BEST DRESSES IN HISTORY

Oh dear!

 

 

I'm beginning to think that there should be some uniformity to clothes even if bodies come in all shapes and sizes.

Walking through the city these days you see such a hodgepodge of fashion choices it can almost make you giddy.  Well it does me.  It has made me think about which dresses I consider to be the most attractive and wearable in the history of clothing.

I think that there is something in the brain that seeks a reference point with which to make judgements.  We know this is how the brain works in regard to facial recognition and it may do the same when we observe fashion.  Perhaps we're seeking a theme.  After all that is exactly what fashion designers work at creating when they bring out a new collection.

Of course they can't just come up with one of their own themes unless they are famous like Versace or Dior, so designers must come up with themes within the current year's accepted Parisian and Italian generated trends.

As I observe people en-masse, with women in particular in mind for this post, I can count the well dressed ones on one hand.  I must be specific about 'well dressed'; it is a combination of well chosen clothes, shoes, hair and, if there is make-up, that too.  It comes down to simplicity and elegance.  It can vary from a pair of jeans and a shirt to a suit, but it's how it's put together.  It can even be eclectic or outlandish but if its done right it can work.

It's also who is wearing it.  A woman needs good posture.  She can be slim or huge but she needs to carry her clothes well. 

Some fat girls and women in Brisbane actually wear shorts God bless their deluded sense of style.  Do they have a special 'thin' mirror at home?  Do their mothers tell them they look lovely wearing anything?  Have they ever looked at their rears in the mirror?  In fact this is a must if you check yourself before you go out.  Even the sleekest can get a shock when they take a good look at their rear.


OK let's get down to business starting chronologically.  These are my choices for the best dresses in history.

The Greco/Roman toga:

Well there are no actual photographs of course but the picture above gives you the idea.  It looks as if the man just got out of bed and took the sheets with him, quite reasonable when people rose with the sun and went to bed a couple of hours after it went down.  What a great way to save time.

If you read about the students of Aristotle you discover that his young students left home in the dark and walked with an oil torch to school so that they could learn in the daylight hours.  I took Latin at school for four years and I picked up this little historical titbit in the process.  Natural light dictated life in those times unlike the extended night life we have now.

In Roman times, women, being delegated to the home, no doubt took a little trouble with their appearance and fashioned the cloth to enhance their female forms.  Their only real asset in those days was their ability to attract a mate who would look after them.  It is interesting that throughout history clothes have become the currency of female attractiveness.

The woman's toga is simple and comfortable yet, although it is long, the fabric lies directly against her breasts and her legs are outlined as the folds fall loosely over them.  As she walked they would also be apparent.  Quite a sexy garment altogether.

In spite of women now being independent, they are still inclined to dress themselves to attract a mate.  It's no use bleating that this isn't true.  We compete with each other at this level and that remains a fact to this day.

The Cheong Sam

Take, for example the Cheong Sam pictured above.  It arose from a much looser garment that was redesigned by courtesans and high society women in Shanghai in the 1920's.  "Let's show off our assets" it said in so uncertain terms.  Our model looks as sweet as a honey pot but that's not the idea of the Cheong Sam.  Most of these dresses have a split up one side of the leg as well.  They can be either long or short but are designed to highlight a curvaceous figure and to attract a man.

Try putting an older Tai-Tai in one of these.  A Tai-Tai is an older Chinese woman, who is the matriarch of a family.  She will wear silk pants and a top that is a loose version of the Cheong Sam.  She has done her child bearing and no longer has to squeeze into the silk come-on dress.  She may also sport a couple of gold teeth.  'Tai' means 'big' in Cantonese.  Translated, therefore, the Tai-Tai is the 'big big' and the head of the household.

The Chinese respect the matriarch's position as opposed to Westerners who have not traditionally respected the housewife/mother.  The Tai-Tai rules the home while the father rules the business and money earning side of the family.

A dress can mean so much more than fashion.  It is tight in youth and comfortable in later years when she has had her family. The Chinese are a wise people.

That brings us to another culture as represented by India and the fabulous sari.

What a wondrous garment this is!  I bought one in Fiji when I was eighteen and spent days trying to wear it correctly.  It came with instructions.  It is one very long piece of material that is wrapped around the body, pleated and folded in a way that makes a Rubik cube look like child's play.  Surely, I thought, the Indian women must secure it with pins or clasps when they get it right so it doesn't come undone.  Somehow I doubt it.

How on earth someone managed to take a rather sumptuous bed sheet and manipulate it in this way is beyond comprehension.  Perhaps a guru on drugs came up with the idea.  Well that's one explanation but that isn't fair to women's ingenuity.  As someone who sews I can almost imagine how the sari came about.

