Last year, my baby brother, Jude, lost his battle with cancer. As it often happens during a crisis, our family began to withdraw from each other.
It's months later now, and we've finally realized that we needed to pull our family together to make our bond strong again. To do this and also to celebrate my brother's memory, my mother and her 24 remaining children, grandchildren and great grandchildren agreed to gather on a regular basis for Jude's favorite pastime — Family Movie Night.
That had always been Jude's favorite, spending time with our parents and seven siblings.
For our first movie night, we chose Jude's favorite, "Grease," a classic musical starring two of 1978's young acting sensations who are now Hollywood legends, John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. They portrayed the roguish Danny Zuko and his high society, good-girl-gone-bad girlfriend, Sandy.
As we watched the movie, we began to feel connected again. Then I noticed that my mother seemed to enjoy the movie more than anyone else. Not only did she feel my brother's spirit, she especially liked watching the 1950s scenes, the decade of her teenage years. The thing she loved most about the '50s was the chichi styles.
She even mentioned how the bawdy, suggestive clothes, hair and makeup of the day was considered "cool" by she and her friends. It suddenly struck me that some of the same fashion trends in the movie are still around today.
In my mother's teen years, the guys wore cuffed up, faded jeans, leather jackets and white T-shirts, complete with slicked back hair. It gave good boys a "bad boy image." Equally hip, my mother said she and her girlfriends would smear on bright red lipstick and tease their hair to the perfect height in the school bathroom mirror. Then they'd sway past the "bad boys" in the hall so that their below-the-knee dresses could ever-so-slightly touch the guy's pants.
At a high school dance I chaperoned recently, the teenagers' party clothes resembled Danny's and Sandy's and their gang of friends from Rydell High.
Just as in that era, the girls are teasing their hair, donning silk bowling jackets over mid-calf skirts pulling on vintage, cat-eye glasses. And the guys are wearing penny loafers, jeans that look like hand-me-downs and T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up.
I found it ironic that so many generations apart, the flashy fashion is still popular today.
When the movie ended, we said our goodbyes. As I gathered my belongings, I noticed a of Jude hanging in my sister's foyer. It hit me why "Grease" was his favorite movie. The outfit he wore when the photo was taken back in the 1980s was a perfect rendition of the style that my parents and the teen icons from Rydell High took so much pride in. Next to him hung a picture of our niece. She, too, was flaunting a risque rockabilly outfit, complete with vibrant, bright red lipstick!
It confirmed my theory that some fashion trends have remained stellar through the ages, and catchy fads really don't die. They just get more naughty and blissfully bolder.
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December 05, 2021 at 06:00PM
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