There are few enough pleasures in this life, and certainly almost none of them exceeds, for calming benevolence to soul and body, the prospect of wrapping oneself in some well-loved and comfortable piece of clothing.
The strictures of seasonal fashion trends aside, in general most people demand three things of their clothes: that they provide sufficient cover to guard them from the peril of arrest; that they protect them from the ravages of the elements; and, most important, that they do not ever cause them pain.
”I base most of my fashion sense,” a perceptive Gilda Radner once said, ”on what doesn`t itch.”
Maybe you do, too.
Nevertheless, throughout history, the people who make clothes for the rest of the world to wear have given birth to an amazingly ingenious pile of horrors in the name of fashion and contemporary style.
Though some of these creations may have made movement and, in some cases, mere breathing difficult, women have been known to adopt quite happily such styles as bustles, hoop skirts, paniers (huge, shoulder-shaped undersupports that gave the skirts of 18th-Century court gowns an aura of authority and solemnity), boned corsets, waist cinchers, hobble skirts and–more recently
–miniskirts and spike heels.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone, men also have fallen eager victim to such vanities as false calves, iron corsets, starched ruffs, celluloid shirt collars, mahoitres (pads to make the upper arms look more muscular) and metal (or ribbon-trimmed leather) codpieces.
There still are, of course, those sheeplike souls who have become so besotted with the need to be on top of the latest trends that they will wear paper towels and razor blades if the fashion magazines say they must.
But even they are not immune from taking a step back from time to time, and when they do, they end up groping in the farthest corners of the closet for the same old favorite garments that everyone else loves, too.
Therefore, it is only right to be grateful for the great old standbys that sweeten everyone`s existence. Here they are:
— Aran Isle sweaters. The authentic ones were originally knit from oiled wool by women in the fishing villages of these islands off the western coast of Ireland to keep their sons and husbands snug and warm on the sea.
The various cables and decorative stitches that make these sweaters so distinctive had a sad, practical side as well. Individual villages had their particular designs, which each knitting mother then altered slightly to make her own handwork unique.
She did this so that if any man in her family were ever lost at sea and washed ashore someplace nearby, even if the water and the ravening fish had destroyed his features, the people who found him would know by his sweater alone to which village and to which cottage his body should be borne.
Today, often as not, your Aran sweater is knit by some machine in Hong Kong, but if you can get your hands on one of the authentic, hand-knit ones, do it. It will weigh a ton and will stretch and droop until it is shapeless as a brown paper bag, but on cool winter nights, you can put it on and be as comforted as if you had been enfolded in the hug of a gently snoozing bear.
— Blue jeans. Whether stone-washed, studded, cut off, roll-cuffed, tie-dyed, straight-legged, button-flyed, designer-labeled, riveted, bleached out, tapered, bell-bottomed, patched, embroidered or worn until they are threadbare and soft as a handkerchief, they are the only all-American garment that ever succeeded in captivating the whole world.
Blue jeans started out as tough, relentlessly utilitarian pants for California`s miners, but in the end it was the people who made the jeans who really struck the gold.
— Footie pajamas. Somehow, there is an enormous amount of satisfaction to be gained from imagining that, as babies, such a divergent cast of characters as Prince, David Hartman, Amy Carter, Phyllis George, David Stockman, Madonna, Gary Coleman, Sting, Tom Brokaw, Meryl Streep, Peter Fonda, Elvira, Donnie Osmond, Wynton Marsalis, Princess Stephanie, William
”Refrigerator” Perry and Loni Anderson may all have worn them, too.
— Flannel nightgowns and nightshirts. Almost no one wants to admit ever to having shinnied into these grown-up, sweet-dreams equivalents of footie pajamas, but sometime, someplace, almost everyone has.
— Khaki. Called ”chino” by the college students who wore it in the
`60s, because it came, after all, from China, khaki probably first marched into the American consciousness in the fall of 1945 when hordes of ex-servicemen returned to college wearing their still-comfortable, still-adaptable general-issue cotton drill trousers.
Actually, the word khaki itself comes from the Persian khak, meaning dust or dirt. The sturdy light-brown cotton–originally dyed, some say, with either tea or river mud–became standard military dress in the mid-1800s when British officers discovered the bland shade acted as an excellent camouflage during the Kaffir War in South Africa. By 1914, the fabric had become general issue for U.S. troops, and since the `50s, it has been standard fare for women`s skirts and for shorts and pants for both sexes, keeping whole armies of preppies (or their current momentary equivalents) looking crisp and neat in more ways than one.
— T-shirts. These garments, too, have their roots in World War II and came into general use as underwear and sleepwear once the boys came home.
By the `50s, James Dean, Marlon Brando and other movie idols had begun to turn T-shirts into legitimate sport shirts, wearing them uncovered as tops for blue jeans. By the `60s–dyed bright colors and printed with virtually every imaginable symbol or message–they had emerged as both an integral part of the uniform of protest and a medium for propaganda.
Today, they are also just cool, clean fun.
— Pearls. No woman in her right mind would turn down a gift of diamonds, emeralds, rubies or sapphires, but no other treasure looks quite so beautiful or regal against human skin as a strand of pearls.
Cleopatra is said to have demonstrated her regard for Julius Caesar by dissolving two huge, priceless pearls in wine and then drinking a toast to the emperor with the precious swill. Diamonds can turn a sunbeam into rainbows, but even in the dimmest candlelight, pearls seem to glow with a warm luminescence of their own, even when they are foolishly cast before swine.
— Trench coats. Cardigans, commando boots, flight jackets, duffel coats and parkas all had their origins on the battlefield, but clearly no piece of combat costume can match the trench coat for a genuine derring-do appeal.
The coats–flapped to protect the ears and throat, belted at the sleeves to keep out the rain and double-breasted to wrap snugly across the chest–were perfect foul-weather gear for British officers in the trenches of World War I. The deep pleat in the back gave horseback charges (or retreats) a certain style that has not, in all the decades since, been in the slightest dimmed.
— Seersucker. The Persian root of the word itself translates as ”milk and sugar,” a probable reference to the striped smooth and rough textures caused by slack-tension method used in the fabric`s weaving. Seersucker helped make Southern politicians and wrinkles legitimate, and even in these trend-besieged `80s, it is a hallmark of summers in a more simple time. Once you could buy a good seersucker suit for $15. Once you could buy a good nickel cigar.
— Polo shirts. You win, regardless of whether you know how to play the game.
— Espadrilles. The originals, with their genuine rope soles, were worn by Basque farmers. Today`s slicked-up, citified versions are a perennial summertime favorite. Less informal than sandals, they have the added advantage of looking breezy with pants, shorts or skirts and can bestow a cheerful bit of punctuation to a long, tan leg.
— Pantyhose. No woman who is old enough to remember panty girdles and the accompanying little metal stocking hooks that bored their painful impressions in the flesh of one`s thighs could be anything but grateful to Professor Amelia Panty and her wonderful invention. —
