I
went to see the movie, “The Dressmaker” last weekend. I liked the movie a lot
and I’m going to blog about it soon.
The
film also stirred up some old family memories and roused my interest in vintage
themes.
I
didn’t live through the 1950’s. But I have memories of family members talking
about significant historical events last century that influenced the post war
years of the fifties.
Firstly,
the desperation caused by the severe and worldwide Great Depression in the
1930’s. Work was hard to find and therefore money was scarce. Men left their
families to find any type of employment they could in order to survive.
Not
everyone had cars to drive. Men might set out on foot and trek all over the
land to find or fail to find an elusive job.
One
of my grandfathers traveled around country New South Wales searching for work.
He ended up driving a truck and carting bags of wheat for farmers. He was
grateful to be earning a small wage.
The
lean war years, 1939-1945, meant a shortage of everything, including food. Family
members adopted a ‘waste not, want not’ way of living. Making do with what
you had was the norm. Sharing your worldly goods and chattels wasn’t a maybe,
it was a given.
The
1950’s saw the western world emerge from the troubled years of two world wars
and the Great Depression. The future was looking brighter than it had for a
generation and the ‘baby boomer’ children were being born. Perhaps the optimism
was short-lived. The Korean War started and finished in the 1950’s. The Vietnam
War started in the mid 1950’s. The 1960’s were just around the corner with the people’s
calls for cultural change and revolution.
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♥ ♥
“The
Dressmaker” movie has at its core, a story about a mother and daughter
reconciling their pasts. I thought I would share a little bit of history about
my mother and me and vintage fashion.
As a sixteen year old woman, my mother was forced to leave school due to the family’s poor financial situation.
There was a prolonged illness in the family and no health insurance in those days.
Her father was responsible for substantial medical bills after a family member passed away from a slow death caused by cancer. (Her father was my grandfather who carted wheat in the Great Depression.)
My mother had to help out her debt-ridden father. She gave up her dreams of going to University and studying to become an Archaeologist.
 |
source:fotofolia
Beside the type-writer is an early desk calculator (I think?).
An operator of the calculator was called an Accounting Machinist.
It was another occupation for women. |
Mum left school to start
work at a typing pool in Sydney.
A
typing pool was a group of mostly women, who were employed to type documents on
their type-writers all day.
The repetitive strain injury (RSI) on fingers,
wrists and forearms from striking the hard, metal keys wasn’t good in that era.
Only women were expected to leave work permanently once they were married.
Each
workday, Mum walked from her father’s house to the station to catch a train
into the center of the city. She spoke of wearing her hat and gloves and with a
color-coordinated handbag.
I
think she wore court shoes.
Always
wearing stockings on her legs no matter the weather.
Being
well-groomed and looking well-turned out.
On
a Friday night, If she was going dancing with her girlfriends after work, she
might bring her evening dress with her on the train to save a trip home to get
changed.
I
remember her red lipstick and the screw-on pearl earrings. The lead crystal
bead necklaces, single and multi-strand. Also the necklace made from the black
gemstone, jet (maybe a legacy from Victorian age fashion).
While
she was working in Sydney, Mum met the love of her life and married my father.
She looked lovely in her wedding photographs and I’m sure her dress would still
be liked by a retro-chick or vintage fan somewhere in the world today.
After
the wedding, my mother moved from Sydney to Queensland and she did various
typing and secretarial jobs for most of her working life.
She
adopted a progressive attitude to life. She made a conscious effort to be happy
despite the tragedies in her younger life. In the 1970’s, I had a vague sense that
my Mum was a bit different to other mothers. She had a licence to drive a car.
A lot of other local women walked or rode bicycles to school and to the shops.
She had her own small car (it wasn’t an expensive one). She loved the color – I
remember it as a type of teal. She gave her car a name and didn’t like Dad
driving it.
When
my parents had a quarrel, Mum might leave the house and drive us kids to the
beach or downtown.
She
needed to work to help pay the mortgage. At the time, It was more usual that
mothers didn’t work.
When
I wanted to go to University, my mother was determined to give me the
opportunity she’d missed out on. My parents borrowed more money on their home
loan to help support me. It seemed an impossibility that they would ever pay
their mortgage off. They paid the bank for their house many times over and
eventually had to sell it to pay medical bills. (It was a familiar family
theme)
I
had days at University when I didn’t have a single dollar in my
purse. I worked part-time around my studies, but I could barely earn enough money
to keep going. The impressions left by my relatives and their stories about the
war-times, and the Great Depression helped me get through the financial struggles.
Mum
generally had a long fuse on her temper and a lot of patience. However, when
she reached the end of her tolerance, she was a flaming, hazel-eyed Irishwoman.
A relative to a Banshee, whose sharp tongue dressed down those who deserved it.
Mum
also had a legacy of Victorian age standards, morality and views on polite
society breed into her by her Irish grandparents. She tried to pass on the antiquated
values to me. Eek! No! I was a child of the revolution. I wasn’t having a bar
of that old stale, stuffy stuff from the 19th century.
Now
I love writing romance set in the Victorian age. Sometimes mothers know best…
When
I was a young child, the clothes that hung in my mother’s wardrobe were what we
would call vintage today.
Mum kept the same clothes for years, decades for
special dresses. It was a money crime to get rid of a dress that still could be
worn.
Nowadays,
my elderly, widowed Mum dresses for comfort and in her favorite colors.
She has
had a lifetime of pleasing others so there’s a bit of rebellion in her to now
please herself.
She would say the spirit of her feisty, red-headed, Irish
grandfather’s ways was finally letting loose. She would be happy about that
too, after a lifetime of biting her tongue and trying to keep the peace in her
world.
♥ ♥
♥ ♥
My
next blog will be about “The Dressmaker” movie.
I
sighed with pleasure at the gorgeous, vintage, haute couture fashion I saw on
the big screen. There is an element to the story that is told by the clothes
the characters wear.
The
Dressmaker—Tilly Dunnage uses her sophisticated, couturier skills to bring out
the nasty truths hiding beneath the clothes.
The
townspeople of Dungatar did her and her mother wrong.
Revenge
is back in fashion.
Hope
you can join me again.
Ashlyn
