Long Skirts and Eyewear Fashion

I was twelve years old when I first noticed I was having trouble seeing the blackboard at the front of the room. In seventh grade, I was sitting in the next to the last row of desks in our one-room country school.
I told my Mom I thought I needed glasses. She doubted me, saying the only reason I wanted glasses was because my best friend had just started wearing glasses, so, naturally, I wanted some too.
Each year, the teacher would test our eyes using the Tumbling E chart. When she told my Mom she thought I needed to have my eyes checked by the eye doctor, Mom finally believed me and made an appointment. Yes. I needed glasses - but only for distance. My eyes were fine for reading.
Choosing my first eye glass frames was easy - I wanted some just like my friend's. (Mom was right about that part - wanting glasses because Virginia had them.) Mine weren't exactly like hers, but they were the same blue-gray plastic similar to the ones above. I think the frames were $12.00 and the lenses were about the same price. I wore these glasses about four years until.....

I was a junior in high school and got these snazzy two-tone gold frames. The shape of the frames was a little more fashionable, also.

When I was public relations director for the College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, I had to have my picture taken to include with a press release about my appointment. My eye wear was less pointy, but I was back in gold frames.

In between those two, I had some real 'cats eye' frames. Looks like Mom and Grandma, did, too. This was in 1962 when Doug was a baby.

And 1968 - still similar style. By this time, I had been wearing glasses more than ten years and my eyes didn't seem to get worse every year or two as they did those first few years. So, even though eye wear fashion changed, I didn't get new frames just to stay in style.

Two trends in the seventies were long skirts and BIG glasses. In '78, Kari and I were both sporting those "all the better to see you with" frames. They remained popular all through the 80's.......

.....and into the nineties - although they were starting to get smaller when this picture was taken in 1996.

My eyesight hasn't changed in the past five or six years, so I've been wearing these same frames for quite awhile. I doubt I'll be wearing the popular rectangular eyeglasses of the last two or three years because......

Just as the seventies saw big glasses and long skirts, I have been noticing the trend toward those two fashions once again. I've seen several floor length dresses this summer. If I've seen them in our small town, I'm sure they are popular in the cities.

Long skirts were one of my favourite thing about the 70's & 80's. I always felt so dressed up when the skirt went all the way to the floor. In the case of the picture above, I was dressed up for New Year's Eve. But I had long skirts for everyday wear, too - especially the broom stick ones. I had them in several solid colors and many, many prints.
The other trend I'm seeing coming back is jump suits. Loved my jumpsuits. But they are long gone.

The only floor length skirt I still have is this dress I bought fifteen years ago for my 35th class reunion. I wore it to Brock's high school graduation in 1999 and again to Kathryn's high school and Alyssa's college graduations this spring. I still love the dressy feeling of a long skirt.

Too bad all my others went to Goodwill. And too bad those big eyeglasses went to the Lions Club Recycle for Sight Program. I think we're going to see both styles making a come back.