Where has all the color gone?

[mamadeb]

I've noticed this in the past few weeks, with something really driving it home recently. The ladies in Flatbush have stopped wearing colors, at least to dress up.

Oh, black has always been a popular color for Shabbos and Yom Tov - it's slimming, it goes with everything, and you can wear the same black suit over and over and no one will notice. I have a black suit of my own for that reason. I only really wear it for simchas (weddings and bar mitzvahs) because my synagogue is sort of askew from the rest of the area, but I do own it. But there's always been other colors, too.



A few weeks ago, though, I got to attend a yeshiva high school graduation - the son of friends of ours. They had separate seating, so I was with the young man's mother, sister, grandmother and another family friend. His father sat by himself until Jonathan showed up a bit late.

We were the only women in the auditorium wearing colors. The mother wore a lovely pink suit, and a white knit hat with a flower and I wore the outfit I wore to my brother-in-law's wedding - a green skirt, melon tank and embroidered natural linen jacket, with a green headscarf. The other ladies also dressed in summer-appropriate colors, and wore hats (except for the twelve year old, but she wore a blue headband.) Everyone else wore black or grey or black and white, and, of course, wigs. I was also the only one who knitted, but that's fairly normal. Better that I knit than I spoke or texted on my cellphone.

However, this is a fairly right-wing yeshiva even for Flatbush, so the other families might have skewed that way anyway.

This does not explain what happened on a recent Friday night at the local mikveh. The waiting area had a number of women in Shabbos dress (some in outfits, some in Shabbos robes), and all of them were wearing black or black and white.

Except me. I was wearing that outfit I mentioned above. I felt like Mrs. Technicolor. And the people who use this place don't skew any more right on average than the rest of Flatbush. Which, yes, can be pretty far right.

Is it a style thing? Am I hopelessly out of date?

Comments

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Cycles of fashion, I suppose.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I'm sure - and this group follows both the outside world and its own cycles.

[sethg]

Heresy! Of course your neighbors in The Other Holy City are wearing exactly the same clothing style as their parents, as their ancestors in der altische heimland, as the bnei yisrael at Sinai. When our sainted foremothers marched out of Egypt, they marched in opaque stockings and sheitels that had straight hair on the top and a little wave at the bottom.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course.

The men wore bekeshers and streimels, and everyone spoke Yiddish.