Purple Rain and Prints

I'm a plain Jane kind of girl. You can open my closet doors and find almost all solid colors, no prints. (Most of those colors will be hues of white, black, brown, gray, tan or olive.)

 

I've often wondered if my dislike of prints comes from wearing so many dresses made from feed sacks and flour sacks when I was a child. If Mom was trying to get enough material to make matching dresses for herself, my sister and me, she would look at all the patterns available and then select three or four sacks of feed (or flour) in the same design. Otherwise she would buy whatever caught her eye.  I wouldn't want anything made from the above feed sack pattern today, but as a child it might have appealed to me. If I remember right, we didn't always get to choose the designs. I have a memory of running out to the corn crib to look at the sacks to see what the patterns were like after feed had been delivered.

A lone skirt, culottes and two blouses from my closet. I liked the black skirt with pink flowers because it reminded me of circle skirts Mom, Betty & I had when I was in high school. Mom made them from purchased material - not feed sacks. The culottes are in my favorite colors, black, tan and brown. The two blouses are as close as I come to wearing animal prints - I call them jungle prints. You can tell by how faded it is that I really liked and wore the blouse on the right a lot.

Again, white, black and olive with some red to spice it up. I wear it as an over blouse along with tan, black or white slacks. I liked the richness of the colors of the print camisole & panties set.

The closest I can come to purple rain in my closet and the last two prints to be found there. The black and purple blouse is the one I bought to wear to my brother's wedding, worn with black slacks. The long purple and pink tunic was part of a set I bought for a class reunion thirty years ago. The solid navy jumpsuit it went over is long gone. If you remember Bea Arthur as TV's Maude in the 1970's, you'll probably remember all the flowing tunics she wore. I loved her clothes and wanted to dress as she did. 

I suppose I should apologize for the Purple Rain and Prints pun. All I remember about Prince, the artist, was that my daughter was a fan of his back in the 80's and I know he had a song entitled Purple Rain as well as a movie, I think. I can't say I even remember any of his song's lyrics. I was more an America's Ventura Highway fan: "Wishin' on a falling star, waitin' for the early train. Sorry boy, but I've been hit by purple rain."