D R E S S I N G
D O W N
SUSAN BRADY KONIG
Mrs. Konig is a former editor of Seventeen.
D R E S S I N GD O W N
IT'S A DIFFICULT time of year for me. The fashion magazines have their big fall issues on the stands, bursting with style news. I buy them all and look at the pictures. It doesn't help. I'm garmentally challenged.It's a Nineties thing. My mother, who came of age in the Fifties, is the epitome of style. I'm a slob. God knows she tried to impart her natural sense of style to me, but when I was young and impressionable, Calvin and Ralph told me I could wear jeans anywhere.
I'm not saying every member of my generation is an unkempt clod, but we miss a clothing savvy that was fundamental a few decades back. Even the very fashionable these days opt for casual ease when their time is their own. Hey, was that JFK Jr. or a bike messenger?
Women in the Fifties and Sixties saw Jacqueline Kennedy first as a trendsetter and then as a one-woman style revolution. But when I turned 18, Rosalynn Carter was First Lady — attractive woman, not a style maven. Now Hillary Clinton — interesting hair story there for a while, but not exactly a fashion role model. The Fifties career girl was Doris Day. Ours is Ellen DeGeneres. (What's with the pants all the time? Oh, right.) Their TV mom was June Cleaver. Ours — Roseanne.
We used to have standards and expectations. And hats, gloves, and hosiery to match. Formality was de rigueur. Appearance counted for something; it reflected one's background and upbringing. Young people at mid-century had begun life during the Depression and spent childhood enduring a world war. So making the best of what they had was a matter of pride.
Forty years ago, women went to work in trim skirt-and-sweater sets and pearls, nylons, and high heels. Up five hundred steps to the elevated train and across 47 avenues to work, as mother tells it, in heels. No slipping into sneakers. Now we're roller-blading there.
Perhaps the decline began in the Sixties, when people had a reason for looking bad. It was a metaphor for revolution, man! But who can explain the Seventies? I spent the entire decade in a school uniform, so I don't think its groovy fashions contributed to my own lack of style.
By the Eighties, we were dressing up . . . but poorly. See any Duran Duran video for big hair, big shoulders, big skirts. Everyone was in a ``big'' mood. Then, stealthily, the arbiters of fashion let us venture beyond the walls of gyms and resorts in exercise clothes. The look took. Expectations about what people would or should wear fell. To tell a woman her slip was showing had lost its relevance. A scantily clad jogger led my mother to remark, ``We used to call that a bra and girdle.''
When movie stars shop Rodeo Drive in bike shorts and backward baseball caps and supermodels favor T-shirts and jeans, we mortals feel justified in our own choice of casual comfort.
SO if I don't feel like ironing, and I never do, I can throw on leggings and a huge denim shirt — the outfit I became attached to when I was expecting my kids. People won't assume I'm a vagrant or a ne'er-do-well — though once the lady who runs the fruit stand said, ``Oh, pregnant again?'' Still, it's comfortable and easy.
And if I want to be stylish, I'll buy a $200 pair of sneakers or a sweatshirt that glorifies its creator: Tommy Hilfiger or DKNY. Even the fashion houses from forever have succumbed, with Chanel T-shirts and Baby Dior bibs. Clothes no longer speak for the designer — designers speak through labels and logos. Is that bodystocking suitable for afternoon tea? It must be — those three Adidas stripes racing down the rear end just scream: ``Fashion!''
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