Just to get you boys here.
By Helvi Oosterman
You older folk here might remember the times, when anything Indian was all the rage; long cotton caftans for the girls and rough hewn grandpa shirts for the boys. Those were the days when your tie-dyed, floor length wrap-around skirts, not only kept your legs warm but at the same time swept the streets or maybe just the foot paths clean…
The council workers whistled at you, not because they admired your legs, but because you were doing their job for them. I remember wearing a long caftan when six months pregnant, looking rather majestic, almost a cross between Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, Brunnhilde from Wagner’s Ring comes to mind. Hubby too suffered for his latest acquisition, sandals made from old car tyres with some brass buckles tagged on them that gave his feet bad rashes.
Many years later the tights arrived on the fashion scene; welcomed by all comfort loving females, mums, daughters and grannies. They were taken up by skinny girls, fat sheilas, old and young, tall and short. My slightly underweight girlfriend gave me a backhanded compliment: “Helvi, you look good in them because you got big legs, I look like a starved baby bird in those”. Ah well, who needs enemies when your friends tell the truth about your short comings. These tights, as you all know, were usually teamed up with oversized t-shirts or large tops with huge shoulder pads. These pads were not sewn but usually Velcroed to shoulder seams and easily removed. On long train trips they could double up as pillows, after all some were almost bigger than average size Tontine.
Not all that long ago the fashionistas got inspired by India again; the bright colours were in and black was out. Tired of looking like Sicilian widows, we now took to rainbow colours, glitter and sequins like ducks to water. Many of us suburban mums of course even looked like ducks, waddling in our tiered skirts and heavily sequined tops weighing us down. All those vivid colours that so flatter darker skinned slim Indian girls, made us look like stumpy Christmas trees.
Oops, almost forgot about those hipster jeans, maybe it is because I really want to forget about them; all those tummies and bottoms bared, and in country towns still bravely exposed, even when the city girls have moved to the” waist highs” a long ago.
This morning I had to go to town early for an appointment. Popping in to buy a newspaper at the mall, I noticed a group of young girls still in their nighties hanging around. I assumed they had had some kind of sleep out or a pyjama party and were on their way home. The polyester swishing could be heard as they walked past. Later on I came to realise they were not nighties,but this season’s new look: floor-length summer dresses that reminded me of those caftans. Only the caftans were cotton and pleasant to wear, these long poly dresses must be as hot as a visit to a sauna.
I feel like a cooling swim is needed right now!
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Pingback: What not to Wear by Helvi Oosterman « Oosterman Treats Blog
A family weekend, so son and daughters arrive with off-spring. Greeting them I comment on second daughter’s lovely new cotton dress; a long tie-died outfit in soft blue hues.
Grandson Thomas begs to differ, he doesn’t like the length, too nightieish he says , cut it here he says and bends down to point at the length he would prefer; it all goes cycles…I see it clearly now. It’s no use going against the trend or trends
LikeLike
Just a little correction; it was of course the Greek singer Nana Mouscouri who wore those dark rimmed glasses, and Melina Mercouri was the actress in the Greek movie “Never on Sunday’.
LikeLike
Here she is, totally Greek.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXOZrZQrt48
LikeLike
I thought there was something odd about that “eye wear” allusion, H.
Melina, of course!
She, with Never on a Sunday and Anthony Quinn with Zorba the Greek put Greece on the map!
I don’t know what made the Yanks change the original title from “The Children of Pireas” to “Never on Sunday”. There’s a delightful faux logic at the beginning of the film which I’ll never forget. The American academic enters the taverna and mocks the bouzouki player because he can’t read music. The player runs off to the dunny and locks himself up in there, unwilling to get out and play. Enter Melina, finds out what happened and rushes to the bouzouki player.
BP: He said I’m no good because I can’t read music!
Meli: Can the birds read music? Listen to the music they make!
Bouzouki player smiles and gets out of the dunny. Hence forth he plays even more passionately.
There was also the argument between her and the american as they watched a performance of Medea.
American: Medea is a bad woman! She hates her kids!
Meli: No, she’s a good woman, she loves her kids!
