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

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.

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.

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.

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!!!!

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.

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

My favourites were hand me downs from a friend in school. I loved the bag that would arrive! my other favourites were a pinafore denim dress from a jumble sale and I lived in white trainers from Woolworths. My mum worked in Lennards shoe shop in the late 70s early 80s and I sometimes got shoes in the sale.I had a dress made of polyester that I hated as it was itchy and my parents smoked and I always thought I would catch fire from their ciggies as it said " flammable" in the label.

My Mum & Nan were expert knitters & my sister & I often had dresses made by a seamstress up the road, I always remember trips to her sewing room where you stood ankle deep in threads & fabric scraps. Dad's sister lived in Canada & sent us a parcel of beautiful clothes every Christmas, we loved our "skorts". Mum tried to make me wear a hideous flared blue satin dress to a grammar school party when I was 12, I wanted a sheath dress like the other 1960s girls...never did go to that party but pretended I did. Spent several hours hiding in the Waiting Room at the railway station instead.

I used to love my summer dresses with a matching bolero. Made me feel quite grown up!

My Mum and my Nana made all my clothes (except undies - and I had liberty bodices with rubber buttons) and my Mum says once when asked what I wanted for my birthday I replied that I would love a dress with no pins, as in shop bought!
I do remember lots of the things that they made me and the love and care that went into them. They both taught me how to sew and I was making my own stuff from about 13. We didn't have much money so I used to buy things at Jumble sales and use the fabric, zips, buttons etc.

Grammar school uniform was mostly second hand from the sale the school had at the beginning of the school year. If it had to be new it was always too big - plenty of growing room! If I sound ungrateful it's probably cos I was mortified.

My Mother loved Shirley Temple. Say no more.

I remember wearing identical dresses and cardigans as my sister, who was 3 years older than me. My mum also made all our dresses, & knitted cardigans. I think it stopped as we neared senior school age, so about 11.
It’s only later in life I realized how much love my mum had for us in making these clothes. I can still vividly remember one or two of these dresses, and of course looking back through photos, black & white photos, by seeing these can remember the colours.

My mum always made dresses for me and my two sisters all matching she would sit up until the middle of the night to finish our dresses for Easter/Christmas all identical she would then get the pinking scissors out and cut us ribbons in the same material,I always felt sorry for my youngest sister as she would have the pass me downs for the next few years.
Mum also knitted us matching aran cardigans which seemed to grow with us and lasted years.

I was the same Henetha! My family weren’t at all well off, my mum didn’t have a sewing machine. She was given an old one by a kind neighbour but never understood how to use it as she’d not got the hang of sewing at school or home. She used to hand sew things for us. I remember a green velvet shift dress she made from a cut out and ready to sew package she’d bought in a magazine. I thought it was beautiful! She also made school dresses for myself and my sister sometimes as it was cheaper. We had a lot of second hand clothes from my cousin when we saw her which wasn’t often as my parents had moved to the other side of the country away from family so contact was very limited in those days. We also got hand me downs from my parents friend’s children and went to a little second hand shop in town. We weren’t overly concerned about clothes although I do remember feeling bad when some things didn’t fit well as I was a chubby child! I remember a tweed coat that barely buttoned and whose sleeves were too short with particular embarrassment! Things improved when I was thirteen and was allowed to go flower picking. With my first wages I bought myself orange cord jeans (?!), a blue top and my sister a white shift dress with blue braiding. So many clothes over the years (something of a clothesaholic!) but will always remember those!

My mother made a lot of my clothes but she wasn’t a great seamstress. In my early teens at the beginning of the 60s I started to make my own “Carnaby St” style clothes and got reasonably good at it. I could copy designer stuff for a fraction of the price. I started sewing again during lockdown but fabric is so pricey now that it’s cheaper to buy ready made!

