Modern Fashion & Why I Forgot to Kill Hitler

What ever happened to fashion? What ever happened to the way we dress? I’m doing research for the second in a series of short stories set during the late Edwardian era and, much like with photos right up until the mid-1950s, I look at how beautifully these people are dressed and how neatly, even for casual walks down the street… then I look around myself at the people who share 2016 with me and I think, ‘How did we come to this’? With clothing getting cheaper and cheaper, dressing poorly does seem a bit feeble.

Alright, maybe this isn’t the most deep and meaningful gripe anyone’s ever had, but it’s from the heart. I’ve never been a jeans and tshirt kind of girl. I completely reject the modern myth that jeans are comfortable. Crikey, on what planet? They’re stiff, unforgiving and unattractive as a general rule and I remember having to wear them during elementary school and middle school and, oh, how I hated them. The awful jackasses of fashion.

Still, you can look put together in jeans. No one tries, though. No, this is not a beautifully written expose on some sort of political nonsense, nor is it an article listing the ten things you don’t know about some celebrity or other. It’s my blog, though, so take that. 😉

Must admit that the Edwardian era is not my taste in fashion, really. I prefer the more casual, simple glamour of the late 1930s and early 1940s, but no one can tell me that modern fashion is prettier, more flattering or sexier than something you might see on Downton Abbey. Fashion took such an awful turn in the 1950s, worse in the 60s and has been downhill ever since, like everything else.

Now, I’m not singing the praises of corsets and the like, that would be insane. I’m more disappointed, I think, in the lack of good taste and propriety you see out on the street. Grown women in onesies and slippers at the grocery store with full night makeup and their nails done. Bit odd, to take all the time to do your nails and makeup and entirely forget to put on grown-up clothes.

I can’t pretend I’d like to live in a past society and do away with all the progress we’ve made just to get back some sense of appropriate street fashion. I do wish the government would invent a time machine, though. So that I could plea to go back and kill Hitler, and they’d believe me because I’d be so sincere and enthusiastic, and so give me the keys and the instruction booklet. Back in time I’d go… to shop at Macy’s and find a nice milliner to make my hats for me to my head size (25, thank you so very much) and then my shoes and bags, the proper shade of lipstick, a real bottle of Chanel No 5 and have my makeup mixed for me at the counter… I’d probably kill Hitler if I had time. That was the wrong side of history, wasn’t it? Oh, bother.

Yes, I suppose this is a bit of an odd way to make sure my blog is posting to Facebook. Well, if you were subjected to this, I guess it worked? I really am a horrible, awful person who judges and judges some more. Makes me glad, actually, that I don’t subscribe to a religion that judges me for judging. Ah, freedom!