Or words to that effect. Haven’t seen these two films for decades!
LikeLike
So many memories are flooding my brain. The height of sophistication round our way was; drinking Victorian beer, ben ean (benzene) moselle, paisley shirts, neckerchiefs (yes, I had one), platform shoes, and, of course, barbequed eggplant slices, with sausages, or, for the more affluent, chops!
Grown ups were saying that Jonathan Livingstone Seagull “spoke to me”!
LikeLike
Horror of horrors, Big one!
That’s me down to a T!
(Och, those neckerchiefs! How painful that memory is, ey?)
What I seem to remember though is the frustration of not enough clothes shops for men and bugger all variety in them. The items you’ve mention were the only choices a man had back then. Either wear that lot or go bloody naked!
I remember drinking a lot of French wine back those days, also. It was cheap enough and -really- the drop that may be rightly classified as wine. All those Chateux! Latif, Latour… the occasional Beaujolais, Bordeaux, Rothchild… none of which I could afford nowadays!
LikeLike
ato, I think lots people did go naked, they were soo naugthy.
I can’t remember when, but at one stage I wanted to look like Melina Mercouri; I wore similar eyewear to hers, yet there was nothing wrong with my eyesight.
I had long hair and a long caftan when walking somewhere in town. I was tickled pink when some passer-by said: you look amazingly like Carole King.
Of course I didn’t, the bloke did not wear his glasses!
LikeLike
Big M, the platform shoes were a must, you needed a bit of height with those flary jeans; I even put some different coloured triangle shaped extentions on one pair.
Some girls , clever with the sewing machine made skirts of old jeans…
The kids kill themselves laughing at pics of that period; Gez in a tie-dyed grandpa shirts…
Mambo shirts are still cool, but they might have come on much later.
LikeLike
I remember doing the same to a pair of my own jeans, Helvi… And I also remember wearing grandpa shirts, hipster loons, an Indian shirt similar to the one Gerard describes… and platform shoes too! In fact I miss the platform shoes… that was the only period in my life when I ever felt ‘tall’…
BYW, what exactly IS a ‘mambo’ shirt?
🙂
LikeLike
Helvi, I saw Reg Mombasa interviewed regarding the fact that he no longer designs shirts. He was complaining that the only people who bought his shirts were grey haired, beer gutted, middle aged men. Oh, how I laughed, until I looked in the wardrobe at the mambo shirts all neatly arranged on their hangers.
LikeLike
I bought one Mambo shirt once in a second hand shop; Red roses on yellow background sounds horrible, but it worked.I loved it , and was looking for it the other day, but could not find it. Son might have nicked it…
There is a book coming out about Mombassa, I think it could an interesting read.
LikeLike
I was on a ferry in Scotland once, there was an American tourist looking outh the window at the seagull flying alongside. She wondered if the seagull was Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
LikeLike
What was Jonathan Livingstone Seagull wearing that day , I would like to know…
LikeLike
A nice array of feathers, streamlined as the wings flapped in the breeze.
LikeLike
City girls have moved to waist-highs, have they?
LikeLike
Hi Madeleine, nice to ‘see’ you. I think the ‘waist-high’ just means that the girls now pull their jeans up a bit higher, maybe not right up, but they seem more covered these days; here in the country you still see too much of everything exposed.
I’m missing your stories here; always good a good read. I’m hoping that you and also Voice will write something soon, we need a bit gender balance here at Sow’s Arms….
LikeLike
“I’m hoping that you and also Voice will write something soon, we need a bit gender balance here at Sow’s Arms….”
Agreed, Helvi! How about it, Maddie? Voice? Someone needs to keep us macho piglets in line!
🙂
LikeLike
Helvi, before I read the post I have to say iro this line
“Just to get you boys here.” and photo…
They don’t come for the fashion. Loved the outfit myself.
LikeLike
…I love it too!
LikeLike
Thanks Emm, for positioning the top photo better, it looked rather awkward before.
LikeLike
I like the idea of Voice’s Gin and Tonic with a slice of lemon. It has been some time since I enjoyed the imbibement of that.
