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Your first fashion memory

Vildy

Veteran

I was thinking back about how long I had been fascinated by clothing - I'm 75 now. When I was 2 I used to grab by mother's only pair of fancy shoes - that she could no longer wear but kept and walk up and down the hallway in them. She hated that because I would "ruin them". She certainly never did wear them again but kept them dear anyway.

Here is exactly what they looked like: 40s snakeskin slingback.

The next thing I was excited about, I was maybe three years old.
We had a restaurant and I would spend my days there with father and mother. One day I saw several girls coming down the street in what looked like bridal dresses. White and extremely poufy and with veils.
First communion dresses. I grabbed my mother and pulled her over to see. My irreligious Jewish mother was nevertheless unhappy at my clamoriing over these and claimed to know nothing about them or where you could get them. And maybe she didn't but she did seem mighty displeased. I'm sure she imagined me switching religions for the outfits. And I certainly would have!

What's your first fashion memory?

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40 replies

Latest reply was from Bijou

Runcarla

Veteran

My glamorous single aunt took me out with her to the hairdressers and we both got cuts and ’do’s. The hairdresser affixed a little net and wire butterfly with pearl beading in my hair, and then we went to see Mary Poppins at the cinema! I was wearing a pale yellow dress. The movie was released in ‘64 so I would have been 3 or 4.

I went to an experimental kindergarten that was part of a university education research program. I remember we all had portfolios of gender neutral paper dolls we had made (they looked like the stick figures for men that are on washroom doors) with clothes we cut from wallpaper sample books.

I have a memory of being at my mother’s shoulder while she finished making a dress for me. It was black corduroy with big red roses, she cut out a large rose from extra fabric to make a pocket. I was 5 or 6. When I was 7, my mom and I had a rip roaring fight over a winter coat. It was wool and either aqua or mustard wool. I refused to wear it, so it was returned and I wore my older, too small brown one for another year.

Dee

Veteran

Yes Runcarla, playing with paper doll cutouts, I loved changing up those clothing pieces and also loved dressing my Barbies dolls too.

I also remember being around 8 years old and wearing a lovely green velvet dress with a white lace collar, white leotards and black patent Mary-Janes, I felt like a princess in that outfit even though they were hand me downs from one of my older cousins.

Vildy

Veteran

oohhh, you guys, paper dolls! Yessss.

Vildy

Veteran

Do you guys remember Rootie Kazootie and his girlfriend Polka Dottie where everything she had was polka dot? Pretty sure there's a Japanese artist doing that now.

LaPed

Veteran

My Devil Dog Dungarees in preschool. I loved the name, and the fact that they looked like the jeans grown-ups wore.

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pirouette

My God mother visited the USA when I was about 4 years old and brought me back clothes that were really stylish compared to Irish fashion at the time. She was my inspiration and she died aged 104 years and was interested in fashion right up till her death. She was very generous to me all my life and instilled in me my love of fashion.

Vildy

Veteran

LA PED, that was my whole thing. I wanted to wear what grown ups wore. The communion dresses looked like bridal gowns to me.

Roberta

Veteran

My Easter outfit! Red wool coat with a faux leopard collar and matching leopard muff. I have no memory of what I wore under it, just the red and leopard outerwear for a chilly Ohio April. Heaven knows where my mother found this combination for a six-year-old in 1964.

I also remember her perusing the Bloomingdales catalogs and ordering things from New York City! I was sooo stylish when she dressed me. Then I took over in the 70s, what a mess.

Vildy

Veteran

I remember in the 60s haunting the John Wanamaker junior department in downtown Philadelphia. I was always by myself because the girls at my college did not like to either attend anything by themselves (where's the date?) or would not go downtown without a skirt suit and gloves.

I found an amazing bathrobe. I had always seen pastel bland bathrobes often like model coats. This was a full length cotton quilted robe double breasted with half dome ball buttons in brass and horizontal stripes of tomato red, mustard and navy. I'd never seen a bathrobe before that was energetic looking.

cat2

Veteran

I was a toddler when my mom made matching dresses for me and my baby doll.

Kari

Veteran

I have no idea where they came from (I’ll have to ask my mom) but the epitome of sophistication when I was a kid was a pair of adult-sized pumps in our dress up box. They had clear plastic heels (as if they were glass) and the shoe was covered in glitter or sequins - blue, green, and purple. We thought they were the best!

