Joe

My two roommates became the closest friends I ever had. Chris was quite a bit taller that I, a bit of luck which literally made it possible for me to stay in college. It was a weird situation, to say the least, but it all had to do with fashion. Now, I have never been a fashion guru, although I can sew well, taught sewing to hundreds of students, even a few boys.

In March of 1947 a fashion show in Paris by The House Of Dior rocked the world with a collection they called The New Look. Women have always been slaves to fashion, and at that time dress hems were measured to the bend of the knee in back. The two I made to take to college were that short. Not being an avid newspaper and magazine reader, and being totally absorbed with farm work all summer, I missed all the fuss. There was a big dance for the freshmen and friends, like Big Sisters, etc., and I went, because it was not a date affair. There I saw my big sister for the first time since our escapade in the rain the Sunday I arrived. She and a friend were wearing the most amazing black dresses, a little longer in the back and reaching to within eight inches of the floor. Very slinky! They both wore very sheer black stockings and very high heel patent leather pumps. All of these features were new. Stockings had always been flesh colored. Nylons, which were introduced a year before the war had not been available for five years. I turned 16 during the war and started wearing shoes with some heel and stockings made of rayon which made your legs look like glass. Silk stockings, which had been available, and very expensive, were made in the orient. We could get nothing from Asia, spices like black pepper and cinnamon, even rubber for auto tires, we just did without. I have never even owned a pair of silk stockings. The ones we did have had seams up the back, a pain to keep straight.

The first weeks of that first quarter had everyone speculating about how long it would take the fashion industry and our students to catch up with the rest of the world. Every day we saw a few more girls wearing long dresses. Articles in the school paper were polarized. Some girls were quoted saying they would never ever wear the dresses that long. Articles and pictures from the wire affirmed that they were, all over the world. Although the polls showed that men hated them, and most girls agreed they hid their best feature, before Thanksgiving the majority of girls on our campus wore them. Chris could afford to buy longer dresses, and she gave me the ones she didn't want, which came down long enough for me.

Seriously, I would not have returned after Christmas if all I had were short skirts. Only one girl defied fashion, the girl with the prettiest legs on campus, always tanned and strutting in front of the college band in her little twirly drum majorette's costume. Helen showed up after Thanksgiving in her same short skirts. It drew protests from the other girls, an article in the school paper with a little chiding and a challenge to "get in step", which she did.

One of my favorite displays in the dress collection of the V&A in London is the the one on THE NEW LOOK showing many of the dresses I remember and wore for ten years. When hems started to rise, they came up with a vengeance until in the seventies skirts barely hid the underwear. Pants had not become fashionable for school and work until the late seventies.

I was not interested in having a boyfriend that first year, but there was a single guy in church, Joe Jenkins, hardly a boy, as he was a veteran who had served in the Navy and was around 30. His mother persuaded me to go out with him, so we went to a drive-in movie with another couple. He held my hand the whole time and actually sound like he was panting. It was such a strange sound. Perhaps he had a respiratory problem. It was a miserable night. I could not bear the thoughts of going with him again. On Sunday he walked me home from church. I could not think of a way to avoid it, and he kept grabbing my hand until I just decided to endure it for three blocks.

My parents had decided to drive up to see how I was getting along. They had been to my room, waited a while, and decided I must be in church since my sentence had been lifted, so they parked out on the street and watched me walk by their car holding hands with Joe. They saw me go into my dorm and the scene which followed was not pretty!