Clothes
Someone has written, “To an extent, we are what we wear.” The longer I live and the more “people watching” I do, I believe this is true. I just finished reading of a couple making wedding plans. The bride suddenly exclaimed, “Tommy, we have not even discussed the most important decision.”
“What is that?” Tommy questioned
“Why, darling, what am I going to wear?”
I have a friend in the “winter time” of her life who has told me, “As I look back on the exciting events in my life, I can also remember what clothes I wore during those times.”
I pride myself in not being superstitious (after all, I did own a black cat). But when I coached the Anderson High School Girls Golf Team for nine years, I always wore something red and green to every golf meet (even knit myself a sweater with a lot of red and green). If our team won, I found myself wanting to wear the same outfit for the next golf meet. – thinking our team had a better chance of winning if I did. I wasn’t the only coach who felt that way. The coach of the Madison Heights Girls golf teams always wore red and black, and Bill Green, the boys’ basketball coach at Marian High School in those days always wore his purple sweater to every game, believing it was a good luck charm.
No doubt you have noticed how the styles of clothing have changed over these past years – become much more relaxed. In the early 60s, my parents had flown here from California a couple of times (really to see their grandchildren) for a week or so. To board an airplane, my mother always wore a dress with nylon hosiery and a hat, while my dad always wore a suit with a white shirt and tie. Today, if you walk down any airport concourse, you see all styles of clothing, even pajamas, but rarely, if ever, do you see a woman wearing hosiery, a dress and a hat or a man in a suit and tie unless he is part of the crew and he is in uniform. These days, the same can be said for the way people dress when they go to church, shop in stores or attend a funeral.
Personally, I have mixed emotions about these changes. Is our more relaxed style of dress a sign of more relaxed times? I’m not sure. Are we being more honest with ourselves? Or have we lost some of our self-respect by not being more concerned about how we look in public? I must admit that there are times I feel more comfortable in a t-shirt in public even when I know my mother would not wear one in the privacy of her home.
Yet, it is also true that I also experience a certain amount of satisfaction when I put on a nice outfit. I don’t believe this is just a female trait. I recently heard of young man, who because of his life style had never owned a suit. When he was asked to be a pall bearer for a family member’s funeral, he decided he would buy one. When the service was over, he was heard to say, “This is the first time in my life when I know I really look good.”
One more comment about clothes: Don’t we wish we owned stock in a blue jean factory! If so, we would all be millionaires.