Kate

Veteran

Paper dolls. Oh how I loved paper dolls and dressing them up. I even made clothes for them, cutting outfits out of the Sears catalog and occasionally drawing my own.

My red corduroy overalls which I had when I was maybe 3 and loved beyond reason. My poor mother had a real task peeling me out of those. I never wanted to take them off.

When I was a little older, about 5 or 6 I guess, my mother bought me madras plaid shorts with a matching sleeveless top AND sneakers. That outfit became my next love, even when the sneakers bled onto my feet when I got them wet. I probably happily sported blue feet for a couple of days! Looks like I came by my love of plaid pants early.

Kari

Veteran

I also remember one of my mom’s friends bringing over old issues of McCall’s magazines that we would use to cut out people to use as paper dolls.

Echo

Veteran

Ooh, I remember my "Fish Fry Dress" and shoes. I wore it from about aged 2-1/2, and I wore it for quite a while, as I didn't grow much at that age! It was white with navy piping, and I had black patent leather t-strap mary janes with white piping. I loved to twirl in that dress, and I wore it every time we went out for fish on Fridays.

I also remember having Rhumba panties. I was very, very young, so my memories are sketchy, but I remember dancing at my aunt's wedding and my grandma kept telling me to keep my dress down because I pulled up my dress (to show off my ruffle pants!) and shook my tiny little butt!

These two foundational memories combined with the fact that my mum was required to wear a skirt or dress, hose and heels daily (as a school teacher!) might contribute to the fact that I am never happier than when I am "dressed up." Even my casual clothing tends to be much more dressy than most others I interact with. "Fancy clothes" are just my happy place!

cjh

(website)

Veteran

So many pictures in my mind of clothes my mom made me and my siblings! Possibly the earliest I can describe are one year’s Easter outfits for me and my two sisters. Each of us had a sleeveless gingham dress; blue, peach and lilac were the colors. Then each had a matching light coat in solid light wool with a gingham lining. She also actually wove little round baskets of reeds, painted them white and sewed drawstring tops onto them for little purses. I’m certain we all had white straw hats as well.

Around the same year, she made the girls navy wool plaid jumpers and the boys had corduroy collarless blazers.

I could make a book of the many pretty clothes I had throughout my childhood years.

Runcarla

Veteran

I’ve posted this photo before (me and my stylish aunt at Grandma’s house dressed for church Easter Sunday.) Grandma had a great dress up box with Aunt Mary and my Mom’s old party dresses from the 50’s. They were all pouffy chiffon and netting, and below the knee made them full length princess dresses. I think I was a princess in one of those gowns every Halloween until I was 11!

Funnily, I never had dolls or a Barbie or an easy bake oven. My mother was an artist and may have had a feminist streak. She didn’t approve of colouring books either - though I had lots of crayons, paint, and paper.

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Carol

(website)

Veteran

I was in middle school, the time of emerging adulthood, when the supermodel era began. I also began watching MTV. George Michael came out with a dance song called “Too Funky.” It had an accompanying video with Linda Evangelista, Tyra Banks and others wearing the most outrageous outfits and strutting their stuff. It turned me into a junkie for magazines, and anything I could find out about New York.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2DVwSVIIo

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rachylou

Veteran

I have a lot of very early fashion memories. First argument with my mum was maybe 2-3 yrs of age, lol I definitely played in her wardrobe. She had this one pretty pretty dress: a deep pink with embroidery under the bust and pleated chiffon sleeves. Then there was a dress my dad gifted her that she hated, lol. It was spectacular but also very Cher - kinda best on someone very tall.

Anonymous

Halloween when I was in preschool. I had on this leopard costume- think my mom or grandma made it. My grandma was carrying me on her back and my long tail was dragging on the ground (grandma was short like me).

Before I remembered that I thought of earrings. I wasn't allowed to get my ears pierced till I was a teen, so I wore clip ons. They hurt and caused such dents in my ears!

Jaime

(website)

Veteran

Not super early, but I remember pouring over the Sears catalog around the age of 8 (yes, it was a thing then).

Jaime

My first memory is from 1 st grade. A girl in my class wore white gogo type boots, a suede fringe purse, crocheted vests. I wanted to dress like this SO bad but my mom put me in traditional kids type clothing. When the fashionable girl won the coveted May Queen role I became convinced how important dressing cool could be.

