Fashions of the times

Susan Cheever

Exercise 23. Make up 10 sentences with the words given above.

Read the text

You always dress for travel and for dinner. You always carry a hankie. You never, ever apply makeup in public.

No linen or white before Easter or after Labor Day. Only white for bap­tisms and brides. Only black for funerals, and never black in the sum­mer.

Those were the old rules, passed down in my family from mother to daughter with the unquestioned authority of the Ten Commandments.

Here are the new rules, passed down from mother to daughter with the provisional authority of the adult who pays the phone bill: you never wear clothes with food on them; clothes should not have holes in them; clothes should not be visibly dirty. Sarah, my 15-year-old, calls these rules "Mother being annoy­ing."

There were lots of rules in the old days. My great-grandmother wore long, black skirts with high-laced boots. Her hair was in a bun above her high-necked blouse. She never went out without two petticoats: one flannel and one sheer cotton.

My mother tried to live by the rules too. "Women with brown eyes can't wear blue," my mother's step­mother told her. My mother still doesn't wear blue. Her pocketbook and shoes always match.

My father liked women who wore pretty dresses. He disliked dark col­ors, and he thought that opaque tights were a statement of strident political intent. He also thought women's hair should be curly, although he had a horrified fascina­tion with the unwieldy instruments of the curling process. Somehow we were supposed to have wavy hair without actually waving it - a difficult task in a family where hair grew as straight as good intentions.

The old rules were just the begin­ning of a fashion catechism that defined generations - that separates the stylish Us from the ignorant Them. My generation tried to throw out all the rules. We talked a lot about judging people by who they were and not what they wore. As far as I can tell, that was just talk.

I can still spend hours dressing to go somewhere, trying to find a look that follows the rules of fashion, the rules of personal expression and the rules of not caring about fashion, all at the same time. This is too short, that doesn't go with that, that looks too teen-age, this looks matronly. This makes me look fat, that makes me look too pale. As I stand in front of the mirror, Sarah sometimes laughs at me. "You look fine, Mom," she says.

My daughter doesn't want to be the stylish Us; she doesn't care about being Them. She just wants to be seen as Herself.

But she has hundreds of rules of her own. For years my daughter would wear only pink and only dresses. Now she wears only black and forest green. Her favorite pants are blue jeans with torn knees. "These aren't holes,'' she says indignantly when I protest. "These are ventilation!" At 15 she has developed a set of person­al fashion rules more definite and individual than anything my mother or I ever would have dared.

But as they say, every journey is a return journey. Sarah's hair is often pulled back in a bun. To dress up, she has a long, black embroidered skirt that she wears with black lace-up boots and a turtleneck. I think my great-grandmother would be pleased.

Fashion, after all, is rules - what changes is who makes the rules.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-24