Can you remember the clothes that you wore when you were young?

anyone from liverpool remember paddys market for clothes? Got lots there, the big items were grand for cutting up to make smaller items. Also woollen jumpers were unravelled and the wool was wound into a skein over outstretched arms, washed and a weight was hung on the bottom to get rid of the kinks. Very make do and mend in those days. We had a sunday best dress and another for school and that was basically it. One pair of shoes that got soaked and my feet were freezing after walking to and from school in 1963. None of us had boots

This brings back so many memories , my mum wasn’t a seamstress but she could knit anything ,so like many others we had knitted twin sets etc and an auntie would make us kilts with the pleats and big pin ,no Scottish ancestry just mum loved kilts.
We didn’t have lots of choice either and clothes lasted till they no longer fitted.
Like many others I thought shop bought clothes were more modern and I longed for them but we were not well off and they were for Sunday best or special occasions only.

I remember a particular outfit i wore when i was christened, i was about 7 years old and christened the same time as my baby sister. It was a white pleated skirt with a blouse topped by a red blazer which had white piping around the edges. White ankle socks and sandals completed the look. I still have the photo of me wearing it. For 'normal' days it was usually hand me downs from ,y cousins apart from school dress and one good outfit for best. I also remember a mustard coloured winter coat which i was wearing on the way to sunday school with my brother and his friend. They dared me to walk on the ice on a pond we passed and of course i fell in the water. The coat was soaked all around the bottom and i was terrified of going home to tell mum as it was a new coat. I can still see it now, hanging on a hanger to dry so that mum could give it a good brush to clean off the mud. It was a wool coat and sending it to the dry cleaners wasn't an option, that was too expensive and money was tight. Funny what stays in your mind from years ago. Oh yes, my brother got the telling off for this incident, he was older than me and should have known better!!!!

My mum didn't sew or knit very much after the 'matinee coat' stage but my Nan was a fabulous knitter and made jumpers for me and my brother. I still have a scarf and matching beret she made me one Christmas. We learned to make clothes at grammar school - I remember making a set of 'shortie' pyjamas which I wore with pride. I made several summer dresses and even a suit, I remember. This came in useful when my mum was pregnant with a 'late' baby when I was 17 - she was really big and couldn't find anything to fit her so I made her a couple of tunics which she wore every day in the last few months. I doubt schools teach this useful skill nowadays - such a shame.

We were poor until I was 7 (then Dad got left some money by a relative) Mum used to buy clothes and jumpers at jumble sales, remake the fabric into dresses for us, and unravel the jumpers and re-knit them. She was a terrific knitter, and our jumpers and cardigans quite often had patterns in them.
After we were a bit better off, she used to buy the children's clothes kits from magazines. They came cut out and ready to sew.

The airing cupboard was in my bedroom and my liberty bodice was kept there overnight. The little rubber buttons seemed to have melted with the heat and I hated trying to do them up every morning.

I remember the jeans we had to get into the bath to shrink and the subsequent blue legs! My first pair of drainpipes after wearing flappy flares. The matching dresses we had as sisters; I always wanted the red one but had to have the blue because my Mum said red suited my sister better. I had loads of jumpers (and toys) knitted by my Nan which I wish I had been able to make for my kids but didn't have the patience.
Now my daughter looks at the photos with the clothes I dressed her in, she is horrified at the fashion. At the time she loved them and I'll never forget the beautiful green striped dungarees which were really expensive for me to buy as a single parent. The first time she wore them, she knelt on a panel that had wet plastic cement on it and that was the end of that. I was gutted.

Maywalk

I wonder how many of the members reading this were rationed with clothing coupons to purchase their clothes with.
Each garment had to have the CC41 tag sewn in it before being sold.
It was a make do and mend time and having to unravel old woolen garments to re-use for children's knitted swimsuits, vests and knickers plus other small garments but we survived.

My clothes had the ration mark for a number of years in the early 50s. Even the dreaded liberty bodices especially the ones with rubber buttons.
I seem to remember that some of our furniture had as well.

Hand me down clothes and cardigans my mum knit. I remember I had a lovely bubble gum pink dungarees I wore with a white high neck jumper. I was about 7 years old and thought I was lovely, it clashed terribly with my red hair. I had two Sunday best dresses that I would alternate to wear to church and Sunday school.
In the 80s, my teenage years, it was frilly blouses, ra-ra skirts and oversized t shirts with skinny tube skirts. I was like an ironing board in those days, straight up and down, not a wide hip to be seen. Those were the days....

