As a kid, I didn’t care too much about clothes – apart from some notable exceptions. As long as my clothes weren’t scratchy or prickly, I didn’t really care!
It’s just as well in a way – being one of 4 kids with a single mum on a pension, we really couldn’t afford the latest fashion anyways.
It was only after I started high school that I truly started to become fashion aware.
On a couple of different occasions in Year 8, I missed the mark fashion-wise and was cut to the quick by comments from my peers.
Over the summer of Year 7 into Year 8, short board shorts were all the rage, for boys and girls. I eventually got a pair of pink ones with navy blue piping and decided to wear them to the school fete, where I learned a hard lesson about dressing appropriately for the occasion. One “friend” turned her nose up at what I was wearing – what would have been okay at the beach was apparently not what I should have worn to a school function (it was probably freezing cold too, but let’s face it when you’re young you have to “look” the part and to heck with the weather!)
Another day I was at the shops with my family (how embarrassment!) and I bumped into another girl, who looked me up and down before making some comment about “blue and green really don’t match”!
It was a bit of a rude awakening. From then on I started to save my meager pocket money to supplement my wardrobe, or asked for clothes for Christmas and birthdays. As a result I usually managed to look okay in Summer – as I had a January birthday – but Winter was much harder!
This photo shows my first ever fashion purchase – a tartan skirt. Very cool, back in 1980. I bought a grey tab shirt and a grey boucle sweater at the same time, and purchased some black espadrilles too – I felt like it and a bit when I wore them! Sadly, there’s no photo of the complete ensemble which was actually quite tasteful (even for that era). Because I was “at home” that day, I wore it with a t-shirt – yellow, never my best colour. But it “sort of” matched the mustard stripe in the tartan – yes, I was obsessively matchy-matchy even right back then. Oh, and it seems I’ve always been fond of kitties 😉 .
Now it’s your turn – when did you first become fashion aware? And what was the first fashion item you ever bought?!
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