Today

Some more about the Silverstone jaunt

Although this June is still beastly chilly, there is at least some sunshine. So on Saturday Becky and I put on summer skirts, both in trendy black and white. I really like my skirt which is a slightly mad affair, cut in a fullish A-line over a white net underskirt.

Felt rather special in our rather special car. Only problem, given that I wasn't wearing tights, was that my legs felt scratchy with sitting on the net and I had little miniature criss-cross lines all over my thighs.

In My Day

I remember the great late '50's fashion for net underskirts. These skirts were separate from the main skirt (so you could have several skirts to one underskirt). They were intended to be visible, especially when you went jiving. Mine was lemon yellow and I loved it. It had several layer of net and some yellow lace, for good measure. I wore it under full-skirted shirtwaister dresses, mainly. There were rather hard to care for and magazines gave all sorts of advice on how to restore that desirable scratchy stiffness after washing. We weren't used as a nation to these sorts of fabrics (stiffness was generally reserved for cotton shirt collars and fronts and involved starch which clearly wasn't going to work here). The most bizarre was the recommendation that you rinse them in sugar. The water would evaporate, leaving behind the crunchy sugar, was the theory.

I didn't dare try that one, for fear of stickiness and of attracting lots of wasps. So I think the underskirt just got greyer and greyer.

They do say that fashion repeats itself.