For the love of pinafores!

Gymslips, pinafores, aprons and kirtles

A month or so ago, listening to Katherine May’s wonderful interview with Samantha Irby (thank you to Katherine for introducing me to Samantha and her hilarious books – seriously check out this interview and both these writers!), I realised that I have long had a strange relationship with clothes and fashion. I think most people who know me in real life will think that I have no interest in either of these things, but that isn’t true. Like Katherine and Samantha, my relationship with clothes has undergone a change in the last few years, but, unlike them, I didn’t use to know how to dress and then lose that over the pandemic. I’ve always been weird with clothes.

Samantha Irby on being a person

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As a child I wanted to dress as a Victorian or Edwardian child; now that I am an adult I want to dress as a Victorian or Edwardian… child. Don’t worry – I am not about to start turning up places wearing horrific frilly dresses. Probably. However, I love, love, LOVE a pinafore and I am very happy that dungaree dresses have been available to buy in the shops in recent years.

My love of a pinafore dress or a dungaree dress is due to their similarity to an old fashioned gym slip, so often a part of a girl’s school uniform all through the 20^th century in the UK. Even in my state primary school in the 80s, where uniform wasn’t compulsory, I often wore one. There is something about wearing a comfortable, hard-wearing dress, that can be layered with shirts, t-shirts, tights, leggings, cardigans or jackets, that is really appealing to me. And then there are all the boarding school stories (Malory Towers, Trebizon, Chalet School, and others) that so many of us grew up with. My experience of reading and re-reading those books as a working class girl in the 1980s would be a whole other post, which I am sure I shall write one day.

The front cover of Three Go to the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

This blog post gives an interesting history of the gym slip and its connection with physical education for girls and women in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This makes me wonder if a gym slip is just an old fashioned tracksuit… I’m clearly constantly ready for all manner of athletic undertakings in my pinafore!

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Part of my interest in pinafores and gym slips is, I think, the idea of having a uniform. There are so many aspects of this that attract me but one major part of it is the restriction and repetition involved. I really like routine and repetition in many parts of my life. For example, I have two pairs of earrings that I wear. A pair of pearl studs that I wear every single day, except Christmas. And then a ‘fancy’ pair of studs that I wear for Christmas Day only. I am the same with shoes. I can pretty much always be found wearing a pair of red Mary Janes or a pair of brown Chelsea boots. I do have other shoes, but I rarely want to wear them. I may simply accept the inevitable and reduce my shoe options further. The rest are just taking up valuable book space.

I remember, when I was in my early 20s, I used to wear a skirt and blouse combination in several colours that my ex and a couple of his friends called The Uniform. I think I have always wanted this, but have been a bit too embarrassed to lean into it fully. Nowadays, when I find an item of clothing that I like, I tend to buy it in several colours, wearing it over and over until it wears out, at which point I try to replace it with the exact same item again.

I have no need or want of variety. In fact, getting rid of variety further would soothe me, I think. When I was in my teens I had a fascination with the religious life¹ and I am sure part of that was about getting to wear the same frumpy, but comfortable and practical, clothes day after day. Now, that is clearly not a good reason for making such an extreme life choice, but, well, if you’re going to be weird, why not go all out with it.

I think I need to have a ‘nun month’ soon. Nunvember anyone?

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I think another part of this for me, and one that I feel much less awkward about than the ‘posh Edwardian boarding school girl’ thing or the ‘nun’ thing, is that I just want to wear comfortable and practical clothes. I want to be able to move about easily. I want to be able to get grubby. I want pockets!

I love watching historical programmes like the BBC’s historical farms series, with Ruth Goodman, among others. No, I don’t want to live in Tudor times – it sounds shit. But, there is something soothing about the simplicity of working with your hands, creating a garden, knitting, even cooking and baking. I’m not doing much of those last two these days. I recently told my sister that, after cooking several times a day for lots of people for the best part of two decades, I’m taking a decade off from cooking. I’m about halfway through this cooking strike…

But, when I am working on my allotment, I want hardwearing clothes that I can move around in easily. I don’t want to wear jeans - they are rubbish! They soak up rain, they give you a wedgie, and you can’t fit tools and snacks into the pockets. I want a kirtle and chemise, with a linen apron, all with capacious pockets.

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Which brings me, finally, to where I might go with all this, if I can find the time, energy, skill level, and probably money (‘phew – that’s never then!’ everyone thinks). A few years ago some friends introduced me to some amazing historical sewing YouTubers. I am not the only one who is tired of boring old normal modern clothes, it would appear. I have discovered the talented Bernadette Banner, and have even started sewing an apron following her instructions, although it is probably going to take me a year, rather than a day to create. I have found amazing people like those at The Tudor Tailor and Burnley and Trowbridge.

And, until I have the money and skill to create the clothes I really want to wear, I am going to carry on limiting my wardrobe and wearing my white linen tunics under a navy pinafore dress like the weirdo that I am!

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1. I am going to write a post on this at some point. I have a big pile of nun-related fiction and nonfiction to be read (think In This House of Brede by Rumer Golden, The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner, as well as Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream). Thank you (again!) to Katherine May for another great interview that she did (with Catherine Coldstream) that made me think about yearnings for the religious life and autistic women. You can find the interview here:

Catherine Coldstream on life as a nun