Fashion through the ages
I was exhausted today. Crawled into the house, made some sort of desultory attempt at preparing dinner and collapsed into a chair in the family room. Maybe the fact that finding sleep last night had been a bit on the dicey side, listening to the village clock strike one, then two o’clock, then having to rise at 6:15 a.m., explains my torpor. I dozed in the chair while the TV played on; no particular channel selected, just background noise until I heard these words: “Your clothes look like they came with a walker.” I was instantaneously up and awake. Another jibe at older people, supposedly a humorous comparison of style and age.
My gosh, today you have to weigh every word you say about almost everything. The PC police are on patrol. God forbid that you slip and offend someone with an errant noun, or implied insult, but it seems to be not only OK, but widely acceptable to poke fun at the nether end of the age spectrum. And, since I am standing right near the upper reaches of that timeline, I am taking umbrage. Of course, most of those who are making fun of their elders won’t know what umbrage means, so I will have to translate.
The program that engendered this pique is a frothy, guilty pleasure called “What Not To Wear,” no longer a weekly show, but still in syndication. The hosts of this program find it amusing to tell the subject of their makeover that his or her clothes are dowdy, like grandma would wear; they are frumpy like an old lady’s clothes, and so on. While the hosts advise the subject to dress in an “age-appropriate” fashion, which is good, they have penchant for using references to “older” as synonymous with ugly.
The aim of such programs is to teach someone who has no clue about fashion how to dress for their body type and age, and I guess there is a body type called “Grandmother.” This type, according to them, and repeated by others in a variety of circumstances, sports attire that includes white shoes and matching belts, muumuus, “Mom” jeans and assorted cotton underthings. Hair styles don’t require a smoothing iron but run the gamut of outdated salon options including permanent waves … shudder!
So, what did your grandmother wear? Mine wore simple dresses, most made from the same pattern. She looked fine to me. She looked like most other grandmothers did. The shoes she wore were shoes that you would associate with a grandmother until the 1970s rolled around and we all wore semi orthopedic/grandma shoes and loved them. They were age appropriate for that time. She never in her life wore jeans or trousers, separating her clothing into housedresses and Sunday best. Today grandmothers dress … well, how do they dress? Most have a wide variety of options, some of which would be considered age inappropriate.
At my 50th high school reunion, one of my classmates must have thought that it was a costume-themed event. She showed up dressed much like my high-school-aged neighbor … that is, she wore short-shorts, a tube top and long, straight hair. I guess no one had the courage to tell her that straight hair only accentuates the results of many suntans and that tube top was for someone who had only recently been introduced to gravity, but … well, I don’t want to be thought of as snarky. The rest of us did not dress like that. Heck, we didn’t even come close. Were we fashion plates? Only if fashion plates are made of Styrofoam. We dressed in jeans, T-shirts or shirts that were not tucked in because “in” was too far out, if you get my drift.
I can use my wardrobe as an of example of what grandmothers wear. I wear what fits at the moment. I look like most of the people of any age in line at any supermarket or DMV. We are comfortable, which in fashionable parlance is an anathema. After a lifetime of shoes that hurt and clothes that you had to be careful about, that restricted your movement in space, that you had to iron or pay to have dry cleaned, dressing for an ordinary day where you are not trying to impress, is OK. More than OK, it’s perfectly acceptable and age appropriate. It’s our uniform.
Truth be told, dressing well does have its advantages. Suspicious sales associates don’t follow you around the store when you look like you can afford the merchandise. Those same sales associates (the people we used to call clerks) will pay more positive attention to you if you are well put together. Good grooming and put together clothing do lend an air of competence which is important in job interviews, sales pitches and what you expect of your surgeon who is just about to remove something from your less-than-well-attired body.
And while we should be evaluating each person on the basis of their character and competence, their attire does give you a clue to what you can expect. It’s the same old same old. We don’t need uniforms except when we do. Doctors, nurses, etc. in hospitals should dress so that we don’t confuse them with visitors. Who wants their diagnosis and care made by a young man or woman dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that sports the words, too hot to handle?
Grandparents of any era have earned the right to dress as they find appropriate and to feel appreciated for who and what they are and their own eccentric, individual fashion statements. Besides which, grandparents in fancy clothes can’t play “monkey in the middle”, hide and seek, build a Lego castle on the dining room floor, make a volcano out of baking soda and vinegar or cuddle a sleeping child with a fever.
Each generation of grandparents carries their youth preferences with them, modified to accommodate hard won ease. While my grandmother never wore jeans and I wear them daily, they are most definitely not skinny jeans. I am wondering what my daughter’s generation of grandparents will wear. That generation will no doubt pay more attention to the gym that I have paid. And, in the long or short run, we can with little effort clean up nicely so as not to offend those who equate our attire with prosthetics and walkers.

Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.