730 things — Day 128 & 129 of 365

Do you know Christine the Glambassador's channel on Youtube?

I really love it.

Focusing on the 1930s and 1940s (with an emphasis on American fashions) she looks at different aspects of vintage style.

Here's one of her videos.

I so enjoy what she does.

I especially love the clothes of the 1910s and 1930s — the long straight shapes and dropped waists of the 1920s, and the shorter skirts of the 1940s appeal to me less. I like the elegance and grace of the 1910s and 1930s, the modest, flowing but comfortable, movement-adapted fit of clothing.

I also enjoy Crows Eye Productions' historical clothing videos on YouTube, and I loved this video of getting dressed in WWI, and this one of a nurse of the same period getting dressed.

And I found this gallery of photos from the 1930s absolutely delightful.

I was born in 1957, my mother was born in 1927, my grandmother in 1897, and my great-grandmother in 1877.

I vividly remember how my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother dressed. One of the reasons I love my green crêpe dress is that it reminds me strongly of my great-grandmother's clothes, and I feel connected up to the flow of the women in my family who came before me. 

Here's my great-grandmother and great-grandfather with my grandmother and my great-uncle, probably around 1907-1910.

You can see that my great-grandmother still favours the more Victorian styles reminiscent of how she and her sisters dressed a few years before. My great-grandmother is the one at the front.

And here's my great-great-grandmother, Mary Gott, whom I never knew as she died before I was born. That's my great-grandmother sitting next to her on the step.

And this is my mother, on her wedding day in 1951.

I can remember them all so clearly, those women. They were very strongly linked — highly individual but very similar at the same time. Vivid personalities, people of great determination and practical intelligence, resourceful and purposeful; and arguing with them was pointless.

When I look at those videos of vintage clothing on YouTube, they are before my mind's eye again — my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, each with her own style and clothing choices.

Memories . . .

Well, I have two days' worth of things to send out: a grippy thing and a chain; then two more spanners.