My mother wasn't keen on dressmaking or knitting, although loved doing tapestry, but we had a woman nearby who had a little business hand knitting so she knitted our jumpers. I had lovely viyella checked dresses with hand smocking as a small child and, as I got older, my winter coats were always tweed from a local tweed factory in Fermanagh ( Lisbellaw). The only clothes I didn't like were the ones occasionally sent over from London by my aunt who was a nanny with an aristocratic family. She was sometimes given clothes outgrown by their daughter for her nieces in Ireland. What suited the lifestyle of an aristocratic child in London wasn't always appropriate for a farmer's daughter in Fermanagh!! I remember going to a birthday party in a horrible pink creation and feeling embarrassed. Even as a small child I knew it was old fashioned and too fussy. Awful.

Does anyone remember “Windsor Woolies” little knitted skirt and jumper sets? They defined my childhood… and to a certain extent my daughters too, gran’ma saw to that!

my computer set- up starts with a 'wallpaper' in sepia of my school photo when we were all 10 or 11. I can remember the exact colours of all the girls' different summer dresses. The more popular boys wore grey pullovers, white shirts, grey shorts with a belt with a S buckle at the front.

My Mum made a lot of my clothes when I was a toddler and Nan knitted for me, but when my parents split up and Nan died, within a twelvemonth of one another, most of my clothes were shop-bought as Mum had to go out to work to keep me and didn't have the time to make my clothes.

When I was a young teenager in the late 1960's Mum resurrected her old Singer treadle sewing machine and ,made a lot of my summer shift dresses, some of which I still wore until the 1970's when mimi-skirts went out of fashion.

After I had my daughter in 1991 I tried to knit her cardigans and jumpers but was asked to stop knitting for her when she was 7 because hand-knits were old-fashioned aparrently. I've never, since I was at school, sewed a garment for either myself or my daughter - didn't have the time or the inclination - but felt that to knit for a baby was something you 'ought' to do.

Virtually all the clothes I had as a child were either made by my mother, or more often were hand-me-downs from an elder sister and two cousins - who were ‘larger’. I particularly remember a coat, probably expensive - they were much better off - that I disliked because it looked ‘fat’.

Jumpers were all hand-knitted. Funny to think that it was cheaper back then to dressmake/knit than buy new.

I do remember a summer dress when I was maybe 10, because IIRC it was virtually the only one I ever had* that was actually new, from a shop.

*Until I started buying my own with Christmas/ birthday/ babysitting money.

Maywalk, I remember that black-and-white CC41 label.
Because of clothes rationing we had a clothing exchange in our town where outgrown clothes were taken in exchange for bigger sizes although the choice was not always good. My mother did all our knitting, usually very simple patterns. She also made me a circular skirt which was great for spinning around in. Today I have too many clothes and badly need to do a cull.

Not a lot of money in our house growing up and I remember my mum taking me with her to jumble sales, and me trying to hide in the queues waiting to get in. I hated having to wear jumble sale buys so when Mum bought us new stuff I remember it well.
Particular memories stick of purple flared trousers with a purple satin overshirt . They were for a Christmas dance at school. And matching floral undies once.
When I could go shopping myself with my own holiday job money. I remember buying knee length brown suede boots but telling Mum they only cost £5 when they had cost £12. I felt like the bees knees in those boots with the brown waistcoat suit to match. Happy days.

HowVeryDareYou

I was the only girl, with 3 older brothers, so never had hand-me-downs. My mum didn't make any clothes, but my eldest brother's wife did, and she made me several nice dresses. I was actually really trendy. In the early 70s, I had a Crombie coat - anyone else have one?, Levi's Stay-Prest 2-tone skirt, and then when I was about 16, I had platform shoes and was always "falling off them" and twisting my ankle.

I also had a Crombie Harrington jacket and stay press trousers and a stay press suit
We as young teenagers used to hire rowing boats on the river managed to fall in Crombie did not survive lucky I was a very strong swimmer. Also brogue shoes with blackeys
As for the platforms worked all day in Woolies in a very high pair lol

my mother made everything for all seven children. I fondly remember pretty little boleros over shirred dresses, gorgeous. Later in life, Mary Quant dresses, by then I was making my own clothes and later again, white crochet mini dress

“Didn’t always use “