2021 Fashion On The Ration Challenge

TwibbleDee

Cherryfudge said:

I wonder if the UK is peculiar in its tendency to buy clothes specially for holidays (on the precept that 'Climate is Different There' and 'This Will Be Useful For Holiday Activities')? I certainly have quite a few pieces of clothing that I'd never wear in the UK but which were chosen because they pack well and I might need to cover up from the sun or in the cool of the evening while in the UK I'd just put a jumper on...

Around here, it's very much dependent on where you are from and where you are going.  Even just a few hours can make a major difference, and 8-10 hours driving can get you into a completely different climate.

For example:

I grew up in Houston, Texas.  Hot and humid, some colder weather, but never freezes for long and school is probably canceled if there's frozen stuff on the ground.  The general expectation was that if it's cold enough to wear different clothing, you should probably just stay inside as much as possible.  Recess would be canceled 2 or 3 times a year because it was "too cold to go outside", by which they meant not everyone had a suitable coat for the temperatures.  When we went to my grandparents' house in New Mexico (12 to 14 hours away, and we went at least twice a year), there were ski bibs there in various sizes for all the kids (it was always a bonus when you found a $5 in the pocket!).  Some of the adults owned their own.  Mom had some heavier sweaters that only seemed to come out there, but the kids just added a layer under their winter coat.  Our heavier coats were always ski coats because we'd need them when we went up there, but a lot of people only had light coats and rain coats.  That's still the case, especially for people who can't afford more than one coat; that's part of why the cold freeze when Texas lost power in February was such an issue.  If we were going on a cruise, we were pretty much set with our current wardrobe.

I live further north in west Texas now.  It's hot, dry, and windy (I live in a blow dryer in the summer), but generally cooler and rainy for at least part of the winter.  I rarely wear skirts at home because, well, they fly.  When we go towards central Texas, however, they're much more practical.  This last weekend, we were in Austin (4.5 hours away from home) during a flash flood warning.  I was wearing an ankle-length skirt designed for fly fishing that I rarely wear at home but wear tons down in that area, and very glad that I was as when we had to go through several inches of water to get back to the car, my jeans would have been soaked to the knees!

Cherryfudge

That's complicated, @TwibbleDee! A continental climate is so different from ours here.

Am I the only one who had to look up 'ski bibs'?

Liverpool_Anne

@Cherryfudge, no I had to look up ski bibs as well as an ankle length skirt designed for fly fishing. I don't think I have ever seen a woman fishing in a skirt, especially not fly fishing when they are mostly up to their knees at least in the river. My cousin's wife is a champion fisher and she always wears waders or thigh high wellies depending on where she is fishing. Fishing skirts are the frilly bits on lures over here I think. Language is a funny thing

TwibbleDee

This is the type skirts I have: https://www.macabiskirt.com/how-it-works. It looks like they've changed the descriptions to "travel skirts", but they were original designed for fishing!
They work great for kayaking and keep my legs from getting sunburnt.

PollyWollyDoodle

That’s fascinating - it’s not at all what I was picturing, I was imagining a sort of Victorian mackintosh skirt. It looks very versatile and very comfortable. I love the advertisement, too - no ‘leg-specific garments’. Thanks for sharing that, TwibbleDee. 

Liverpool_Anne

@TwibbleDee, yes I thought that was what you meant when I searched. I think it's a climate thing, we don't often have it hot enough here to need to keep cool when you are standing in the middle of a river

Laura_Elsewhere

The Macabi seems much the same as the big dupion-silk skirts I make and wear nowadays  
Years ago I worked in a war-zone and took with me a splendidly useful overskirt - simply 4 yards or so of black polyester pleated onto a buttoning waistband - I was working in an area with strong religious/cultural rules about women, and as the sole woman in the team it was very useful to be able to slip this long skirt on over my working gear in an instant - it folded up to nothing, dried in ten minutes, etc. 
Here's one of my silk skirts when I was ditch-digging a few years ago, just kilted up into the waistband either side, one of multiple ways to wear it, inc bringing the back-hem through and up to bifurcate myself (oo-er!), which is how men wore their very long shirts for centuries Eminently practical! 

MrsCD

@Laura_Elsewhere, please could you show how you made your waterproof over skirt again? I can't find it! I thought I might try a practice one with a cheap plastic poncho. 

Laura_Elsewhere

MrsCD said:

@Laura_Elsewhere, please could you show how you made your waterproof over skirt again? I can't find it! I thought I might try a practice one with a cheap plastic poncho. 

I used 3m of ripstop nylon and had about half a metre over.... I used one big long rectangle that was the width I wanted the length to be, iyswim, and a good twice or 2.5x my wast measurement.  Then I made a waistband that was my waist plus 12" for overlap at the front, and then one end very long so it went right round the back of my waist to the front again, and the other just long enough, so when I put it on, I held the skirt behind me, wrapped the short-tie across my front, the long-tie side across on top overlapping it, and then the long tie round the back to tie in front. I pleated the very long wide rectangle onto the waistband (ie waist +12").

Does that make sense? 
You can do it any length - I did mine about 30" long because it was mostly to wear when going on overgrown footpaths through woodland, so I wanted to keep most of my skirt dry. If you wear shorter skirts or just want to keep your legs dryish on pavements or open paths then just knee-length would do fine. And the amount of fabric I needed does reflect my waist being on the large side!  

Wraithlady

Laura_Elsewhere said:

Years ago I worked in a war-zone and took with me a splendidly useful overskirt - simply 4 yards or so of black polyester pleated onto a buttoning waistband - I was working in an area with strong religious/cultural rules about women, and as the sole woman in the team it was very useful to be able to slip this long skirt on over my working gear in an instant - it folded up to nothing, dried in ten minutes, etc. 

On a holiday to Greece, a day trip included a trip to a monastery -  the write-up advised that women had to cover up their legs (to below knee-level iirc) and head and no bare shoulders, this was repeated when you signed up, and again on the bus (and notices all round the entrance.

Being sensible, I took along my beach kaftan, silk so folded to very little, not very see-through and generally comfortable in the baking heat, my straw hat (with chin strap) was a given anyway as I'm a redhead. I assumed that other women would be similarly prepared - oh, how wrong I was!

Of the 20 or so women, there was me, the tour guide and (?) 3 other women - all the rest had to hire the skirt and shawl combo from the ticket booth and quite a few complained loudly about this (the skirts looked like they were made from 1970's curtains, to be fair) but, as the tour guide pointed out, no skirt, no entry.