clothes and the Marlows

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

Partly because of the changing timeschemes, I always have difficulty envisaging the Marlows' clothes, especially the non-handmedowns and the various special party dresses of Run Away Home and Doris's fabrications in Peter's Room.

I don't have a copy of the latter, but in RAH, Nick gets as a Christmas present of a dress of 'green and white striped silk', while Lawrie's has 'a black velvet bodice and black taffeta skirt sprigged with roses', both with matching velvet 'wraps'. Miranda's dress, given to Nicola after the Changear row (with its very specifically seventies tunics with pea-green swirls and tartan trousers), is 'cream-coloured silk, finely pleated, falling from a high yoke' and makes Nick look ravishingly like Ginty. AF is always attentive to fabric and colour, but I, for one, have absolutely no sense of what any of these dresses would look like in practice, other than the fact that Miranda's dress is clearly (at least for Nick) a version of The Platonic Dress which makes the wearer look endlessly beautiful.

(a) Is AF being deliberately non-specific on these, with the aim of not dating her work? Or because she is not all that interested in the specifics of people's appearance, famously non-specific on Esther's beauty etc?
(b) How does anyone else picture these garments?
(c) Bonus points for incorporating references to the Bridesmaid's Horror, anything from Mum's Chest, or their ideas on how an entire school uniform could possibly be scarlet and not make Kingscote look as though it is drowning in arterial blood.

Comments

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

I think that coy is almost the last word I'd use to describe AF. Part of this is also a timeframe issue. Puberty is starting earlier and earlier for various reasons. Even when I was at school twenty years ago, it wasn't uncommon for girls not to start their periods until they were 15 or 16 and many (though certainly not most) were fairly much flat chested until around the same kind of time.

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean 'coy' as in prudish, more 'reticent about matters she considers private or vulgar'. Yes, AF mentions teenage pregnancy, periods and Claudie's frolics, but her references to sex are always kept fairly discreet and low-key.

On the subject of periods, Ginty must be about 15 and a half in Cricket Term when she muses on the 'curse'. If she's casually musing on her periods and they're regular enough to predict when one is arriving, I'd guess she's been having periods for at least a year or so. Assuming the twins take after her, I'd say they'd be menstruating by Run Away Home, which ups the likelihood that they'd have breasts warranting a bra.

[theminky.livejournal.com]

which is the reference to teenage pregnancy?

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Run Away Home.

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

Two of 'em... one in Run Away Home, where 16 year old Judith gets pregnant to her Swiss boyfriend, and one in Ready-Made Family, where 19yo Karen flushes scarlet at the hint that her haste to marry Edwin might stem from her being pregnant.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Even in the early-mid 1990s there were those of us who might kindly be called “late developers” and were easily bra-less until 15 (though catching up later). But in this context, I’d expect that at Kingscote, even girls wearing the ghastly approved styles of bra would be expected to wear a vest as well, at least in winter.