A woman came across five metres of fabulously woven fabric and tried to decide how to make it into something she could wear.  The fabric was so beautiful, with borders and gilt embroidery, that she couldn't bear to cut it.  What could be done?  She spent hours, days, weeks, months, perhaps even years trying to wrap it in such a way that she could conserve all the material and also make a feminine gown that enhanced her figure.

She only had to make one concession and that was a top to cover her shoulders and breasts that she could wear beneath it.  The woman who came up with it deserves a Nobel Prize in design.  Of course some man probably took the credit.  I suspect the only credit a man deserves however, is figuring out how to unravel it to get a woman undressed.

We move on to my last great dress, the Flapper of the nineteen twenties, which arose in Western society.  Of course in previous eras in the West there were voluminous dresses with huge skirts, lace collars and tiny waists.  I suspect these were a tribute to the fineness of the manufacturing process that created such materials and the quantity of fabric that the wealthy could afford.  The wealthier the woman the larger the skirts to show that the cost of the fabric was of no concern to her.  They were encased by corsets made of whalebone, another expensive and rare item, and stiff lace collars made by hand. In those times wealth was displayed by the quality of clothing and not only reflected how advanced was the manufacturing process of woven goods but how effective was their trade with foreign lands.

The Flapper

A Modern Version of the Flapper

It's post WWI and a whole new world rose from from the ashes.  Massive progress has always been made in technology by governments spending huge amounts trying to win wars.  All kinds of remarkable innovations grow from what is a terrible and negative event.

The greatest casualty of war, however, is a way of life.  WWI saw the demise of old class systems but also the growth of women's emancipation.  Because I'm writing about fashion I won't go into why these things happened, but fashion reflects these changes.  Hemlines suddenly went up and morals went down, at least compared to the rigid Victorian times.

It was as if the twenties became one big post war party.  Naturally lives went on as usual and people got back on with the business of making homes and families.  Yet there were other repercussions from the huge carnage of WWI and these had the effect of making some people live as if there was no tomorrow.  Adding insult to injury was the great Influenza epidemic of 1919 that killed as many people as the war had.  Can you imagine the effect these events had on youth?

No wonder some of them started to party and from this arose the Flapper, one of the first signs of the newly independent woman.  Aside from the negative events that help precipitate fashion trends, the results can be uplifting.  The sight of women exposing more of themselves has to have a positive effect on the psyche of men no matter how serious the reason for the change and especially after so much suffering.

The Flapper dress is beaded and short but also loose and, at the same time, slimming.  Of all the dresses of history this one speaks of women's new found freedom of expression.  There is no corset, the bra hadn't been invented and legs finally came into view.  The lady probably had a cigarette holder and smoked as well.  Although smoking is frowned upon now, for a woman to smoke in public showed her equality with men. This woman had arrived and for the first time ever she cut and bobbed her hair.

If you look at nature you will see how all creatures use colour and shape to attract mates for the purpose of reproduction.  Humans with their evolved minds try new ways to do so instead of just leaving it to nature.

As our intellect grows so too does our creativity to compete for sex.  Fashion is our ever changing display.  We are really more fascinating than we realise but, while butterflies, for instance, never get it wrong because their method is tried and true and built into their DNA, humans can and perhaps that means that, if your display isn't good enough, you won't attract a mate.  Either that or you will attract one exactly suited to your type.  Maybe that works just as well.

Nature aims for the best.  Humans, it seems, with their blossoming intellects, may be evolving new standards that will either succeed or fail.  I guess that's the risk in evolution.  You get it right, you endure.  You get it wrong, you don't.  Dresses are a woman's display as we have no feathers or fur.  The beauty of fashion is that we can vary it to suit our moods.  What butterfly can do that?

My last tribute isn't to a dress but I couldn't resist it.  Who could forget Raquel Welch in a fur bikini in the film "One Million Years B.C."?

Raquel Welch in a fur bikini

Now if you wore this down the street, oh, and borrowed her figure as well, it wouldn't matter what any other woman within a kilometer was wearing.  No one would be looking.

These a just my choices.  I'd love to have my readers comment on their choice of History's Best Dresses.

END.

ANZAC DAY - LEST WE FORGET - The WWI diary of my grandfather.

Edwin Albert Greenwood came home from WWI less one arm but went on to start a family.

He was my mother's father and, in World War I, left Australia by ship to serve overseas.  It was four days after his twenty-second birthday when he set sail.  At least he came back.  I write this in memory of him and the men of my family who served in wars.