My mother made all my clothes too, apart from school uniform and hand-me-downs In the summer she made me and my sister two dresses each - easy dressing - pants on dress on - dressed. Later on I made my own clothes, even in my twenties since as a student I did not have much money. I made a beautiful suit to wear for a special occasion I attended My mother made a lot of her clothes too, including a dress and hat to wear to her sister's wedding. I had a handed down dress for that. My mother was very clever and made us toys too including a punch and judy with a booth to perform in and characters with papier mashe heads. Much later she went to woodwork classes and made a coffee table and needlework cabinet. We all knitted - my grandmothers, my mother and my sister who did the most beautiful even knitting, and me. One of my sons has even done knotting and he made his own bed. My husband made three of our bookcases - beautifully done. I have rather got off home-made clothes - sorry

Any chance I got, I was in trousers/shorts and a t-shirt. Pretty much like now but no shorts. I remember the dreaded liberty bodice and hiding it under the mattress.

knitting, not knotting !

My parents bought me a beautiful dress for my 9th birthday. It was a really bright yellow with red and blue flowers. I loved it. We went to see Grandma and I wore it. When Grandma saw it she said "That dress does not suit her, she's too pale for that bright colour." I was thoroughly deflated and never liked the dress after that.

My Dad often made dresses for me and Mum. They always looked like long shirts but we didn't like to tell him that.

Unfortunately my parents couldn't afford my green school dress and we had to buy it from the school second hand cupboard. My dress had been washed multiple times and was very light compared to all the other girls with their new dresses.

It seems that everybody on Gransnet had second hand clothes! Those were the days...

My Mum was a wonderful seamstress She made all my smocked dresses & clothes & knitted too. I remember a ruched swimsuit that went transparent when wet ! So embarrassing
As a teenager she made me skirts with lots of net petticoats in blue pink & yellow
They had to make the skirt stand out so we soaked them in sugar water do they were stiff when dry Laddered my nylons though as the edges were sharp
She & my Auntie Jane made my wedding dress & sweetpea bridesmaid dresses Material bought from John Lewis in Oxford St. My ‘posh’ grammar school uniform came from Daniel Neale Straw boater for summer She smocked all my dresses when I was small As an only child I was very spoiled & grew into a precocious young lady Married at 19
Mum bought me my Ist sewing machine a Frister Rosman German built I still have it 50 yrs later It works a treat. I made my own twins clothes on it & love sewing. However I can’t knit like my Mum She could knit animals onto fronts of jumpers & fairlisle patterns for her Grandkids. She gifted me the joy of sewing I’m so grateful xxx

My nan made a lot of my clothes when I was at home but when I went to college I made my own even though when we did sewing at school I was absolutely useless

Growing up in a pit village we didn't have a lot but we're happy. I remember my main clothes were a pair of denim dungarees, I think I did actually have 2 pairs for when o e wa sin wash but they were both the same barring a pocket on one. I would wear them day in day out normally with one strap unbuttoned and I'd walk around sucking the loose end or fidgeting with it. Always my right side strap that wasn't fastened and in summer despite being a girl I was so tomboyish and flat sheared until I was about 12 I'd often go out without anything under my dungarees, in winter I'd put a t-shirt or long sleeved top on I barely wore a cost although I know I had one.

My Auntie was a dressmaker for royalty
She would bring all the sample made evening gowns home So we had a wonderful dressing up box. Spoilt me for ever as I still love special clothes
Don’t get much chance to wear swishy evening dresses these days tho.
In my 20’s I was given some beautiful dresses from a famous ladies wardrobe which I wore whenever possible Amazing labels Mary Quant etc Should have kept them but I gave them all to a theatre company when I moved to Australia. Different lifestyle here

