Itching for a swim

I have been buying yet more books. Actually, this latest batch  I’m really justifying as being a Christmas present to myself. Why do I always feel this surge of guilt every time I bring a new book into my life? Why should I have to justify every purchase with a good reason, or a work cause? No, the truth is, I fell in love with this book when I first saw it on the shelves in Melbourne.

Yes, I bought it because I love it.

However, what I couldn’t justify at the time was the $90 Melbourne price tag so, when I later searched for the said book on Amazon, how could I turn it down at just US$26?  Of course, to make the purchase worthwhile, and to spread the cost of international postage, I couldn’t just stop at the one book, could I? So I also bought the latest Nicky Epstein publication,  ‘Knitting Over The Edge’, plus the two Nancy Bush publications, ‘Folk Socks’ and ‘Knitting Vintage Socks’.

Roaring Twenties Fashions: Deco, by Susan Langley, covers that glorious period between 1925 and 1929 – commonly regarded as the Flapper Era. This book is a fabulous combination of vintage images (ie real people photographed at the time), of present day photographs of surviving pieces of fashion, as well as period artists’ illustrations. There are bountiful collections of head-hugging cloches, and of bejewelled shoes.  There is page upon page of flapper dresses in silks and sequins. And then there are a lot of these too:

Knitted woollen swimsuits. 

There’s very little knitwear in this book overall, but there are plenty of examples of  knitted swimmers.

And the most horrific memories came rising to the surface. You see, I used to have to wear one of these things as a little girl. It was made of navy blue wool, scratchy, heavy, and it wrinkled like mad. It used to drop downwards when it was wet, and used to give me the equivalent of rope burns when my mother pulled the wet suit off my little body after we’d swum in the sea or the Thames. My mother in the UK even has family snapshots of me in the blessed thing. I can remember how  real my embarrassment was at having to wear such an unstylish costume. But what’s puzzling me now, since these memories have resurfaced, is what on earth was a child in the late ’50s/early ’60s  doing wearing a costume that was possibly obsolete by the late 1930s ?

Apart from the perverse thought that it might have been some sort of ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, I suspect it was really no different from most of my other childhood clothes: a hand-me-down.  Just who the previous owner was, I haven’t a clue. Like many families, clothes in our household were handed down from the eldest (6 years my senior) to the middle child (3 years my senior) to me. Unfortunately, both my elder siblings were boys, which meant that, more often than not, I was togged out in baggy trousers and androgenous ‘Ladybird’ brand T-shirts & tops. (Remember, readers, androgenous was fashionable in the ’20s, but it didn’t really become hip again until the ’70s. ) I’ll never forget the day that I stood outside the local toy shop, aged about 8, gazing into the window at all those things I’d never have pocket money enough to buy, when a nearby child asked of his mother what ‘that boy’ was looking at!  I was mortified that someone should think I was a boy ! That always short haircut of mine wouldn’t have helped my cause, but what was more distressing was that the child’s mother obviously couldn’t discern my gender either, as she never offered up a correction to her offspring.

I also used to get hand-me-downs from friends of our family, but these weren’t much better: brown bloomers (you know, those baggy things with a bit of a leg, made out of heavy jersey fabric ) that must have been some poor unfortunate’s school uniform. Yes, you can imagine the taunts when I used to hang upside down on the monkey bars at primary school, second-hand knickers exposed.  If the style alone wasn’t enough to condemn me, the fact that they were poo-brown most certainly drew plentiful and unwanted attentions. Another sure winner was khaki or grey socks – my mother must have loved them, as they didn’t show the dirt. For years I begged to be allowed to wear white socks,  just like all the other girls at school, but to no avail.

But back to that woollen swimsuit. I had a little look around the internet in search of some answers that might explain how I came to be wearing such a thing so long after their demise, when I came upon this page:

The Wool Bikini Set To Make A Splash

My God ! It’s not even from some severe Eastern European regime, but here in Australia. The website is that of Australian Wool Innovation Ltd and it’s an Australian designer who has whipped up some merino wool swimmers for  us to enjoy splashing around in this very Summer.

Now, if only I could lay my hands on those lovely wool swimmers I once had….