Fashion

Fashion in the 1900s was very different to today's fashion; Skirts were longer, shoulders were padded and hair was bigger!

What hairstyles did you have when you were young?

Jo Scott (born 1936)

My first perm, because as you can see I’m very very straight, straight as a yard of pump water as my mother used to say, if you know what a pump is you know where you pump the water out, how the water comes ‘whoosh’ so it’s as straight as a yard of pump water. That was the expression mum always used. But my first perm, after I had my plaits cut off at about nine, yes I must have been about nine and a half, and had a perm. You were wired, there was no rollers and lotions not like nowadays, you were wired up to a machine with all these … almost as if you were being electrocuted and after you come out of the machine, you weren’t supposed to comb your hair for a couple of days for it to set in and the murder, I can remember the murder of getting the comb through it after that, that was awful.

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

We used to wear our hair high, pulled up like that. It had clips turned up like that but when I went into the Land Army, I went and had … I don’t know whether you remember the film with Ingrid Bergman with her hair curls all over? I can’t remember what it was called now and it was all the rage. So I went and had one of those, it had curls all over the top and it was a wonderful perm. It cost me £2.50 but that was a lot of money and Victor Sassoon, I think the name was. I don’t know if they are still around but this was all the rage so I went and spent …. It wasn’t £2.50, it was £2 10 shillings and that was very convenient when I was in the Land Army because it was easy.

What fashions do you remember over the years?

Madeleine Wray (born 1940)

There were lots of different fashions over time, in the late 1950s early 1960s pointed toed shoes were fashionable, they were called winkle pickers. In the 1970s I had some platforms, looking back they were ugly but I thought they were the bees knees.

Sandra Wood (born 1942)

This is my friend and I on holiday in Babbacombe, in the summer of 1959. The fashion at the time was big petticoats to make the dress look full. I had to make do with 2 or 3 petticoats underneath my dress to make it stand out!

Did you make your own clothes?

Margaret Groves (born 1925)

I used to do a lot of knitting and sewing. I knitted all my children’s pullovers and jumpers when they were young. There were lots of shops where you could buy wool in Newport, if you couldn’t afford it that day you’d have it put away until the next time you went.

Jo Scott (born 1936)

I did make my dresses in those days, yes. I made that dress......it was a dress with a scooped neck line with a jacket over the top, a bolero jacket over the top but I did make that myself, yes....I used to enjoy it I must admit. My mum and dad bought me a little table. It sort of folds down to this length with two big drop leaves and I’m still using that table in doors.… Elba, my friend, she was quite a good sewer and showed me how to use the machine but we sort of muddled through together but we used to buy a pattern, take it out and read it and cut it out and sew it together in the right order, really, so self taught I would say. Yes, some of the bits I made like the dress in the photograph that came out alright.

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

I made a lot of my dresses when I was younger....We did do a lot more then and my sister was a machinist, not a machinist she was a Court Dressmaker and she worked in London actually, but I wore school uniform most of the time and I know when I used my gymslip to make a skating skirt because I used to go ice skating with a colleague where I worked, so I made a skirt out of that but …I didn’t have a lot of clothes then. I know my sister made me a very nice coat when I was about 13, and when I wore it, it was fitted like that and I used to get whistled at by boys up the street. I was most embarrassed, I didn’t like to wear it. Oh!

What do you remember about going dancing?

Margaret Groves (born 1925)

We used to go to dances at the Barracks. They had lovely dances there. There were always plenty of soldiers to dance with as the war was on.

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

Before I went into the Land Army, we used to have a good time up in London when we went dancing. In the Royal Opera House it was a great place to go dancing because they had Ted Heath and his Band, Joe Loss and all those people and when the Americans came into the War, there was all the young Americans there and I remember walking with one of them … I can’t remember where I met him and his name was Bill McFerson and we were walking through and he said, “Let’s go find a telephone kiosk and snog”!

Ted Busbridge (born 1928)

We used to have very good music during the War and all the dance bands … there was a lot of nice things that were sort of pointing our way during the War for us to build our spirits up a bit as as teenagers we used to go dancing in the Palais De Dance. It was a Dance Hall. It wasn’t far from us and there was always a live band there, dance bands consisting of about, I should say about 15 or 20 players. Not the guitar type, but other instruments, soothing instruments, you know? It was lovely. We used to dance like anything and there used to be a notice up, believe it or not, ‘No Jiving’. On the walls all round! You weren’t allowed to jive, no, it was a dance and it had to be waltzes, quicksteps, foxtrots and that kind of thing, you see? So it was strictly no jiving! But of course now, it’s all jiving isn’t it? I liked the jive actually but of course, you see, we sere young teenagers at the time and we wanted to enjoy ourselves.

What kind of dances were there?

Kathleen Simmonds (born 1923)

Oh well, waltzes and foxtrots and quicksteps, that sort of dance. My favourite dance was the quickstep. It wasn’t all the jigging about that you’d have nowadays although jitter bugging did come in at the end. I remember doing that in the Land Army’ cos in fact I had a good time in there. There was American Air Force camps quite close to us and there was a … we used to go to a bar, The Ferryboat Inn, I don’t know if anyone knows that, on the Broads and it was close to where the Hostel was. We used to cycle everywhere and I was taught how to ride a bike no hands by a chap called Dizzy … we called him Dizzy, Disaroff his name was and he taught me how to ride a bike with no hands and it was a great fun time really.

Did you used to go to the Cinema?

Peggy O’Rourke (born 1920)

Yes, oh yes. We watched anything that was on really. My father used to like cowboy films and we went to all the cowboy films but also the dance ones and variety. Not terribly keen on dramatics but if it were people that one knew, actors when you knew you went along. There were two Cinemas in Ventnor at one time. Do you know where Kings Lodge or what they called it … off the High Street, the road that goes up out of Ventnor, on a side road there was a small Cinema there and then there was a Cinema in the centre of the town, in the High Street and we managed to keep up with all the modern films that were there. The one in the centre of the town, I think it burnt down, a bad fire anyway and the other one kept going until the War … oh by that time we had got the Rex Cinema...we used to have some very good films there.

What music did you listen to on the radio?

Madeleine Wray (born 1940)

Well I can’t remember much myself, but my mother, I can remember on a Saturday night she used to listen to … what’s it called … something Theatre it was called … um .. and she used to love that. It used to come on about nine o’clock and that was something she enjoyed. I can’t remember a lot of radio or television, not until I was a bit older, and then I used to listen to Elvis Presley and things like that which my mother hated! You see he loved classical music, my father, and he didn’t like modern music.

What music did you have when you were young?

Ted Busbridge (born 1928)

Now music was very important. It carried a great deal of fashion. Love songs, rock and roll, juke box, swing, a tremendous variety of big bands and small groups. The big bands were absolutely wonderful. There could be about 30 or 40 musicians in a big band and Glen Miller and all that …