopping as such. I hated the whole process of pawing through a rack of things, looking for the size that wouldn't make me look like a sausage, trying one on, looking like a sausage, and trying again over and over. I did pick up a fondness for hats, as those I could try on instantly and generally didn't make me look any fatter.
This state of things continued mostly unabated until the house fire on Father's Day '98, which wiped out pretty much everything in my wardrobe except the clothes I was wearing at the time and a few things - mostly sweaters and jackets - that had been left in the front room and were fine once the smoke was washed out. The staff at the Montessori school I was subbing at took up a collection and bought me about four outfits that I could wear to work - not stuff I would normally have worn, including a few tank tops and leggings, mostly in beige and turquoise. About a month after that, I started what has now become a habit - checking the clearance sections of several different large-women's retailers about once a quarter and ordering a few things. My wardrobe has long since become replenished, but somehow in those years just post-fire I acquired a taste for clothing, at least as long as I don't have to go anywhere to pick it out.
Having one's entire wardrobe destroyed by fire is also a good way to develop a personal fashion concept, it turns out. Previously, most of my wardrobe was defined by what my mother thought was appropriate, and among other things, she was of the opinion that skirts are church-wear and formal-wear, and perhaps work-wear for a professor on the days she has class, but not casual-wear and not really everyday school-wear either. So my wardrobe ran to pants and shorts, with a few dresses and a skirt or two. That revelation will probably shock the fool out of anyone who met me post-'99, as I far prefer skirts to pants - it was the discovery of garter belts and stockings to replace pantyhose that did that for me. I only own one pair of jeans now, and I wear them perhaps twice a year.
Which brings me to my current predicament: a number of the broomstick skirts purchased when I was first building a teaching wardrobe (read: the first time I both needed business-casual sorts of clothes and had the money available to buy them) have entered one of the typical failure modes for such items of clothing. The elastic has failed. To my chagrin, on at least three of the skirts the elastic is the only thing that has failed on the skirt; it is otherwise perfectly serviceable, without rips or stains.
Now, the ones that have obvious fatigue or other issues, I am perfectly willing to retire. But there are those three that I really would prefer not to send to the fabric-scrap pile without at least trying to revive them. So, those of you who are somewhat familiar with sewing: how difficult would it be to either replace the elastic, or, failing that, add a drawstring to the skirt? Can the second be done without cutting multiple holes in the waistband? Is there anyone local with a sewing machine who can give me a hand?
To some extent, this was a matter of self-protection. My mother genuinely cares very little about the appearance of clothing, hers or other people's, as long as it's comfortable and appropriate for the occasion. My parents were also very, very frugal when I was a child (indeed, they appear to have only stopped being quite so frugal since the little sibs hit adolescence). The upshot of this is that I did not get to choose my own clothing until I was about 12. Prior to that, the majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my four-years-older cousin, a non-trivial percentage of which were, in turn, hand-me-downs from her three-years-older sister. Both sisters were blond, and their mother not very choosy, so these were clothes that were usually in decidedly non-natural fabrics, in colors that didn't suit me, and in fashions about eight years out of date. I got mercilessly teased about these, of course. My mother didn't understand what I was complaining about, of course - they fit, didn't they? The rest of my clothes were things that my paternal grandmother purchased for me, being a woman of fashion herself, and perhaps slightly embarrassed to take me out in public in what my mother dressed me in; while these rarely fit my sense of myself either, they at least tended to be in colors that matched mine.
This finally ended a couple of years after puberty, when the hand-me-downs no longer even came close to fitting; after that, my parents began letting me order an item or two whenever they sent off to Land's End or L.L. Bean for something. I typically chose things in colors I knew would match without any work, which meant black whenever possible, blue when it wasn't, and occasionally white or purple for contrast. The few things I purchased for myself out of my own money were t-shirts for various bands, events, or organizations; I could get by for a week on my MOB shirts alone. After college, I picked up a few things in batik prints from World Market, mostly sarongs and caftans, but still did very little clothes shopping as such. I hated the whole process of pawing through a rack of things, looking for the size that wouldn't make me look like a sausage, trying one on, looking like a sausage, and trying again over and over. I did pick up a fondness for hats, as those I could try on instantly and generally didn't make me look any fatter.
This state of things continued mostly unabated until the house fire on Father's Day '98, which wiped out pretty much everything in my wardrobe except the clothes I was wearing at the time and a few things - mostly sweaters and jackets - that had been left in the front room and were fine once the smoke was washed out. The staff at the Montessori school I was subbing at took up a collection and bought me about four outfits that I could wear to work - not stuff I would normally have worn, including a few tank tops and leggings, mostly in beige and turquoise. About a month after that, I started what has now become a habit - checking the clearance sections of several different large-women's retailers about once a quarter and ordering a few things. My wardrobe has long since become replenished, but somehow in those years just post-fire I acquired a taste for clothing, at least as long as I don't have to go anywhere to pick it out.
Having one's entire wardrobe destroyed by fire is also a good way to develop a personal fashion concept, it turns out. Previously, most of my wardrobe was defined by what my mother thought was appropriate, and among other things, she was of the opinion that skirts are church-wear and formal-wear, and perhaps work-wear for a professor on the days she has class, but not casual-wear and not really everyday school-wear either. So my wardrobe ran to pants and shorts, with a few dresses and a skirt or two. That revelation will probably shock the fool out of anyone who met me post-'99, as I far prefer skirts to pants - it was the discovery of garter belts and stockings to replace pantyhose that did that for me. I only own one pair of jeans now, and I wear them perhaps twice a year.
Which brings me to my current predicament: a number of the broomstick skirts purchased when I was first building a teaching wardrobe (read: the first time I both needed business-casual sorts of clothes and had the money available to buy them) have entered one of the typical failure modes for such items of clothing. The elastic has failed. To my chagrin, on at least three of the skirts the elastic is the only thing that has failed on the skirt; it is otherwise perfectly serviceable, without rips or stains.
Now, the ones that have obvious fatigue or other issues, I am perfectly willing to retire. But there are those three that I really would prefer not to send to the fabric-scrap pile without at least trying to revive them. So, those of you who are somewhat familiar with sewing: how difficult would it be to either replace the elastic, or, failing that, add a drawstring to the skirt? Can the second be done without cutting multiple holes in the waistband? Is there anyone local with a sewing machine who can give me a hand?
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 06:32 am (UTC)If it's some other construction, I'd probably need a good description or picture to offer a suggestion.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 10:34 am (UTC)waistbands with long, stringlike things. But a safety pin
works just as well.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-30 07:40 am (UTC)* Although a large part of that has to do with lack of flexibility in my knees and hips, making it hard to get the damn things over my feet and aligned properly, and this could be remedied with a course of flexibility exercises if I weren't too lazy to get off my ass and do it.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-30 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 04:19 am (UTC)I have trouble finding knee-highs that fit, too, although I have confirmed that they do occasionally exist, unlike the pantyhose.