The journey by ship to Europe took some months.  Like many Australians he volunteered.  Australia felt bound to England as an ally and young Australian men from the age of sixteen became cannon fodder in a war that had nothing to do with them and who could not imagine the horrors that would confront them.

My grandfather seemed to take it all in his stride in spite of losing an arm.  From his diary he appeared to be stoic and to concentrate and enjoy what was good rather than dwell on what was bad.

I know he grew up on a farm in Hahndorf in South Australia.  There was no conscription and he and his brother, Bob, tossed a coin to see who would remain to tend the family farm with their father and mother and who would go to war.  My grandfather lost the toss but thankfully not his life.

I often consider how many people were not born as the result of wars.  Considering how close my grandfather came to death I may well not be here.  He told my mother that he was walking beside another young man on their way to the trenches.  When my grandfather went out of the trench into no man's land and was shot, that same young man took the brunt of the blast and was killed although this isn't mentioned in the diary.

Below I have included all there is of his diary.  I could have transcribed it but I felt the original, covering 1915 to 1917, was far better to display.  His writing is clear.  There is discrepancy in the dates where some pages contain periods that go between others on previous pages.  I have cut and pasted the pages in order to put them in the right order, but there may remain one or two discrepancies.

He spent one day at the front at Steenwerk in France. It is 56km South East of Dunkirk.  He went 'over the top' of the trenches, which he called the 'parapet', was shot and lay on the battlefield for eighteen hours before being brought in.  He does not mention in the diary that maggots helped the blood to clot in the wound and helped stem the blood flow.

His left arm was amputated at the elbow and luckily he came home.  His description of all of this is incredibly matter of fact but read it yourselves.  The diary begins in Melbourne where he boards the first of the ships that will take him to France.

Steenwerck, Les Monument aux Morts

Below is his diary.

Page 1

E.A. Greenwood front and centre on Hospital Ship

 

End of Diary

Reading this I find it amazing that his writing shows no despair at losing his arm.  Perhaps he was just glad to come out alive.  Yet there is so much emphasis on the positive. He enjoyed being paraded around Paris and shaking the hands of locals on his way to the trenches.

Later on he had fun on leave in Paris and at a dance in England when out of the hospital.  While in hospital they were visited by 'Zeps', Zeppelins that bombed near the hospital on four occasions.  He also 'swanked' it in a first class carriage on a train from Southall.  The loss of his arm was almost an aside.  Perhaps men didn't show their emotions then but I think he had a 'glass half full' mentality.

I know nothing of what happened immediately after this.  I also don't know what year Pop, as we called him, met my grandmother, Lillian Sutherland, in a boarding house in Victoria run by her mother.  They were married in 1920.  He set up a manchester business from scratch and it became so successful it was publicly listed under the name 'E.A. Greenwood'.

People who knew him in business called him the 'one armed bandit', a reference to his shrewdness in business and the poker machines of the time that had a lever (arm) to make them spin rather than buttons.

He was a tall, elegant man who always dressed impeccably.  Sadly in his last fifteen years, after my grandmother died, he had a stroke that left him without sight in one eye.  He gradually became weaker and was an invalid for the remaining eight years of his life.  He remained mentally competent to the end of his life and I loved him dearly even though he was a reticent man.

One moment in France in a senseless war left him disabled for life.  He didn't let it interfere with living however and I never once heard him complain.  He had a special knife cum fork made in England so that he could eat and drove an automatic car without a problem.

In searching for photos of Pop I also came across some of my father's father Henry Kenneth Prior who later became editor of The Bulletin.  His father had bought it from its founder J. F. Archibald.

Ken Prior, as he was known, once joked that he may have shot off Pop's arm as they were in France at much the same time.  Ken Prior came out of that war unscathed physically.

  

 My father's father Henry Kenneth Prior on a horse in WWI

  

Unfortunately the backs of the photos give few details as to his whereabouts in all the photos, however, those that follow were taken in Tel-el-Kebir, Egypt where Ken Prior spent some of the war.  Below are other photos and these must be of men in his unit with whom he served.  They are well worth including in this tribute even though I cannot name most of the men.  They are a visual history.  He also went to France but those photos are too faded to place here.

 

The photo below has details on the back.  The men are all from one family.  It was taken at Tel-el-Kebir, Egypt in March 1916.  Their ranks appear beneath each one.

Cpt. V.H. Gattiff,        Lieut. C.E. Gattiff,       Capt. F.E. Gattiff 

       49th Battery              4th L.H. Regiment      54th Battery

       Major D.S.O.            Captain 51st Battery

                                        

 Whoever these men were, they served their country almost one hundred years ago.  There was no fear in their faces, just camaraderie and perhaps that great Australian word, 'mateship'.

