330 Oh honey--go home and get dressed!

When women my age were teen-agers in the 1950s we liked to wear low-slung Levi's and tie our blouses in the front to expose a little tummy. Sounds just like today, doesn't it? However, that was for parties with the girls or school picnics. If we'd shown up in school that way, we would have been sent home. I don't recall "dress slacks" as an in-public outfit until the late 1960s or early 1970s, when we women desperately needed something to cover us when the mini-skirt fad started.

But when I was a teen in jeans and quasi-halter top, my mother and grandmothers were in dresses. Not today! I see older, matronly women in the coffee shop in the morning that I just pray are going to the gym or exercise club and not work. Hair looks good, make-up applied, fashionable purse, tights and baggy t-shirt that don't begin to cover the belly rolls and bursting flesh that the undergarments can't corral and control.

But modesty is making a comeback. Quite by accident I came across a clothing apparel website for Lydia of Purple, a Christian seamstress. It seems the homeschooling movement has created some demand for dresses that cover and flatter rather than reveal and insult. They do sewing, custom made clothes for home schoolers and conservative religious groups like Amish and Mennonites. I browsed through some of the patterns, and some look pretty good. Gathered waist, full or A-line skirts, pleated bodice, elbow length or long sleeves, higher necks. Similar to some of the dress patterns I have from about 1965. They will make a pattern for you, you can send the material, or make it yourself, I think.