The French drink which makes water cloudy is what I have forgotten the name for.
But for the love of Mike, don’t ever touch the prawn cocktail on a hot afternoon.
The wedding was at Strathfield and delayed for hours. Finally we were given the cocktail with the rim of the glass sparkling with crystals, sugar or salt, I forget.
Anyway, hours later and on the way home in a 1948 Chevvie, my brother wanted to know who was eating cheese on the back seat!
LikeLike
Pernod in France. Ricard in Spain. Ouzo, as Atomou can testify is another aniseed drink—I think.
LikeLike
Or more generically, pastis.
LikeLike
Correct, O vociferous one!
LikeLike
Quite so, Anon! I do testify!
Sometimes I don’t put any water in my ouzo -seldom do actually- but my brain feels cloudy!
Anything with aniseed does it. Turkish Raki and French Pastis (Picard). Arak, sambuca and mastica also turn cloudy when mixed with H2O.
LikeLike
When an alter ego of mine worked in Spain he drank ‘Cuba Libres’ chaques nuit. Nuit after nuit, after nuit
LikeLike
And another alter ego used to serve a Sambuca with two coffee beans floating on the top. And then setting it alight.
LikeLike
Anon etc etc, brother-in-law once showed up with a scorched moustache and nose hair and a big scab on his nose. One too many drinks and he tried to blow out his flaming Sambucca.
See, I’m not even smiling a lot, over here…. well, perhaps a little chortle…..
LikeLike
That would be your young man alter ego, and your pretentious twat alter ego respectively?
LikeLike
Hang on Vwuh, I have feelings you know.
And I am listening while MY alter ego is talking about me!!
The Sambuca was served in my restaurant in UK. I used to instruct the waitresses, (or do it myself) to walk across the room with the drinks on a tray, but light it at the table.
One night after a slightly flirtatious quarrel about something, a girl(bitch) lit the drink first. That was geat until she spilt a drop and the fire dribbled onto a paper napkin that we always use to stop stuff slipping.
OMG–what an episode!
LikeLike
Julian! You!? Who’d have guessed?
A simply super touch of the theatrical there old chap. A,j didn’t provide the context, did he? A mischievous alter ego indeed. What did you ever do to him?
LikeLike
Reading here about Hock and headaches, maybe the title of this story should be: What not to wear or drink. Let’s start with unmixed Hock, Mrs Ato might add ouzo on the list?
Many years ago, we had bought a case of white wine in Hunter Valley, it was from one of those little boutique wineries. Because everything they made was very good, we risked buying a case of Blancquette without tasting it; it tasted hidious, it tasted like what dog blanket smells on a wet day…
So, number 3. Blancquette
Yet I believe they make nice Blancquettes in France and in Italy.
LikeLike
I remember the first time I drank a Hunter red. It tasted like dirt. I’ve got used to that now; great with a BBQ.
LikeLike
Dirt and food.
Sounds like a Hungy to me, Voice.
Possibly one of the few things the Kiwis have gotten horribly wrong…..
LikeLike
✓ Hung by her own petard. You sound Tired.
LikeLike
Voice, like Manuel, I know nothing about Hock…
Were those Germans in South Australia also producing some of that Hock wine. In England I’m sure the Hocky came directly from Germany.
Seeing the Summer is already here, I might take on the practise of mixing my whites with lime and lemon…
Maybe the girls in pic are doing just that.
LikeLike
Well before the arrival of Barosso Pearl, safari suits and the pubes of Hair, there were the Ladies Lounges in pubs, 6 o’clock swills and the drinkers of ‘real coffee’ were seen as poofters.
Away from beer, and it was the sipping of sherries& shandies. At parties, we served thinly sliced cucumber and devon or sometimes ham.
I remember going home by train in the late fifties, after a builders Chrismas Party in North Sydney. The boss had put on a big keg and unlimited prawns.
Boy, was I sick, train windows could still be opened then. Don’t mention the stained glass window effect.
LikeLike
Devon is a food, Gerard? Not a county in the southwest of England? Never heard of that before!
What does devon taste like? Clotted cream?