 WWII

My father served in WWII as a lieutenant.  He spent two years in Sydney and told his superiors that if he was not given a posting out of Australia he would go to London and join the Air Force.  He was posted to New Guinea and took command of an Anti-Aircraft Artillery Unit.  He spent four years there.  Happily he was never wounded.

Lt. William Norman Prior WWII 

At the end of the war while still enlisted he joined the War History Department.  As part of his duties he interviewed senior Japanese officers who were being held to go on trial for war crimes.

Edwin Greenwood's son Ron Greenwood, my uncle, joined the Air Force and served in Canada, the United Kingdom and South East Asia as a Flight Lieutenant.  He came out of the war unscathed but tragically died at the age of forty-six from a massive coronary leaving a widow, Margaret and two children, my cousins Malcolm and Debbie.

Ron Greenwood RAAF WWII

I was a young teenager in the sixties and watched the demonstrations against the Vietnam War and forced conscription.  Years later I advised my son to never fight in a war that he did not believe in.  I would rather he go to gaol and I'd visit him rather than have him conscripted and die in a war that is not Australia's concern.

WWII was our concern.  It was the whole worlds.  WWI should have remained a European affair but thousands of Australians' lives were sacrificed to it.  I am grateful none of the men in my family died in these wars but they served their country selflessly and that is still an extraordinary and honourable act.

I pray and hope our children when never have to fight in another war but here's to those who did.  They saw it as their duty and did it with gallantry.  Long may their memories live.

 END

 

HAIR

My Mother handled Col's hair as if it was live snakes.

Have you ever wondered why humans were left with hair on top of their heads and not much anywhere else post the Homo Erectus stage of evolution? In fact why did hair make an exodus from the body?

At first I thought it must have been the result of humans covering themselves against the cold and the elements so that evolution, taking the hint, made a substantial amount of the body hair drop away.

Then I realised that humans had lost their hirsute covering before leaving Africa and its relative warmth.  Clothing, therefore, doesn't explain it.  I think hair must have remained on the head to protect the skull and brain but why does our head hair grow when that of most other animals grows to a certain length and stops?  The body hair that we do retain only grows to a certain length as well.

Some dogs have hair that grows constantly but this is probably the result of genetic mutation when humans interfered with breeding to create certain types of characteristics in dogs.

Whatever the reason we have retained head hair, it has provided humans with a lot of fun.  Not only that, it doesn't hurt if you cut it and you can manipulate it in all sorts of ways.  I also have a little theory.   Let me try it on you.

Intellect and self-consciousness are a bit like unstable atoms.  Things whirl around changing places and making connections.  It's remarkable we're not all quite mad.  As the brain evolved and self-awareness and thought came about we were fortunate in still having the basic desires of hunger and sex to keep them under control; to give them some direction.  And then there is hair.  What an interesting little distraction that is to a newly formed intellect.  So if a human is feeling a tad unstable or depressed there's always that mop on top which never behaves itself or does what it should that we can attack before turning our angst on some innocent party standing nearby.

Sound crazy?  Well I'll get back to that at a personal level but for now...

In ancient times women discovered that using certain fruits and herbs could alter their hair colour.  Henna and lemon were probably among the first to be used.  Henna was used as a red dye and lemon as a lightener particularly when out in the sun.

The Swedes had the monopoly on blonde and this desirable shade was often accompanied by blue eyes.  While grey and white hair signify age for some reason the equally pale blonde does not.  Perhaps it is more like the sun and has warmth in the tones.  The Northern peoples, who were the first natural blondes, saw little sunlight and this caused the exodus of Melatonin from their skin and hair.  In fact its absence caused them to appear more like that which they had lost, and that was light.  So in a sunless land, hair shone like the missing star.

In 1907 Eugene Schueller, a French chemist, invented "Aureole" a hair lightener that didn't damage the hair.  Its name later changed to "L'Oreal", the company that is still a leader in cosmetic and hair care research today.

I find it is very interesting that, unlike eyes, the colour of hair when passed on genetically seems to become a mixture of the parents, or it can throw up a recessive gene just to be perverse.  Eye colour follows certain rules but have you noticed how a child's hair can be a combination of its parents' colour?

I first noticed this in Eurasions.  The child of a Caucasion and an Asian didn't necessarily turn out with the hair of the Asian parent or that of the Caucasion.  It was often a dark-reddish brown.  My son is a mixture of my natural dark brown hair and his father's blond hair.  He is light brown or ash.  I dye my hair blonde and people get a shock these days when, at my age, they notice my roots coming through a splendid, grey free dark brown.

