What are you going to wear this winter? First, you men: Don’t buy anything new. The floor-of-your-closet jeans and just-off-the-boat-from-Baghdad shirt are still in, although experts say the jeans are losing ground.
Older men: this same costume is for you, too, unless you have more pride, or work in a bank uptown, then it’s the dark blue suit, dark blue coat and dark grey pants, maybe even – not that, a tie! But don’t fret. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and their set still dominate. To be a “Big Man” you have to look like you have just herded a thousand cattle and bullied a dozen other guys while you did it. Sick!
Men, remember the beautiful plaid and green, brown and light-blue sport coats. A few older sports still wear them to church and look “cool.”
Women – also girls (choice of one), you can go just about the same route as the boys unless you like to look prettier and are willing to take on the extra trouble it requires.
A local expert who has been in the business since 1958, nearly fifty years, Martha Rose Carson, says she still yearns for the day when she rode train, plane or automobile to the wholesale markets in Atlanta, Charlotte and New York. There, four times a year, she bought daytime dresses, all-day-suits, cocktail and Sunday dresses. Not only was this variety good for business; she truly enjoyed helping customers look prettier.
Ladies’ retail shops have decreased and dwindled over the last thirty years, not only because women now work all day, but clothes are more expensive and jobs take away the leisure time left for selecting, maintaining and dressing up, she says.
This season, aside from the no-iron casuals, women who do care will have more three-piece suits in wool and wool blends. Also silks (which have become very popular), and lots of fitted blouse designs to wear with them. Many are adorned with sequins, beads and such. Separate jackets can be worn with ankle-length or below-the-knee skirts. Minis remain for the chicks with sylph-like thighs.
“But it still won’t be like it was,” Martha Rose sighs. She pleasurably recalls her final year at the University of Alabama, where she majored in fashion merchandising. “Because the degree required that I work at least six months in the trade, I sales-clerked at Loveman, Joseph and Loeb there in Birmingham. They offered me a good job before I left, but my Aunt Ray Dempsey Gardner had already begun making plans for the dress business we would set up in a building she owned on Broughton Street.
“She agreed with me to specialize in ’junior miss’ clothes, sizes five to thirteen, also the misses eight to 18s. In 1958, I saw the world through much more youthful eyes.
“We opened after several trips to the cities. Our closets were crammed with ’Leslie Fay,’ ’Bobby Brooks,’ ’White Stag’ and ’R. and K. Originals’ dresses. Orangeburg women came flocking to look over the clothes a handsome new shop offered.
“Lots of competition existed, such as Beckers, Moseley’s and Belks stores, and Mims and Town and Country shops. But Orangeburg was growing from wartime military and new factory families.
“As I say, clothes back then were dedicated to ’pretty.’ Never baggy, they did something for the figure: boxy jackets, slim skirts, etc. Then, polyester arrived in the 1960s and a totally new fabric brought men and women neater, less wrinkling clothes. Blended with cotton, they lasted much longer too,” Carson says.
“Back then styles and colors changed every seven years. Now, because people travel often, and see fashions on television, it is every three years. But these changes don’t bring sensational changeovers. Clothes are expensive and people are going to wear older garments so long as they look good.
“As I began seeing the buying public through more mature eyes, I altered my buying choices to more mature women from 21 up. At least half of them career women, the majority came to select all-day garments from our racks.
“In the late 1970s came the biggest fashion change in history, women’s dress pants. Starting with the teenagers, they constantly moved into adult, all-day garments for everybody. Practical and reasonably nice looking if made with any quality, they made many kinds of work easier. Think of a school teacher who sometimes has to get down on the floor to talk with her little students. And how about a girl who is faced with filing a hundred kinds of office papers? And don’t forget nursing with its patient handling.
“At first, some uptown businesses banned them, but the pants upscaled themselves into more expensive fabrics, more flattering designs and slimmer profiles. Today, eighty percent of women, all ages, wear them.
“Interestingly, and I think this is a good statistic to memorize,” Martha Rose says, “twenty percent of our customers still don’t wear pants. Nearly all the under 20s do, but we buy for many who feel better and more fully dressed and female in skirts.
“Competition from the large department stores is strong. Some of them get much bigger discounts on orders because they can buy so much more than a single shop. Fortunately for us, half the women still like to fill in their wardrobes with purchases from smaller shops.
“You have to watch closely and stay on top of the trends. Even after 49 years, it’s still a challenge, but it’s fun.”
Retired editor and public relations executive Thomas Langford’s column is titled “Some Edisto stories.” Let him know if you have stories to share: 803-534-2097.