😉
LikeLike
It’s a NSW thing T2. You (we) have fritz, which is pretty much the same thing. The German connection again, courtesy of the Barossa. Where you can still still get traditional garlic mettwurst and lebewrwurst to die for. I have a rellie who lives there … who I visit at every opportunity.
LikeLike
Whom…..?
LikeLike
Oh [lofty an insouciant tone] A,j I never check my spelling or grammar. It interrupts my stream of consciousness self-expression.
Besides it is sanctioned by the Oxford Dictionaries for casual use, and I think we can be informal here.
LikeLike
Oh, you’re like that big-head Julian. I see.
LikeLike
Tu me flattes, A,j (He might be listening).
LikeLike
I see, Voice… it seems that in Australia each state has its own name for what, in the UK, is generelly known simply by the rather unimaginative title of ‘luncheon meat’… the most infamous variety of which is, of course, SPAM!
But… “I don’t LIKE Spam!”
🙂
LikeLike
Soon after this sad-safari-suit episode, Gerard had to defend himself in the Builders’ Licensing Board, and he wanted to make good impression and to wear a suit for the occasion.
He was rather miffed when he found out that the suit had been taken to the Smith Family. He wanted to buy it back but lady in shop told hubby that ‘it flew out of shop very quickly’.
He came home with a ordinary second hand suit, almost white and it had funny sheen to it. The magistrate must have felt sorry for him, and Gez won the case!
PS. The sleeves of the jacket were a tad too short and so were the trousers.
LikeLike
Geez, we’re going down the great memory gurgler fast, here! Quick, someone tell us what they’re wearing right now… or what they’ll be wearing in ten years’ time!
LikeLike
The safari suit was the height of sophistication together with the quaffing of Gramp’s Orlando ‘Barossa Pearl’.
Did the Cold Duck wine come before the Safari suit or am I getting this mixed up with the ‘Hair’ episode.?
LikeLike
Ah…. Barossa Pearl… Cold Duck! Them were the puking days!
Safari suit!
I wore a white, silk jacket -bloody expensive jacket that one, let me tell you!- at my own party once, back in the days when one’s back yard was at least a quarter acre- and strutted about the place, feeling like a posh Bolshy and looking like… well, some lady who had just been introduced to me, told me what I looked like with this innocent question: “are you the waiter?”
Never wore the jacket again.
Then, not long after that, I remember seeing the quote, “some people wear white jackets and look good, others look like waiters,” or words to that effect. I guess I was one of the latter. Oh, well, back to the cordoroys with the leather elbow patches. I abjured the pipe!
Early 80s!
LikeLike
I’m, thinking …… Lindeman’s Porphry Pearl, Sparkling Rhinegold, Blue Nun, Black Tower reisling, Ben Ean and that suavest of suave ‘sure thing’ beverage, Mateus Rose.
I’m thinking LBDs (little boy’s dicks) otherwise known as cocktail frankfurts.
Jatz, I hear you shout.
I was mercifully too young to ever own a safari suit, but I did have denim flares and my Mom knitted me a couple of fair isle vests.
LikeLike
I am searching through the archives as we speak.
Shame about the gallery—I s’pose I’ll have to write a postscript with the photo, to make it into a story.
LikeLike
It’s a small world; it must have been ato’s white (yellowed) jacket that Gerard wore to court. As I said, the jacket had a silky sheen to it.
LikeLike
Hock, lime and lemon? (Girls only) Or was that South Australia?
LikeLike
Hock is an English term for German wine, sometimes wine from the Rhine regions and sometimes all German wine.[1] It is short for the now obsolete word hockamore. The term is a corruption of the name of the German town of Hochheim on the Main river in the Rheingau wine region. The term seems to have been in use in the 17th century, initially for wines from middle Rhine, but in the 18th century became used as a term for any German wine sold in Britain.[1] It seems probable that Queen Victoria’s visit to Hochheim and its vineyards during harvest time in 1850 has contributed to the continued use of the term hock
LikeLike
From which I gather Helvi that it’s not a NSW thing, or it was a different generation. Basically, hock was just any cheap dryish white wine.