I inherited this gene from my mother and her mother.  Neither had a grey hair in their heads when they passed away, my mother at eighty-one.  My hair was light brown mouse in my youth but decided to darken as I grew older.

When I was about seven my mother's father told me that if I didn't eat the crusts on my bread, my hair wouldn't curl.  He was stunned when I told him I didn't want curly hair.  It must have been much prized by his generation.

My mother probably did eat her crusts but to no avail.  Her hair was flat as a pancake and fine as silk.  She spent her whole life torturing and tormenting these tragic strands to her will.  Sadly she tried to do the same to mine.  I asked her why she kept her hair short and she insisted it wouldn't grow but, given what she did to it, that wasn't surprising.  It wouldn't have had the resolve or strength of will left to grow.  I know it could because there were pictures of her in her youth when it reached her shoulders.

My mother was a neat freak and that meant not a strand of hair was allowed to stray out of place.  As a child I would walk into her room as she sprayed her hair with pressure pack hairspray.  There is some chemical in it that has a very pungeant odour.  I would run from the room.  To this day, if I must use hairspray, it is aerosol only.

Mum felt the need to exert power over me by controlling my hair.  She insisted it was kept short.  It was bad enough I was given two boys names without adding the insult of boyish hair.  Mum's mother had auburn hair to her waist which she kept in a bun.  I find it odd that Mum had such an aversion to long hair because of this but I believe she had issues with her mother and maybe that was the reason, but don't we all?

She told me that I could grow my hair when I reached twelve years of age.  At twelve I tried, but she bribed, she cajoled, she complained, and I gave in until I was eighteen.  My childhood friend Colleen had gorgeous long hair that her mother plaited each side and looped up and tied with ribbons.

When Col's mother went to hospital to have a baby, Col who was seven at the time, stayed with us.  Mum attempted to do her hair.  It was only recently that Col told me what happened.  She said that when my mother tried to plait her hair, she had handled it as if it was a live snake.  She could barely stand to touch it.  Col said it was such a mess that when she arrived at school, she re-did it herself.  It was the first time she had ever done her own hair.

It is obvious that my early obsessive-compulsive disorder came from my mother.  The very strange thing is that she didn't recognise that she had it.  While I beat mine, she had hers for life.  On Friday afternoon when she would pick me up from boarding school, I would comb my hair before seeing her.  I would get into the car and Mum would, almost without fail, tell me my hair was a mess.  I would say I had just combed it.  She would reply, "Well comb it again."

She also complained about having to pick me up at all.  On Mondays she drove me to school and on Fridays she collected me.  I was a very considerate child and tried never to upset her but this complaint fell on deaf ears.  I hated the school and didn't want to be there.  It was just revenge that she had to do this for me.

Once I got my own way with my hair she couldn't stand it.  When I was in my thirties Rob, my husband, actually forbade her to mention my hair at all again, ever.  He could see the effect it had on me and he could also see she was irrational in regard to it.  It really doesn't pay to have a parent constantly criticise you no matter what your age.

My hair has been long ever since I turned eighteen except for one disastrous occasion when a bad hairdresser bleached it off.  I was not happy for the three years it took to grow back.  For some reason I like being blonde.  I call myself a psychological blonde, but my roots insist on remaining dark brown.  I'm rather proud of the lack of grey but like Mum, my hair is silky and flat as a pancake.

I wear it just above shoulder length now and the beauty of longish hair is being able to pull it up into a bun or a ponytail.  Also, in winter I cover my neck and ears with it at night so they don't get cold.  It is a lovely feeling against my skin and makes me feel cosy.

Something lovely happened when Mum was in the nursing home.  She finally said nice things about my hair.  She was an entirely different person.  Perhaps the mini strokes had changed her personality or perhaps, once Dad had died, she finally turned to me.  Sadly no one could maintain her hair to her standards once she was there.  It was cut shorter than before and lay flat against her head.

All those years of putting rollers in it to give it body had gone.  She did need the body as her face was round and she had large cheekbones but oddly, she quite liked her new gamin style.  I truly wish I could have afforded a hairdresser to keep it plumped and perfect just for her sense of grooming.  I don't hold a grudge, I just miss her.

She had been a hyper-critical mother and her lack of being able to praise me taught me to always praise my own son.  It took me years to develop a sense of self-confidence for, whether she realised it or not, she was always putting me down.  I also learned that you must apologise to your children when you are wrong.  My mother never once in my life apologised to me.  My son isn't aware of the good things I did as a mother.  It's sad to say that a child only really notices when parents do the wrong thing.  Nonetheless I consider this a success for he is a mentally healthy young man.

