Shamrock Suit

Time for another fashion flashback! I have so much fun giggling and guffawing while re-creating the appalling fashion faux pas of my youth and--despite my rubbish drawing skills--I have to admit that the outfits are pretty authentically rendered. Don't believe me? Compare my drawing of the psychedelic jumpsuit with this photo of the real thing. I just happened to find the photo when I was visiting my dad over Christmas, and I was quite surprised at how accurately I'd recalled the whole Peter Maxishness of it all, drawing only from memory.

Moving forward a few years, here I am sporting a belted pantsuit. Aren't you green with envy?



What kind of an eleven-year-old owns and wears something like this? And wears it with a smile on her face? Answer: The kind of eleven-year-old I was. As I recall (and my memory may be faulty), one of my aunts gave me this pantsuit. Maybe she was trying to point me toward a career as a girl scout leader, I don't know, but I remember first thinking it was hideous, but then gradually growing to like it. I believe I even wore this to school, but maybe I only wore it on special occasions (like St. Patrick's Day). NB: I never did own any curly-toed slippers like this, but I couldn't resist adding them in when I was drawing this. That's the kind of thing that, as an "artist," I can get away with doing.

Acid (Fashion) Flashback

This is meant to be a drawing of me when I was about five-years-old. (Obviously, I am an embarrassingly poor artist.) It's not a very good likeness of me, but I have to say it is a surprisingly accurate rendering of the zip-up-the-front psychedelic jumpsuit my mom sewed for me.

Cue the Strawberry Alarm Clock and the Steppenwolf!

I picked out the shiny, slinky, static-clingy (rayon? Dacron? Orlon? Klingon?) fabric myself, and I'm certain I picked out the pattern as well from the 4-inch thick Simplicity pattern book. My mom then sewed it up for me, taking all manner of short-cuts, as she was wont to do when sewing. She always dispensed with facings and did all hemming on the machine rather than by hand as purists would do. I can't blame her--by the time she made the jumpsuit she had me, my toddler brother, and my infant sister to contend with. It's a wonder she had time to sew anything.

I adored this jumpsuit. It was by far the coolest item of clothing I had ever owned.

Sadly, I outgrew it rather quickly. I remember running around with the hems of the pantlegs flapping at about mid-calf. My mom intervened and hemmed up the legs to make them shorts-length. At some point a photo was taken of me sitting at the edge of a swimming pool in the abbreviated psychedelic shortysuit. That photo eventually made its way into a photo cube that sat on my dad's office desk for years until he retired in the mid-1980s. My dad was our high school's band director, so my friends (most of whom were in band) all got to look at my younger, much groovier self every time they went into my dad's office for their sightreading tests. Hope it didn't interfere with their ability to concentrate and make them flub up.

Shout out to Writermama (I know she loves that term "shout out") for the idea of blogging fashion memories and for her recommendation of the illustrated memoir Love, Loss, and What I Wore by Ilene Beckerman, which I absolutely loved and which gave me the courage to try doing my own drawings--even though I suck! I may rip off her book in its entirety. I've already made a list of some memorable (not to mention laughable) fashion forays of mine that might lend themselves to illustration and ridicule (e.g., the sexpot band uniform, the urine-yellow swim suit, and the shamrock pantsuit).

Update: Thanks to all who expressed concern about my right boob. The results from the second mammogram came back today and were normal. Whew!