Fall Styles with Plaid for 4 Generations:
The Fab Collab is back! Sherry from Petite Over 40 has joined us this week to feature a pattern many of us associate with fall — plaid!
Pretty much all of us have some personal experience with this classic pattern, even if that experience goes back several decades. For this collaboration, we are sharing our stories and photos of wearing plaid in the past and then we show how we wear it today.
The Fab Collab is made up of four women, each in a different decade in life. Sherry is in her 40s, Jodie’s in her 50s, Nancy’s in her 60s, and Charlotte is in her 70s. Although the decades may have given us different experiences with plaid, we are connected through our stories, our curiosity, and our love of fashion and style.
Here’s Charlotte’s (the 70’s model) perspective on plaid from this old photo:
I picked out this picture for my mom’s plaid piece. Of course you realize that many of my mother’s pictures have me in them also, right? You could say that it’s an advantage of being an only child; you get all of the attention (good, bad and otherwise…ha ha)
As soon as I saw this photo, I asked my mother about these plaid pants. These pants looked like leggings to me, and she told me that of course they weren’t leggings. There wasn’t such a thing as leggings back in the 1960’s (or so said my mother). They were cotton pants—no ounce of stretch to them (we should be very thankful for spandex in our pants right now!!)
Mom told me these were pants she would put on when she came home from teaching. Basically, I’d call them our version of comfy clothes or even sweatpants! Or in my grandmother’s case, as seen in this picture, a housedress!
Heck, my mother told me, she wasn’t even allowed to wear pants to teach at her school until the middle 1970’s!
I think we wear trousers so much now, yet it really wasn’t that long ago that it was inappropriate in many settings for women to wear pants. Shocking, right?
Yet I would consider plaid trousers to be quite masculine and one of those pieces that many of us could wear to work. Maybe not the big, obvious plaid like these pants my mom is wearing in the past photo. But those subtle plaids that you see in many conservative work places! Or like the ones Sherry wore in her outfit!
Another fun fact is the grandmother shown in this picture refused to wear pants even though we were sure they’d keep her warmer during the winter months. She finally broke down when she was 94 and would wear a pair of sweatpants around the house. She’d never wear them in public though; that would be so unladylike!
Charlotte’s (70’s) Outfit: My mom has quite a few plaid pieces in her closet. Of course most of them have been hand made by her, so that’s why we picked this particular skirt as the one for the theme.
I know my mom’s first instinct is to try to match a color from her skirt for her shirt. So I went with one of the darker colors for contrast.
The bracelet is really one of mine. I won it from Michelle and have worn it quite a bit. Since mom was lacking in the red bracelet department, I let her borrow it!!
We added in a scarf for her neck accessory. I really like how the colors in the scarf echo the colors in the skirt!
Skirt: Mom made it (similar here with no red in it, or here a little shorter)~~Shirt: Hanes (similar here)~~Shoes: Anne Klein (very similar here)~~Scarf: (similar here)~~Earrings: (similar here)~~Bracelet: 100 Good Deeds–I won it and let mom borrow it (here)
Thanks for joining all of us in our plaid remembrances!! What do you change into when you get home from work or the day’s events? And if you missed the other three installments—Sherry’s (40’s model) story is here. Jodie’s (50’s model) is here. And Nancy’s (60’s model) is here.
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There are quite a few plaid skirts available! They seem to be a popular print for skirts!