My mother's obsession with my hair was simply a symptom of her need to control all her surroundings.  As her dementia grew the degree of her problem became glaringly obvious in many other areas as well.  I'm sorry she wasn't able to get help for it but the first thing is to recognise that you have a problem.  It was channeled into her hair and thankfully that probably saved the rest of us from worse repercussions as it bore the brunt of it.

Hair, therefore, has its uses at a deeply psychological level and I'm sure there are people out there with lots of similar stories.  A lot of our personality is described by the way we wear our hair and the way we try to control it.  A psychologist should write a book on it, if one already hasn't.

END

THE PERILOUS PURSUIT OF PHYSICAL FITNESS.

Lego Batman with Leg Replacement

 (With Apologies to the Lego Movie)

Sir Isaac Newton was credited with a number of discoveries.  One of these was gravity which was right under everyone's nose but no one thought to give it a name.  It was just considered a fact of life.  When Physics, of whom Newton is the founder, is mentioned as a science, quite often we think of it as something complicated.  It is simply the science of the physical: the interaction of matter and energy.  Newton was not just a scientist but a great entrepreneur.  He took the obvious, packaged it and sold it.

Any word with a 'y' in the middle of it tends to look complicated and intellectual and when 'ph' replaces 'f' it looks even more unfriendly.  Yet physics is fundamental and even more so when we talk about exercise and fitness.

Newton's other discovery was that 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction'.  This was somewhat more enlightened than his gravity theory as he really had to think and observe interactions to come up with it.  The trouble is that athletes don't seem to take this law of nature into account when they pound the pavements, lift weights or make war with inanimate objects such as very large sandbags.

Driving for a living brings me into contact with an enormous number of people and a large percentage of these have suffered exercise related injuries requiring hospital intervention.  Another large percentage have suffered work place injuries.  A large number of men, both young and old have had multiple knee replacements mostly because of sports they have played.  My job has made me very grateful for my good health, although it wasn't for a long time.

I drove a young woman recently who described herself as an endurance athlete.  She was also a busy executive with a husband and young children.  I think that even without the athleticism part, she must have endurance both to work and be a mother.  She had broken her heel in a silly mishap.  I asked her about her knees given the amount of running she did.  "Oh, they're fine", she said.  I explained that I meant how they would be when she grew older.  She really hadn't thought about it.   

That's where the law of equal and opposite reaction comes in.  Her knee cartilages will deteriorate.  She will have put them under unnecessary strain and one day they will complain and refuse to go on.  Being the type she is, she will no doubt have them replaced and start over.  How we do take modern medicine for granted.

I also drove a man in his twenties who had played professional Rugby in England.  He had had four knee replacements and could now no longer run, let alone play football.  You must love your sport to let yourself become crippled by it.

I foresee a time in twenty or so years when the twenty to thirty year-olds of today will be part human and part prosthetic.  But why do this?  What is the point of exercise that degenerates body parts at the expense of supposed fitness?  Isn't there a nice medium?  If you study nature, the hunters, such as large cats, do short term running and long term lying about and snoozing.  They are conserving their energy but remain fit enough to run after prey.  Humans could learn a lot from this.

Mind you we don't have to run after our dinner and this poses a conundrum.  Perhaps we should open a new type of restaurant that makes us pursue the food in order to eat it.  Wouldn't that be fun?  I do find, however, that eating straight after exercise gives me indigestion.  That's probably why hunting animals have a good sleep after eating.  They need all their energy to digest.  For example it can take a month for a python to digest a goat so it just lies where it is and looks deformed.  Mind you I'd kill for its digestive juices as I have trouble eating anything at all.  I eat half a sandwich for my lunch but not all at once.  I graze on it at intervals over three hours.

Humans have become lazy eaters.  As such we must exercise off the results of our consumption.  We buy our food mostly from supermarkets and although these are fraught with danger in the form of small children driving trolleys or running around the aisles, adults who block aisles as they decide on their purchase or elderly men who insist on walking slowly up the centres of aisles and veering this way and that as you try to pass them, this cannot be compared to a jungle.  Well, it comes close, but no killing is allowed no matter how much the temptation.

Bicycling is a lot easier on the knees but the danger of sharing the road with cars brings it into the realm of adventure sport.  Why bungee jump or parachute from a plane if you can just get on your bike and play war games with the traffic?  Some cyclists seem to be at war the moment they take to the treddles.  They weave, they tease and compete and, on top of it all, wear lycra beneath which, if you see them in the right light, there is no underwear. You can then have the pleasure of watching two little buttocks rubbing against one another through the mesh as the rider earnestly pushes the envelope to get up a hill.

