Fashion in the Family

Here’s a fun activity for budding fashionistas---go through old family pictures and look at them in new ways.  Don’t just identify the people (or laugh at silly haircuts) but really look at what they’re wearing.  You might be surprised to find how well dressed your folks have been through time.  Maybe nobody in your circle of kin has ever graced the cover of Vogue, but I have a suspicion you have a great-aunt who was voted ‘most stylish’ in high school or a grandfather who sported a zoot suit during his courting days.  Taking a slow look back at pictures is a good experience, not only for bringing back happy memories, but for seeing our relatives and our ancestors in a new light.

While nobody in the Zipperer bloodline (that’s my maternal family) would ever claim to be a fashion plate, when I look back at them I see little touches that raise a smile and make me think that my folks had more originality than I ever gave them credit for.

Here’s my great-grandparents.  I’m guessing these pictures were made between 1910 and 1915, based on their clothing.  They were young newlyweds at the time---I would love to have a wedding picture of them, but since they got hitched in a buggy at the judge’s house (the first drive-through wedding?) I have to make do with these, which seem to have been taken in the same studio.  ‘Daddy Hubert’ (as we called him) was certainly dapper, with his bow tie, sharp jacket, and slicked down hair.  It was only while looking over these shots today that I realized his trousers have a striped pattern.  Pretty fashion forward for little Pinetta, Forida!  His wife, who was ‘Mamma Donie’ to us, is wearing the classic long white cotton dress of the turn of the century, but with a tapestry sash and with lacy details at the neck.  I only remember her with short, cropped hair, but I think it must have still been long at this time, and swept back.  Mama Donie didn’t have low self-esteem; she inscribed the picture as ‘lovely me!’  And that really should be the first rule of fashion; confidence is the best accessory of all.

The next generation came of age in the 1930s.  My grandmother, Marjorie Hadden Zipperer, was the baby of her family and a tomboy who grew up wearing overalls and running around barefoot.  But in this shot, which was probably made in the year of her wedding (1938), she's very sweet and lady-like.  She also has an unusual dress, with ribbon laces off-set on the bodice.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it in other family pictures.  The picture of my grandfather, Hillbern Zipperer, was made during World War II.  He looks like Indiana Jones to me is this snapshot!  I love the leather jacket and the hat tipped at a jaunty angle.  My grandfather was a farmer and wore mainly caps (usually with a feed store logo on them), but some of my favorite memories of him are of being able to pick him out in a crowd at football games by his stylish grey Stetson (which I now own and sometimes wear).

 

And, I’m taking a risk, because she’s probably going to kill me—but I think my mother, LaNora Zipperer, completely rocked those short-shorts, straw hat, and ballerina flats back on a family vacation in the late 1950s, when she was seventeen years old.  What I wouldn't give to have that wasp-waist figure of hers!  And even better, by this time she had begun sewing, launching a career of making outfits for herself, her mother, and (eventually) for me; she made the blouse she's wearing in the picture.



Looking back over family pictures is a far more rewarding exercise in understanding the history of clothing and style than pouring over back issues of fashion magazines.  I like seeing how 'real people'---those without personal stylists and talented photo-shop editors---put their outfits together and wore them.  I just worry that someday in the future the children of my nieces and nephews may look at pictures of me and shriek--"WHAT HAPPENED!!!!??"