![]() I kept that dress hanging on my door all summer - it smelled like J Farina’s sweat and aftershave. I didn’t dance with William Holden that night - but sexy John Farina slow danced with me to “How deep is your Love” - I had straight pins jamming into my back. My mom made me this beautiful pink dress with a circle skirt - she closely copied Kim Novak’s pink moonglow party dress when she was Madge in “Picnic.” Um - as wonderful as it was at 14 was no Kim Novak - I was so embarrassed to be in a home made dress! The dance started at 7pm - at 7:30 she had given up the zipper and I was being straight pinned into it - I was mortified as only an ungrateful 14 year old could be. For the big deal 8th grade dance - all of the girls acted like they were buying wedding dresses. my lovely mother must have had a raging case of ADD - for important school dances, plays and school uniforms she would always say - “Oh - I can make something SO MUCH nicer than this!” From age 8 to 18 I NEVER had a zipper!! She would dawdle and ALMOST finish stuff - and I would freak out - ok - um Are you going to Hem it? Um - Shouldn’t you start on the zipper? I’ll be damned if I wasn’t pinned in every time. It is amazing what $200-$300 dollars would buy you, whole new wardrobes. Somehow you remembered where everything was and then went back and made your purchases on round two. You never purchased something as soon as you saw it, you always spent the first couple of hours canvassing all the outlets before you even considered making a purchase. ![]() It was always a fun trip to make and while not everyone we knew did this, many families did.īy 1984 in college it was still enough of a thing that I took a group of friends to the outlets during spring break, and another classmate from Lebanon and I explained how you shop outlets. There were also food stores like pretzel factories and potato chip factories we would go to and buy things from. Especially things like underwear were only bought at outlet stores. We usually had traditional places we went to like one store in particular that we always bought our new winter coats each year. These were good clothes very well made, fashionable and good quality by brand named producers. ![]() There were levels of things available including “firsts,” which was the same thing sold in the stores, but at discount (cutting out the middleman of the department stores), “seconds” which were usually out of season goods or overruns of production and “thirds” that usually had some flaw to them, some more noticeable than others like a small hole or pulled thread or partially faded. There were trips in late summer and spring, usually to Reading. I grew up in 1970s Central Pennsylvania where the whole idea of factory outlets started and you literally went to the grounds of the actual factory to buy clothes and shoes, not some clean polished mall stores like today, which is all rubbish. ![]() And sadly, Alexander’s and A&S are both gone, and Macy’s is a shithole. I was dismayed that I couldn’t stretch the budget as much as my mom could but at least I had Levi’s instead of Wrangler or Gap jeans and a pair of Adidas. In 7th grade (1979) my mom gave me $100 to go pick out my own clothes That was the budget for the whole school year. Then I wanted to pick out my own clothes. I rejected anything that came from Alexander’s and only wanted clothes from A&S or Macy’s. It wasn’t until I got to middle school, where we mixed with kids who were upper middle class, that I became aware of labels. She has incredible style and knows how to shop for bargains. My mom bought all of my clothes and I wore whatever she picked out. Boots were almost always hand me downs for everyone. I was solidly middle class, as were all my friends and neighbors and classmates We all got one pair of “school shoes” and one pair of sneakers that we wore to school on gym days. R34 corduroy pants were a hallmark of early 90s grunge fashion.
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