And one last word about lycra.  It is the greatest benefit to exercise ever invented.  I found, when I bothered to go to exercise groups in the past, that putting on a lycra garment was so enervating that I really didn't need to exercise afterwards.  If I managed to do so, as I stretched one way, the lycra would fight against me like a good exercise partner.  It's an exterior muscle and clothing item all in one.  Perhaps that's why cyclists wear it; maybe it is doing half of the pushing.

END

IN A FASHION.

The Author in Her Modelling Days in the Eighties

When you look inside your wardrobe does your heart sink?

Mine does.  I have some nice things: dresses, tops, shirts, pants, jackets for every type of weather, skirts and leggings.  There is, at one and the same time, too much and too little choice.  Men do not understand why members of the opposite sex bleat, "I have nothing to wear", when their wardrobes are filled to capacity.

But we don't have enough to wear.  There is no such thing as the perfect outfit.  My problem is that I am a comfort junky who also insists on being well groomed and colour coordinated.  These are diametrically opposite considerations.   When my mother lived in a nursing home, she wouldn't let her carers dress her in clothes that didn't coordinate.

Mum and I never agreed on each other's tastes, but her standards were ingrained in me at such an early age, it is as if the moment I enter my walk-in robe she is talking in my head.  Just so she feels really at home she holds court in my wardrobe for I have placed her ashes on a shelf therein temporarily until she tells me where she'd like to be scattered.

So far I think she's happy in the wardrobe tut-tutting the condition of my shoes.  Her shoes were always in perfect condition and she never understood why mine actually wore down.  Mind you she had at least fifty pairs in boxes neatly stacked on the floor of her wardrobe.  She also didn't have bunions.

My preference is for clothes that have some give in them.  The new fabrics with Elastane in the weave have been a boon to all women who are not the square, leaner hipped shape of men, but have curves that swerve out wherever their genetic make-up dictates.

Pants are my particular nemesis because I hate anything that cuts into my waist.  My ribs are too close to my hips so that no matter how thin I am, there is never enough space for a wide belt and, also, any bought clothes that have waists are too tight around mine.  A short waist adds at least 3cm to the width that is the norm for your fashion size.

I recently bought a pair of jeans for the first time in three decades because some now come with Elastane in them.  Occasionally I wear them but I find jeans too hot in summer and too cold in winter.  Obviously I'm a rarity as the whole world, male and female, adores jeans.

Two years ago I lost some weight so that my carefully chosen, fitted pants hang on me.  That leaves leggings which I love but I can hear Mum tut-tutting that they are not suitable for work no matter how much men like my butt in them.  Also you can't tuck anything into them.  You have to wear a top that fits over them.  For work I must tuck my shirt in so I found a great pair of pants with Elastane that are pull on but look tailored.

I wore them to death and do you think I can find another pair when I want to?  Of course not.  Well to be truthful, I have been able to find some on occasion, but I sew.  This means I can get the same fabric and make a pattern from the old pants and make them for a quarter of the cost.  They look just as good as the bought pair.  I make them in various colours to match different tops.

The trouble is that unless pants or skirts have a belt or a waist, nothing really looks good tucked into them.  This is where I'm a stickler for detail.  Unfortunately the one thing I can't change is my waist.  Well I could with enough money and if had my lower ribs removed but this seems a bit radical for a woman who isn't Cher.

In the morning or before going out at night, it takes me forever to decide what I should wear.  Here's how my thinking goes, say for a summer dress:

I like that one but it's too hot for today.  It's humid in Brisbane even when it's not too hot.  I discovered early on that polyester is the enemy in this town.  My skin just can't breathe when I wear it.
One dress is too frilly, one too formal and with no stretch.
There's another I only wore once when I went to a party on the wrong night.  The couple invited me in for a drink anyway and I demurred.  A week later the husband hanged himself and I've felt superstitious about wearing the dress ever since.  I really must throw it in the bin but it's a lovely dress.
A couple more dresses are halter or backless and just won't do for what I'm planning that day.
Another is too Hausfrau and another is cool and bright but a bit shapeless.

That's when I reach for my all purpose standby black, stretch, singlet top, short dress, the one that is my second skin.  I live in it on weekends.  I've tried to copy it but bought the wrong material.  The knit was too loose and the outcome was a disaster.  I just don't know what I'm going to do when the little black dress disintegrates.

I like skirts and tops as an alternative to dresses in summer.  I bought a great skirt that fitted and then couldn't find another like it.  Instead of cutting it up to make a pattern I found an old Butterick pattern for a pencil skirt and made a few.  It had a waist band and the pattern piece for this just mocked my waist so I left off the waist band and made it with the top of the skirt having a self-facing instead.  In fact this makes it like the shop bought one.  I've made about six of these now in different colours.  You can never have too many skirts.

