The personal language of fashion is often as carefree and breezy as a day at the beach. My mom calls cropped trousers pedal pushers and my grandma called a handbag a pocketbook. My Aunt Midge referred to a winter scarf as a muffler, and in the American Midwest trainers and plimsolls are tennies (short for tennis shoe). My favourite phraseology however is a word my sister coined. Since she was a kid she's called a bathing suit, a baiding suit (rhymes with raiding). In my 20s, fresh from university and feeling incredibly superior, I said to my little sister, "You understand the correct pronunciation is actually baTHing suit?" I expected her to say "yes of course." Instead she replied, "Bathing suit, why? You don't wear it in the bath tub." That was me told. To this day when I'm visiting my sister on the shores of the Florida coast, I say baiding suit. It's a special word, full of holiday memories, sun oil and sand, culled from the language of our childhood. I wonder if you've your own fashion vocabulary?
2 comments:
Well, I do have a predilection for 'house' clothes, be that a house-dress or a house-cardigan. I can't remember if I coined the phrase or if it was a friend of mine from my uni days up North. Walking through a park together one day we found a pretty, white, knitted cardigan of the sort that was over-sized enough to throw over the top of a jumper or two. It being a very cold climate and us being poor students, we adopted the cardigan and named it the 'house-cardigan' to be owned communally and worn by whoever was most freezing! I've since applied the term to dresses not to imply shared ownership but to denote that a particular dress might be too showy/impractical to get many trips out but just perfect to throw on and slouch around being glamorous and little eccentric in around the house.
:) C x
I like it! Feels like an excuse to buy a big lovely, maybe hand-knit charity shop cardie. No house is complete without a house cardigan.
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