My grandmother – my style icon

As a vintage lover you can get your style inspiration from many places – books, films, paintings. Yet nothing beats chatting to the people who pioneered the styles we are trying to emulate. Vintage fashion blogger Mia Lane, who writes Used and Abused Vintage, caught up with her style icon and grandmother, Gloria Lane.

It’s all well and good loving vintage. I for one have spent hours trying to perfect a Forties victory roll, re-create a swinging Sixties eyeliner flick and searching out the ultimate Fifties prom dress. But when it comes to knowing how to put a look together, and oozing elegance without even trying, you can’t beat our very own grandmothers.

And I’m blessed with not one but two of them. Of course they’re kind, generous, a lot of fun and full of good advice, but they’re also two of the best-dressed women I know. So here’s my thinking – let’s find out all about vintage fashion from the women who really know about it. First up, my Grandma – or Grandmama as she prefers to be known.

Meet Gloria Lane – fashionista, hat lover, fab Grandma and storyteller extraordinaire (she also pens bodice-ripping novels and lyrics for some of 2 Hot 2 Sweat’s songs!). Over Christmas we had a little chat about dressing up, dressing down and dressing to impress. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Mia: As I’m sure you’ve realised by now, I’m obsessed with vintage clothes. It’s become increasingly fashionable to wear items from the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and Eighties in recent years. Does it surprise you to see young girls wearing clothes that were fashionable decades ago?
Gloria: No, not at all because it happened in my day too! There’s never anything really new in fashion anyway – it just circles around for twenty, thirty years or so then comes back slightly changed – lengths, widths, descriptive names and the way it’s worn. There are only so many things that can be done so, eventually, that particular fashion is back where it started – only now made more practical for its particular time and space.

Mia: What is your favourite era for fashion?
Gloria: Ooh – the late Forties for sure. After the clothes restrictions of the war I was absolutely bowled over by the ‘New Look’. The long skirts inspired by Edwardian times (as I said, we too were trendy in stealing from a bygone fashion age) were so feminine after the short boxy ones to which we’d been restricted for so long. Hats – my most adored fashion passion – made a brief re-appearance looking so much prettier than the utilitarian scarves we’d grown used to wearing. Of course, although almost everyone was into the new fashion, wages were not what they are today and few people could go out and buy new outfits, so instead, we cut the bottom 10-12 inches off our coats and skirts and sewed in some kind of insert to lengthen them.

 There were some quite weird combinations, including floral curtaining in dresses, but my favourites were either velvet or fur – neither easy to come by. I remember I had a burnt orange coloured coat which I lengthened in this way with some brown fur which my mother managed to find for me – I had enough to add cuffs too and I thought I looked the bees knees in it.

Mia: Do you have a favourite outfit of all time?
Gloria: Oh yes and more than one. I once spent a half week’s wages on a long black crepe dress with a very flattering crossover bodice and wore it with a black boater hat I’d trimmed with artificial flowers and veiling that I tied beneath my chin – all very reminiscent of the ‘My Fair Lady’ fashion era. I wore it for work because by that time I’d been promoted to deputy manageress and needed to look very ‘with it’.

We were able to buy trimmings and hats at cost price because management wanted us to wear them at all times in order to encourage sales – the more striking they were the better. Unfortunately we were fighting a losing battle because, along with white gloves in summer, they have never returned as everyday wear and that makes me sad. They were so feminine and much of today’s fashion is androgynous by nature.

Another outfit I was fond of centered around a model hat I wore in a fashion parade. It was a large Linden green fur felt – halo shaped with a pheasant feather curling around the front of the brim and down the side to feather out under my chin. My Mum attended the show and absolutely loved it on me, so much so, that she contributed to the cost when I decided to buy it. Even with staff discount it cost over five pounds which was twice my basic wage before sales commission – a very hefty buy for me at the time!

I couldn’t possibly afford the coat that I wore with it in the show but, as I already had a respectable green and tan tweed coat which toned in beautifully with the Linden green which – in case you don’t know- is a lovely soft shade, similar but less bright, than apple, it really didn’t matter. I figured anyway that nobody was going to be looking at the coat in the presence of that hat!

Many years later I moved to a new job and recognised one of my new colleagues as a fellow traveller on the bus I’d taken to work on those days. He spoke then of that hat and said that it had made him notice the difference between girls and boys and decided he was going to ask me for a date the very next day. The request never came because that was the day I turned up wearing a brand new engagement ring and dashed his hopes…. Aah!

Advertisements used to advise men – If you want to get ahead get a hat. Maybe that should have read – If you want to get a man get a hat!

« Previous page 1 2 3 4» Next page