Since I've been back with my family in Canada for the summer, I've been taking another look at the photos that have been displayed on the walls of my grandparents' basement for as long as I've existed, with renewed interest. The thing I find most fascinating is how the oldest ones capture a very specific fashion moment in time, whereas more recent decades are generally harder to pinpoint (unless you count rocker hair and Madonna-esque accessorising which most certainly betrays an adherence to the worst of the 80s).
The photo above is my mother in 1952. The polish of her 'look' well represents how children were dressed and groomed back then, regardless of socioeconomic status. At barely two years old, her hair was curled and styled with a bow that matched her proper little coat - every inch the 1950s ideal of what a little girl should be. Coco Chanel's influence on women's clothing was still in its early days and hadn't yet trickled down through the hipsters to the average woman and her baby girls. And Yves St. Laurent was still more than a decade away from creating the immeasurably influential "Le Smoking", the first tuxedo for women which lead to stylish pantsuits and everything else that we have with a fly and two legs, today. If it weren't for the French I might be forced to wear dresses every day rather than opting to do it (we'll see if I can keep it up once the winter rolls in. I'm no fashionista - I will never knowingly suffer for fashion).
Here's my mother 15 years later in her high school graduation photo (no, not her coronation as it would seem). The thought of dressing like this for my own grad confuses my brain, I can't even grasp the mindset it would take to think I could pull it off - things had changed so much in 20 years and this kind of formality was no longer relevant. Or was it? Were we simply expressing the same values through new and different fashion? Sure, we could have dressed this way as a fun throwback to the era but it would be more about costume than who we were.
The photo on the right is my grandmother in the 1940s, just a teenager with her hair styled in a French roll and wearing her dainty lace-bibbed dress. Compare it with that of a teen from the 1970s and beyond and it's like we're from different planets. Which is why these portraits are endlessly fascinating - there is an extraordinary quality here that simply can't be reproduced today (despite the painstaking efforts of Christina Aguilera. Dita, however, is as close as anyone's going to get).
I have a few vintage-inspired jackets and coats for my daughter which would look adorable with this hair so I'm going to attempt it (provided she has enough to pull it off!):
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