Photos Trigger Memories, #1

Daughter Anna recently posted a photo of a group of four of us at my 21st birthday party, back in 1967. Standing with Mike and myself are my close friend Heather and Mike’s mate Tony Munro, who would be best man at our wedding a year or so later.

Here I was wearing my very favourite rich emerald green satin, floor length dress, which the family dressmaker, Mrs. Lucas, fashioned into an elegant halter neck number. Straps crossed on the back, and a flat bow was at the front where the straps joined the dress front. The fabric had a band of heavy machined embroidery along one side featuring paisley motifs with little lacy cutouts, which was about 40cm wide, and there was enough of it left to make the 3/4 sleeve jacket which I’m wearing in that pic. I don’t know or remember what, if anything, happened to that outfit. I don’t remember seeing it since packing up to leave the Great Boulder Mine in 1977, but surely not … but anyway, it could be under a pile of blankets packed into a brown painted wooden crate still in storage (just one of the untidinesses of our lives.) The fabric was bought for me on a shopping day with Mum in some of her favourite Sydney shops, all of them quite upscale institutions which stocked high quality brands, many, perhaps even most of them imported from England or ‘the Continent’. (I mean, from her experience, where else would one buy real quality in 1960’s Australia?)

Our hectic university student social lives in those days required several long dresses, most of which we ran up ourselves, as styles were simple then, and our budgets were low. The young men required a dinner suit, and all this formal gear was worn probably at least two dozen times in most years, possibly more for those living halls of residence on campus. This green dress was such a favourite that I saw no need for a new one for this party, much to Mum’s disappointment.

She was 16 when WWII broke out and clothing coupons took effect in Australia. Her own post-school social life, courtship and wedding (1943) were all carried during that austere period of rationed clothing, which lasted until 1948. That helps explain why she often bought what was pretty expensive clothing which I now realise was in part a reaction to what she and all other Australians went through in her youth, a kind of revisiting her dreams through her daughter’s young life.

However, she always went for quality materials and manufacture in basic classic designs. Because such designs never dated, with proper care they lasted for many years. I’ve adopted that approach, too, along with another clothing ‘rule’ which was to always change out of her ‘going out’ shoes and clothes when she returned home. (I’ve always had certain clothes I never wear outside the front gate) Of course, her parents’ generation (my grandparents) survived the privations of the Great Depression, so it was little wonder that to my eyes she often went a bit overboard spending on quite expensive clothes, and my wedding was another occasion full of examples of Mum really ripping apart the purse strings. I was once in a Launceston women’s upscale clothing boutique, trying to decide whether to buy a very expensive Diane von Furstenberg 3 piece outfit – silk skirt, wool jumper and silk scarf, in jungle print and black, browns, golds and cream. It was gorgeous, looked terrific on me, but the price, AU$400, was a huge amount of money in 1984. I’d never spent that much on anything other than furniture. (my top of the range Bernina sewing machine had cost about $300 some 10? years before) Most of that money was a gift from Mum, to which I added a bit, but she seemed shocked when I told her her the outfit’s price. I think she’d expected I’d buy a new couch or something for our home, not something personal like an outfit!

What tipped me over the brink of my hesitation ? The sales woman said “Well, it’s really investment dressing, isn’t it?” … which I immediately recognised as another one of Mum’s underlying rules, and without further ado bought it. The silk skirt wore out many years ago; after some years I found the jumper didn’t fit me as well as it used to so I ‘lent it’ to my friend Kitty who’d always loved it; and I still wear the ~150cm x 60cm silk scarf many times a year, winter and summer. It’s a great wardrobe accessory which I never travel without. A quality investment indeed!