There are so many reasons I am grateful for my mother: her untiring devotion to her family, her positive outlook on life (even after a lifetime of adversity), her ridiculous exaggerations while regaling her audience with life events, and her unwavering moral compass.
My mum is resilient, resourceful, impossibly patient, and always kind. Her warmth and good nature is infectious, she’s an amazing dancer and a captivating public speaker.
She also has amazing style.
I’ve been fortunate enough to inherit many garments from mum’s past wardrobes, spanning over fifty years. This Mother’s Day I have styled four items of mum’s clothing, from four different decades – the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties – in honour of a truly remarkable woman, whom I am lucky enough to call ‘mum’.
1960s
Mum had amazing pins and would show them off in the cutest pinafore mini-dresses which she often made herself. It’s no wonder she had about fifteen marriage proposals before she decided on my dad!
The dress I am wearing (below), mum purchased in London in the sixties, and has always referred to it as her ‘bumblebee dress’ due to it’s fuzzy stripes. She would wear it with grey suede knee-high boots. I’ve modernised it with Valentino pumps and a clashing checked blazer.
1970s
Mum met and married my dad in the early seventies. Her wedding dress was so beautiful my Aunty borrowed it afterwards, for her second marriage, dying it pink for the occasion!
In the seventies mum went with the flow and started wearing longer skirts and dresses. She would combine the skirt which I now possess, with a crocheted wrap-around top (worn below by the same Aunty who borrowed mum’s wedding dress – as you can see, Mum’s wardrobe was highly covetable!). This top now also belongs to me.
I love wearing this skirt over swimwear in summer. It’s a flattering length and cut and is also great for layering (and twirling).
This skirt made me think of Dior’s iconic sheer gowns, and inspired me to style it as such. The silk playsuit I’m wearing underneath is also vintage. I slipped on some Marni point-toe pumps for an updated look.
1980
The eighties rolled around and, like any respectable woman during that era, mum was huge on shoulder pads. As a small child I remember her shoulder pads being like portable pillows whenever I needed a nap.
My gold and black sparkly top has velcro on the inside of the shoulders, for detachable shoulder pads which, sadly, are no longer attached.
I decided to pair this with an Aje leather skirt and Marc Jacobs stiletto booties for an eighties-business-woman-on-a-night-out look.
As you can tell from my cover photo, I got into mum’s wardrobe as soon as I could and have actually owned this blouse since I was about ten-years-old.
1990s
Growing up during the nineties I remember mum’s outfits well. She would pair her white linen dresses (of which she owned several) with espadrilles, and float around the house looking like some kind of Grecian goddess.
I couldn’t imagine wearing this dress any other way so have styled it just as mum did, twenty-five years ago. My only alteration was to wear the dress back-to-front so the buttons were more of a feature.
Today mum is still a total babe, and dresses just as fabulously.
S H O S H I N G T O N 