The return of, ahem, Frankenstein

I hate to admit it to the younger readers in my audience, if I have any, but I have lived long enough to witness the rise and fall of more than a few different items from cultural grace—some of them more than once.

One example that comes to mind is bell-bottom pants. Lest any generation try to take too much credit for them, I believe they were first worn by navy sailors. Which navy and how long ago, I couldn't say, but they did not just appear on the scene in the Sixties because Pierre Cardin had a light bulb moment.

It was the counter-culture Hippies who wore them first. First after the sailors, that is. They sometimes made their own by inserting triangles of colorful fabrics into the outside seams of jeans below the knees. So their pedigree (the bell bottoms') is a tiny bit tainted anyway. Don't worry. I wore them, because they soon made their way into mainstream fashion.

Before they left that scene, though, they had morphed into polyester bells, and then into the polyester leisure suit. Since polyester could be and was made in any wild color or pattern imaginable, it caught on in a hurry in that nonconformist
atmosphere. Too big a hurry. And it was cheap. Too cheap. All of that accounts for the sleazy connotation that goes along with polyester itself. I wore it too. It was a great invention—you didn't have to iron it. But by the late 70's only used car salesmen and great-grannies wore polyester anything.

The contemporary trend of “how low can you go,” low-riding pants may seem like a recent phenomena, but they are nothing more than over-the-top (yeah right) versions of the hip-hugger bell-bottom pants that were popular in the 60's and 70's.

And I was supposed to be excited about their return? And the polyester, too? Not only was the style stale for anyone over fifty, but I looked much better in it the first time around.

Colors schemes in dress and decoration are also wicked in their ability to date an outfit or a home. One that has come and gone is the mauve and gray color combo of the 80's. If there was ever any color combo that dated a living room, it is that one.

I am so glad that we didn't build a house in the 80's because I would have done that then, and had I done so, unfortunately I would still probably have mauve carpet today. I have noticed that it is making a comeback in some venues. Even so, I won't be getting mauve carpet. Everyone who has already lived through the 80's won't be that impressed.

I am not a fashion guru; I know that. Some of the fashions I see I don't even have a name for, and a few of the reruns weren't gone long enough for me to notice. But that makes them really old by now, doesn't it?

Lately, at least, designers have had the grace to put the word “retro” in their narrative somewhere instead of trying to take credit for a rerun.

My kids wonder why I don't get very excited about this or that fashion, or color, or new idea while they act like they invented the latest thing themselves. “I was the first one in Utah to have them; I know it.” (My daughter who lived in the “granola years” actually said that about her first pair of Birkenstocks.)

Whatever. That would be me. I had them the first time they came around, not the second or third. Only they were Dr. Scholl's exercise sandals.