UmmLila (Lisa)

Veteran

My mom had a pair of brown crocodile pumps from I Magnin in San Francisco. Size 7. They were way too big for me. She had kept them but didn’t wear them anymore. In Saudi Arabia in the 1970s, they were stored in our « trunk room » along with other hardly-used items and large green bottles of « mash » used to make (illegal) alcohol. Somehow I remember the fermented sugary smell of the mash and’ the crocodile shoes together as I clumped up and down the trunk room in them

And then after that I think about being 12 or 13 and reading censored issues of Seventeen magazine and wanting to be Diane Lane and wear little tweed blazers in the fall. And have A Little Romance. In September in Dhahran it was like ninety percent humidity and ninety to a hundred Fahrenheit so that was a non starter.

Janet

(website)

Veteran

My earliest memories are mostly of my mom’s and sister’s outfits (my sister is 10 years older than I am and I remember some terrible rows over the micro mini skirts she tried to wear!).

But I loved playing with my Barbies and had lots of outfits for them. This may be really weird, but I remember being about 4 years old, and being fascinated with the little catalog booklet of Barbie outfits. Each outfit had a name along with the photo, and I used to ask my dad to sit with me and read the outfit names out loud with me. LOL. I liked the names of things as a kid — I would make up songs of street names when we’d pass them (I bet my mom would laugh today if she knew I still remember singing “Darleigh Road!”). So I think the combination of visual and sound appealed to me even then. My favorite childhood book, The Bear Party, featured beautiful illustrations of costumes (koala bears who had a costume party!), which also captivated me.

A little later, one of my favorite times of year was back to school shopping. I loved how the rich colors of fall started appearing (I was also a weird kid who LOVED school until I hit about 13 years old). Does anyone else remember Garanimals? I remember laughing with my parents that they should have made them for adults too, since many adults seemed to need help “matching” the tops and bottoms of outfits! Hey, it was the 70s, patterns and colors were hectic.

Vildy

Veteran

My mom gave in and bought me a Barbie. I was not a girl who liked or had baby dolls. But "everybody" had Barbies and I remember they were three dollars. This was the original Barbie with black and white striped swimsuit and black hair. I guess I must have had a booklet like that, too. I do know that she refused to buy one single outfit for the doll and I had no allowance. She could sew but didn't offer to make doll outfits nor teach me how. But I must have gazed at those clothes hundreds of times. They are still my favorite wardrobe and I think I often dress like that!

April

Veteran

Hmm. Earliest memory would have to be age 3-4, 1966/67. My dad was in the navy then and we were stationed in the hinterlands of Georgia, one of those houses where the driveway ends at a highway.

I remember my mother dressing me up for church - Vatican II was long over but she clung to chapel hats for perhaps a decade afterward.

I actually loved our chapel hats - hers was like a navy lace mantilla and mine was like a white lace yarmulke. I hated the bobby pins that pulled my curly hair. I think we even wore gloves. I had patent leather mary janes and probably a little purse.

To my mother's everlasting dismay I was a short chubster. She didn't get to dress a true Barbie until my sister came along, 8 years after me.

Vildy

Veteran

You know, I had no idea there was an original blonde Barbie. Everybody in my neighborhood had the brunette one. I would have liked a blonde one since I was blonde.

https://www.pinterest.com/susi.....59-1960-ba

Vildy

Veteran

April, those little lace chapel hats would be a fab summer accessory today. If only we were invited to Ascot.

Dana

(website)

Veteran

The most vivid 1st memory of my clothes was around 5 or 6. I had a little white pique dress with some pintucks on the bodice and a small red/white gingham (detachable?) bow. I won't go into the whole conversation, but it was the first time I remember talking about the "rules" of fashion.

Helena

Veteran

I love this thread! Vildy, your communion dress story reminds me of a story my Dad loves to tell and an early fashion memory for me ... when it was time for my first communion, the place to go for dresses in Toronto was 'Little Italy', where many shops did the really frilly and fancy wedding dress looking ones (as an Irish immigrant, this was a big occasion for my mom too; we did a celebratory party with Mass at our house and all).

Anyways, I loved a dress I tried on, floor-length, veil, gloves and all, but me being me, even at 7 was worried about it being too costly to ask my parents for. The very-expressive Italian shop owner declared with confidence: "Your father - he loves you! Money is NO OBJECT!" Lmao ... now that is a sales technique. Suffice it to say, my not-rich father decided he agreed and the dress came home with us!

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