Oh, how I remember liberty bodices. Warm, but not comfortable!! And all those impossible rubber buttons! Then there were the summer shoes with the buttons as well which needed a button hook to get them to fasten, followed by the winter lace-up brown clodhoppers. These went with the obligatory coat with the velvet collar - dark brown, in my case. My mother did lovely smocking, and made my sisters and I matching pink smocked dresses which I still have a photo of.
Money post war was tight, but we had wealthy cousins, so usually ended up with their cast-offs. But in post-war Britain, everyone was in the same boat, so no-one felt mortified about wearing second hand clothes - until we reached teenage years, that is. So in the 1960s I was wearing seriously old-fashioned clothes while my friends had new modern ones. I was also doomed to wear the free NHS wire-rimmed glasses, and was the focus of many an unkind joke from my peers. When I was 15 I was actually allowed to have a non-NHS pair which were in a sale, and I ended up looking like Dame Edna!
When I reached the 6th form, we were allowed to choose our uniform as long as it was basically blue, and then I learned the delights of dressmaking as the fabric and dress pattern were our year's choice. And yes, I did wear it after I left school. I loved that dress until the embarassing moment when I left to go out on a casual date, got in the car, and one of the seams gave way!! I had to exit as gracefully as possible and go back and change.
I still have a lot of fabric scraps from my dressmaking days which lasted a fair time until clothes shops caught on to the fact that a lot of women were approaching 6 ft tall and some more! So now I am making a very scrappy patchwork memory quilt.
Like many others who have posted here, I salute my mother who was a beautiful knitter and who had many sewing skills

My cousin was two years older than me, and every summer I would be given a suitcase full of clothes she had grown out of. They were beautiful, very well made, and I could hardly wait for the 'delivery'! I had my own clothes too, but they were much more ordinary. I can remember in the summer going to primary school in a cotton dress, knickers, and Clark's sandals. The freedom! Sadly, senior school required a hot, tailored uniform.

Mum knitted for me. There were some summer dresses which were bought with the fabric "cut out and ready to sew" from her women's magazines, but not that many. They were always sleeveless because she always reckoned that she couldn't do sleeves. Our elderly next door neighbour earned money as a dressmaker so she would help if Mum got stuck. I remember being older and mum actually getting clothes made for me by another dressmaker (the neighbour had died by then). Not sure if it was much cheaper than buying.

My mum was a knitter and kept everyone kitted out in knitted garments. Our neighbour could sew and she made me a lovely dress when I was eleven. When I was getting married my cousin made the bridesmaid dresses. When I was pregnant my aunt made me a summer maternity dress. Everything that was made for me has stayed in my memory because I loved them all.

My mum made me a beautiful white satin dress when I was a flower girl at the village Gala day. She made me many clothes. I remember standing for the measurements and to check the length. They were always a bit long if I remember correctly. Made in anticipation of me growing. I'm still only 5 ft so never grew much. She also altered clothes to fit myself and my 2 older sisters. I also had a lot of altered hand me down clothes. Yes clothing and everything was under rationing until I was about 12.

I had an older sister from whom I received hand me downs, even after she left home when I was 15. Mum was a good knitter but didn’t sew and I struggled with needlework in school so was very happy to drop it in favour of Music at ‘O’ level.

Our grammar school specified that uniform had to be bought from a particular (expensive!) shop. Money was tight and the initial outlay considerable so Mum borrowed money from my Post Office savings, which she later repaid. Having spent my teenage years wearing navy blue at school and for guide meetings, I have rarely worn the colour blue until recently.

Like many posters, a Saturday job enabled me to buy the clothes I wanted, some of which lasted for several years, especially as I was quite adept at hemming up dresses to follow the the miniskirt craze! Happy memories!

HowVeryDareYou I had a crombie, a deep plum colour, my brother had a black one and my auntie, who is the same age as me, had a dark green one .... we loved them. Growing up mum made a lot of my dresses, skirts, jackets and coats, I still remember many of the beautiful dresses she made for me. She was also a good knitter although most of jumpers and cardigans were knit by my aunt (mum's sister) who amazed me with the speed of of her knitting. I too enjoyed sewing and made a lot of outfits for my daughters as they were growing up.

I've always felt bitter about the fact that I inherited none of my mother's sewing/embroidery skills whatsoever.

I still have two voile dresses with beautifully smocked bodices that she made for me when I was young, and have photos of my eldest daughter wearing one of them for a party. Sadly I now only have grandsons and I don't think they could be persuaded to keep up the tradition!!

The only clothes I ever made for my daughters were from Clothkits ( does anyone remember them?) I was very proud of the results, as no way could I have made them from scratch !!

Andm being pretty ancient, I suspect that some readers may have to google 'smocking' !