I have tried making shirts with some success but haven't quite got the hang of the best fabrics to buy to make them.  I buy shirts now instead and always buy tops.  I have a great selection of stretch tops with fabulous patterns on them.  Lovely as they are I get sick of the same old, same old but I have enough and no excuse to buy any more.

Jackets are items I don't like to wear but must have.  You need jackets for every type of weather and climate.  I have a great selection of these that I collected as I lived in various cities.  None ever seem to serve the purpose when I move to a new place and I have to invest for the new climate.

I have a Parka I never wear here in Brisbane.  I have a wind/rain padded jacket great for early mornings when I drive to work.  It's soft and rolls up easily to put in a big bag I carry in the car.  I have a heavy wool jacket only suitable for a Melbourne winter, a light wool swing jacket, two office type suit jackets, a light linen one and a fake leather one.  All are classics and have outlived fashion trends.

I have a quilted silk evening jacket I bought when I lived in Hong Kong.  It is brightly coloured and I wore it many times.  For some reason I wouldn't be seen dead in it now and I can't put my finger on the reason why.  I also bought a French designer denim jacket with diamantes scattered over the back during the eighties.  It was reduced to a ridiculous price so I snapped it up.  Unfortunately it has bat wing sleeves.  I just can't figure out how to alter it so I just look at it in the wardrobe and sigh.

The Quilted Silk Jacket

I rarely buy anything now.  I just wear things to death and try to buy a replacement if I can't make one.   Clothes I don't wear remain in the wardrobe as a tribute to my past when there was more money and I went out to more functions at night.  I also feel they might come in useful again one day.

In Hong Kong I bought a full length, beaded, black chiffon dress by a well known designer.  The beads are iridescent blue and pewter.  It is a twenties flapper style classic.  I was TINY at the time and now, although slim, I look like a full-length black brick in it.  Anyway there is nowhere to wear it here.

I bought its matching jacket which I'll never part with and is superb.  I couldn't sell the dress on eBay even for a quarter of its price.  It also weighs an absolute ton.

I have collected sweaters over the years and most of them reside in a sealed plastic bag.  I always have this silly thought there may be a disaster one day and we'll need all the clothes we have stored away.  But is it worth it, I ask myself?  If the bag wasn't sealed the moths could get in and I'd have an excuse to throw them away.

What about charity bins you say?  Those things are always filled to the brim and again, no one in Brisbane, unless they are homeless and sleeping in a park in winter, needs the kind of sweaters that take up storage space in my house.

Every five to eight years I possess only two nighties at a time.  When these fall to bits I buy two more that are just right for comfort and temperature for the next five to eight years.  My husband followed by my partner both threatened to throw them away.  I also have one teen bra and seven pairs of flesh coloured and black knickers.  I only started wearing a bra five years ago as I could feel bouncing going on when I drive the taxi ten hours per day.  I wear it as a prevention measure against sagging.

I realise that what lies beneath my clothes is of no importance to me.  Underwear must just be comfortable and invisible through my clothes.  Where I can get away with being lazy and badly groomed, I do, but never on the surface.

What I have noticed is that, as fashion has changed and become shabbier and more casual, women have started to buy underwear that is more structured, lacy and feminine, such as the kind for which Victoria's Secret is famous.  This means I am the opposite of most of my gender.

It must be lovely to be a royal with a person who is your dresser.  This person chooses your outfit for the occasion, knows your likes and dislikes, maintains your clothes, gets rid of them when they are used, saving you the feelings of guilt, washes items before they are put away so that they don't develop brown stains as some clothes do that you think are clean before you put them in your wardrobe.  She would clean out the muck that accumulates on the inside of your shoes and make sure there is rubber on the soles and heels.  She is the fairy god mother of the wardrobe.

Wouldn't it be great if you got up, had breakfast, showered, brushed your teeth, did your make-up and then stood before your wardrobe.  The wardrobe mistress would step out, wave her magic wand and, poof, you would be perfectly outfitted without even having to think about looking in the mirror.  You wouldn't even have to do the contortions required to put on your pantyhose and these would never have a run in them.

She would then allow you to do your hair while she fetched your handbag, cleaned it out of old tissues, receipts and removed hair from your comb.  She would place in it the touch-up makeup and a lipstick to match your outfit that you would need for the day, make sure your charged phone, credit cards, license, clean tissues, money and keys were inside and then hand it to you before you walk nonchalantly out the door that she closes and locks behind you.  She also checks that the stove is off as is the iron, because, after all, you never have to use it.

One can but dream. 

My all time favourite dress