LikeLike
Which is just to put you in the picture H, not to contradict your etymology. The missing link is the Barossa Valley.
LikeLike
I remember the term or type of cheap ‘Hock’ wine. I think it came in a glass flagon together with a thumper if you drank it fast.
I think it was sold first during the 1965 summer. Was that also the year that the naughty term ‘soixante neuf’ first used by Diana Fisher at a pink champagne party in Queens Street, Woolhara?
She lived there with hubby who was the son of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury. I don’t think they drank Hock.
LikeLike
Actually hock, lime, and lemon wasn’t a bad cool drink on an innocent Adelaide summer evening; you’d need quite a few to get a headache. I wonder if those girls/young women still drink it? I moved on to G&T (with ice and a slice of lemon) a long time ago and nothing beats one on a hot day.
LikeLike
I still wear mine!!
Nice diarised style Helvi.
But ‘fat sheilas’ ?….OMG
LikeLike
Julian, not so fat in ‘dem’ days, today is different. What are you wearing now, the caftan or the bell bottoms. Don’t tell me you got a safari suit tucked away in your wardrobe. I told Gez that I’ll go back to Finland if he dares to wear his.
PS. I saw your post on UL, very good.
LikeLike
No! I had a penchant for wearing ‘Indian style’ cotton shirts. Like the top half of the kaftan in your photo, but without the embroidery.
I started wearing them when I lived in Majorca and just kept on keeping on. I have a couple now, that I wear now and again. Probably trying to recapture my youth.
I always wore them tucked into my trousers, so that they billowed a little and gave a ‘gypsy’ look…..In my dreams!!
I’ll write about the pink velvet trousers and leather shirt that I had made there too. One day…..Not joking!!
LikeLike
Now I’m laughing Jules, I have started wearing them (Indian style) as well, they are nice and cool and hide lots of unsightly things. For the up-and-coming Chrissie party in Sydney with all the OLD friends, I bought a nice linen one, I hope it’s not going to be too warm that day.
Sorry about laughing at the ‘gypsy look’, I’m still trying to achieve it…and those velvet pants, well didn’t we all love them…and have them.
LikeLike
The safari suit had gold coloured buttons and a belt with a large buckle that was fastened around midrif .
The suit trousers were slighly flared and the shoes, och meine liebe, made in Egypt and had heels and toes made from some kind of flax or rope.
King Faroek at Mascot.
LikeLike
Dear Gez, you scared the kids, not just me…
LikeLike
What a hoot ! Thoroughly enjoyed the piece, H. And also … Gez’ “merlot coloured safari suit”. Killer line !
LikeLike
Oh well, Emm, I reminded him about that Merlot coloured thing…
LikeLike
Oh, the vivions you’ve created in my head, H!
From Sicilian wives to stumpy Xmas trees, with Wagnerian valkyries and aussie shielas in between! What a feast of fashion! What a delight to read! Many thanks.
Gez, you’ve reminded me of my wedding suit. Shiny green velvet…a…a…a…and huge platform shoes! Unbloodybelievable -But true! Still got the photos somewhere, though I tried to tear all the colour ones up.
Outrageous time for fashion the late 60s-early 70s.
LikeLike
ato, Gez was wearing some funny shoes as well when he picked us , me and ‘me’ kids, up from the airport, they were the same colour as the safari suit and with high heels. The suit had gold buttons and pockets and epoulettes to make any colonel green with envy. The kids clung to my legs, the poor things did not recognise their father after two months’ of separation; I blame it on the safari suit.
LikeLike
What about my merlot coloured safari suit that I wore at the airport to pick you up?
You walked straight past me. I was even humming ‘Mama Mia’ in F.flat.
LikeLike
Was the merlot safari suit worn with a short-sleeved shirt underneath, or just chest hair billowing everywhere. The latter used to be fairly intimidating!
LikeLike
As the suit and I departed very quickly, I did not have time to find out what was worn underneath. It was not just the colour that did not agree with, it was the fabric; it was made from some kind of thickish jersey or is it called knitted suff, clinging to the body….
LikeLike
H wrote that, not G…
LikeLike