It was only natural I suppose that I would grow up with the thrill of the thrifting hunt. While we didn't start hitting the stores until my college years, every summer weekend as a child was spent combing garage sales all over town for treasures. We even did it with my grandmother in Wisconsin, one of which procured me a beautiful yellow bicycle when I was 6 or so that I was too young and too scared to ride until my mom eventually sold it at a garage sale of our own. (I later got a shiny new blue tensspeed when we lived out where I could practice in the long gravel driveway.) What we actually bought when I was really young I don't remember--surely toys and games and occasionally clothes. Bits of decor and dishes, small pieces of furniture.
This dress was love at first sight, bought a few houses down from us and a few sizes too small, but I begged my mother to wear it to school, but it was way too short. So instead, I took to wearing it around the house. It was an almost reptilian pattered polyester that zipped up the back and had a skirt wide enough to twirl in even as short as it was. It looks grey in the pic, but I remember it as closer to blue. It was my thing for awhile, this dress, and I imagine my mother grew tired of it eventually and hid it or threw it out. At the same garage sale, I picked up one of my favorite stuffed animals and also a piece of 60's amazingness, a big green stuffed hippo with felted daisy appliques emblazoned on it's side, so I always put this dress and that hippo in the same shared corner of my mind (and which I think is still rattling around somewhere in the house.)
Even though I had no idea of fashion trends or lines of decades, I knew even then this was far more interesting than the things I could fine in the early 80's, but it did spawn an attraction to drop-waisted mini skirts I was wearing like crazy for awhile there until I was more self-conscious about skirts in upper grades. The age where dresses felt consipicous and too formal, and in danger of being pulled up by boys, who apparently start their bullshit real early. Still, I look at this picture and remember how much joy (as you can tell) a single piece of clothing once inspired.
