Nothing New Under The Sun
Mecca: I asked Mrs. Coleman if she could to describe fashion when she was around 18 years old.
Mrs. Coleman: they were wearing Bermuda shorts. Do you know what that is? (Yes) Pants called pedal pushers. Do you know what those are?(no) Same thing as Capri’s.
Mrs. Coleman: I think we were still wearing… probably somewhere between 15 and 18, we wore really wide skirts. And we wore hoopskirts and crinoline skirts.
Mecca: she then, informed me about “Crinoline and hoopskirts”
Mrs. Coleman: And the crinoline slips, the…hoopskirts if you didn’t have a hoop which was… kind of a plastic circle that you put in the bottom of your slip that went under your dress. That made your dress stands out. You wore crinoline slips. They had to be starched…and that would make your dress very full.
Mecca: Then she described men’s fashion to me…
Mrs. Coleman: They were wearing Peg leg pants. They were tapered at the bottom. Real skinny and tapered, like… today’s skinny jeans.
Mecca: I asked her what country do you think has the biggest influence on American Fashion.
Mrs. Coleman: Europe! European countries probably have the most influences on American fashion. Yeah.
Mecca: I then, asked Mrs. Coleman what effect she thought Fashion has on society and what it represents.
Mrs. Coleman: Fashion represents fashion designers. It does represent necessarily what the general population thinks because fashion designers go along with economics and trends and something different it has to capture you
Mrs. Coleman: Positive effect! I mean that’s what everyone’s doing and I think the way our society is, if you’re doing what everybody else is doing then you’re in the “in crowd”. You know, you’re popular.
Mecca: I asked her what did she think fashion today was based off of.
Mrs. Coleman: Fashion kind of was designed after hip hoppers and prisoners and other elements that weren’t necessarily positive. That the young men or you women have picked up on and I think that will become less popular as people starts recognizing the importance of education, the importance of working, and jobs and family and those kinds of things, but nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same.
Mecca: Mrs. Coleman told me a very interesting thing. She told how Fashion was different from style.
Mrs.Coleman: You can change the fashion by your style. You can add belts or scarves or…like the girls who wear leggings under dresses and you know, you can do all those kinds of things.