Easter is a defining moment in a Southern girl's upbringing. It always meant a new dress for Sunday School and church and family events that followed.
This was an especially big thing for little girls in small towns. I guess I could have survived if I had had to wear a dress that wasn't fresh off the rack, but I didn't think so.
Easter is also the date from which set-in-stone fashion rules evolve, such as the proverbial directives about white shoes, white linen frocks, etc.
Some so-called experts contend that the old maxims like "no white shoes till Easter and not after Labor Day" are passe, but try telling that to dyed-in-the-wool Girls Raised in the South. It won't hold water.
Comparing this decree to issues like starving children, tornado damage and real disasters, it certainly pales in terms of importance. But it's hard to shed your raising, as one of my mother's friends used to say.
When you've had it drilled into your psyche that it's just plain tacky to wear white on your feet before Easter, it stays for a long time. Like a lifetime.
Some people take this even further, contending that white is strictly a summer color, particularly for shoes. They say you shouldn't wear anything white (other than a blouse that, of course, would not be made of a summer fabric) till after Memorial Day and cull the white after Labor Day. A small window of opportunity there.
The rules of dressing can be obvious or baffling, and some folks, particularly people who didn't experience Southern raising, just don't get the policies about white. Southerners, for the most part, take them to heart.
Some of this seems silly, even to me, because of the weather in the South. It may be warmer on a January day than it is in May, but the calendar reigns nonetheless. And I won't wear white shoes in the wintertime regardless of the temperature. I'd be afraid I'd trip and break my foot because Mamma would be "tsk-tsking" me all the way from her heavenly home.
I did a little Internet research and the consensus appears to be that the original rule was more along the lines of "wear white shoes only between Memorial Day and Labor Day." Furthermore, it mainly applied to white pumps or dress shoes. White tennis shoes and off-white boots were exempt, as are any shoes worn by a winter bride.
Winter white clothing (e.g., cream-colored wool) is even acceptable between Labor Day and Memorial Day, too.
I can recall pairing white vinyl go-go-boots in the 1970s with my purple velvet hot pants, one of the weirdest fashion designs I ever succumbed to. For whatever reason, it didn't seem incongruent at the time to wear the white boots with a winter fabric like velvel (what little there was in the suit).
That style, thankfully, passed quickly into history.
One of the things about fashions that has changed drastically — and I definitely think not for the better — is that young girls, for the most part, don't wear pantyhose with dresses these days.
Betty Berry Gwatney, the retired Pep Stepper matriarch, finds this appalling. "Betty's girls" ALWAYS wore pantyhose in a suntan shade with their uniforms.
"Their legs always looked pretty, they were the same color and they looked so pretty in a kick line," Betty said.
She, like me, thinks most of them would be wise to revive the hose-on-the-legs habit.
"Their legs are just prettier that way," she said.
Dancers know that legwear is flattering and haven't given up the practice, thankfully.
There are some fashion rules I admit that I tossed to the wind — like mixing metals. Years ago I never would have worn a mix of silver and gold-toned jewelry. I thought it looked weird.
Now I find it interesting and consider it savvy.
Also, I grew up thinking that as a redhead I absolutely could not wear red — other than my cheerleading sweater which was, of course, sacred to me. You couldn't have peeled that one off me.
I was influenced by Mamma, who told me so often that "you just don't look pretty in red" that I took the words to heart and avoided red for years.
Later on, I determined that I could wear orangy-red tones, but not rosy-red ones. I'll leave those to the blondes and brunettes because they tend to give me a floozy look and that's a look I'd just as soon avoid.
So, I will wear the shades of red that are compatible with my complexion tones and hair color.
I've come a long way, but not far enough to wear white shoes during the "wrong" season.
I may be liberated, but some old habits die hard.
Lynda Hollenbeck is associate editor of the Courier.
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