Buttons

Here’s a question. How many of you have a button tin? Hands up! Hands down if you are over 50. As I thought, this is an old-fogies-only possession. A button came off an old shirt of mine. I promptly unearthed an ancient Golden Virginia tobacco tin (“Now in new metric size”) and tipped out my collection of buttons. A quick trip down memory lane fondling buttons from clothing long since departed and then, sure enough, there was a near ideal button. Hmm, good but not perfect. So, I cut off a button from a less obvious position on the shirt and sewed it in place of the absentee then stitched the ‘new’ button in its place.

So what do people do if they don’t have a button tin? Buy a new button? Buy a new shirt? Buy a new bra and increase the amount of cleavage on view? Do fashionable types not have to worry about this problem because the garment is rendered obsolete long before it begins to deteriorate?

While I had the needle and thread out I also repaired a hem. I learned how to do that in the Brownies. Got a badge for it. Eventually. Where do people learn such skills these days? Does it matter if they don’t? Perhaps people who are not knee-high to duck don’t need to spend so many of their formative years taking inches off the bottom of every item of clothing they purchase.

Of course, when I was a teenager mini-skirts and hot pants were the fashion. I used to laugh at the over forties who also wore short skirts when their legs were clearly unsuitable for exhibition. I wondered why they did it. Could they not see how ridiculous they looked. Now, the answer is revealed to me. There was nothing else available in the bloody shops! Yesterday I bought two pairs of trousers with a very low waist line. Was that because I wanted to put my flabby belly on display? Definitely not, but there was no other choice. We all become fashion victims sooner or later.