Timeline

While reading Jezebel almost a year ago, I came across a post on fashion and decades and silhouettes. I was intrigued by the concept. The decade I prefer should be obvious to anyone who reads this blog with any regularity. From my unabashed love of all things Mad Men related to my hatred of the 1980s. From my fear that I’ll see someone walking down the street in a suede jumpsuit now that the 1970s are being fully accepted as a trend to my distaste for anything resembling a dropped waist.

This has nothing to do with being nostalgic for the 1960s. Nostalgia often leads to a whitewashing of the past. I can’t say that seeing all of those Cher Horowitz doppelgangers didn’t make me squeal the tiniest bit, but I try to remember the good with the bad.

No, what I crave is the silhouette. Not exact replicas. Not costumes. My clothes, for the most part, fit perfectly well into the current decade.

When skinny jeans surfaced as a trend in the middle part of this decade, I spent months searching for the perfect pair. Many pairs later, I now own the slimmest ones yet. An inky and ankle length set that I have to peel off. When my mother first saw me in them she said, You know what those are called? Pedal pushers. Her statement made me consider them more closely. They are not pedal pushers but capris. Pants best known for briefly inflaming America when worn by Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show before being accepted into the wardrobe of large numbers of women.

The cinched waist and wide skirt, which bled over from the 1950s, is recalled every time I belt a long white cardigan over The Dress. The miniskirt, which appeared in the latter part of the decade and represents one of the great shifts in the landscape of female dressing, litters my closet.

My love for the lines of that time extends far beyond Oooo, this is pretty, though I am susceptible to those juvenile moments. It finds its root in how the clothes look on my body. The way slim pants define my legs. The way minis show them off. The definition and curves added by the cinched waists and billowing skirts.

The way it all speaks of sex but never too loudly.


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