I just have one question that I should have asked a 16 year old me - What on earth were you thinking girl?????
I'm quite sure that you won't be able to actually find me in that see of white puffy meringues (although it might be fun to play 'spot the white puffy Wally'). I'm blaming it all on the 80's..... the decade that fashion most definitely should have forgotten. It was the 16th May 1989, and I was in Year 10 at the time.
It was a year when jeans had to had cuffs, and Doc Martens were the footwear of choice. I was listening to a very strange mix of music - INXS, The Smiths, Motley Crue (Ok - Motley Crue was totally due to peer pressure).
I loved the dress at the time - it was white taffeta with ruching down the sides and back, a lace overlay at the front, and a hoop underneath to add the poufiness.... oh, and matching white satin gloves of course!
I carried that dress around for years and years. The cat ended up using it as a bed in the bottom of my wardrobe at my old house, so I finally threw it out when I moved last year. I've only just realised that I'd been carrying it around from 1989 - 2009.... that's 20 years!
I hated my hairdo. I lived in a little country town (which I'm certainly not going to mention) and the local hairdresser gave me that horrible puffy blow wave, and then used half a can of hair lacquer to stiffen it. I didn't have time to wash it out and start again, so I just had to go with it.
Ahhhh the memories...... I think it might have even been the first time that I ever had far too much to drink.
If you'd like to play along and show us all your fashion fail moment, then please do! It doesn't have to a debutante ball. It could have been a wedding, a formal, a party anything! Just pop in your link so we can all come and visit.
23 comments:
Oh Ms. Pops that is so funny. There will be a lot of that 'BIG hair laquered to within an inch of the ozone layer' in these deb pics I suggest.
You are very brave Cam - I didn't make my deb, but my year 10 dress was just like that but aqua - the colour of choice in '89! I wish I could find a photo!
I'll get my pic on later tonight but I think you and I were hit by the same fashion bug of the time. **Tragic** Mine was in 1986!
Maybe I am old but I think you look lovely in the photo. Or maybe it is because I harboured a secret wish all through my teens to have been born in the era of crinolines. I always felt sad that I wasn't, not realising that we were way too poor to have been of the people who wore them. Cherrie
oooh I think (except for the puffy sleeves) the dress actually looks quite lovely =)!
Dude, I can see those puffy white sleeves of yours in the second row, and I don't even have my glasses on!!
I hear you on the small town hairdresser. I once went in to get a wave perm on my wispy fringe, and came out with a full-on mullet, tightly permed all the way back to the crown of my head. I took to slicking it all back with gel and putting my hair in a (mulletty) ponytail, but occasionally little tufts of short hair would poke out from the gel and I'd look like a scary hedgehog. That went on for two years while I grew it out.
Fashionwise I don't have many fashion disasters as mum made all my clothes. My formal dress was FANTASTIC!! I'll see if I can find photos, though, and post them. I do recall a wedding I went to, wearing a home made skirt and jacket made out of some dishclothy kind of fabric. It was a horror, made worse by the fact my best friend was marrying my ex-boyfriend.
For the record I think you look really smashing, especially seeing as you were having a deb ball in the midst of the worst of 80s styling!!
that is hilarious, but I have no photographic evidence of such a time...
Very elegant.....for the time! Wouldn't it be great if you could talk to your 16 year old self. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Hee hee, so brave. Luckily my high school formal pics are tucked up in my mother's album, a thousand ks away!
I agree, you look tres elegante!
I too actually think its a very sweet photo of you in your mid teens. But yes the sleeve puffiness does make me smile. Unfortunately I don't have anything similar to share (and yes my mum is keeper of embarrasing youth photos and she is 1000's of kms away too!)
thanks for the giggle this morning Cam, I must say we all had the same hair I am sure, the 80s was afterall the "big hair" decade you all look like a lovely bunch of brides!!!!!!!
Oh, those puffy sleeves! At least you were rocking it with your Doc's, INXS and The Smiths!
ZOMG! That is a LOT of meringues.
Love it Cam, haha, thanks for being brave. xo
Ah Cam ... I actually think there is a touch of understated elegance lurking beneath those puffy shoulders ... hearing you on the hairdresser - but that was my Year 12 disaster ... have posted my year 11 for your perusal...xx
Stunning!
I'm also from a small town where debs & dodgy hairdressers were in abundance....you escaped lightly hairdo-wise compared to some of the disasters I sported on my head!
I'll be back to play next week, I'm off to dig around in the piles of photos, looking for the taffeta series.
I'll have to go hunting tomorrow and see if I can find my deb photo
I have once posted a pic. of my foofy 80's musk stick pink taffeta bridesmaid dress and I will NOT do it again....but here is the link http://linoforest.blogspot.com/2007/09/flashback-friday.html
Nothing under the sun could have made this eastern suburbs girl willingly partake in a Debutant ball...so alas no pics. to share!
Love it. Can't remember my debutante photo (thank gooness for small mercies I am sure) But somewhere out there is a photo of me in culottes, clogs, with big glasses of the 70s and maybe even a mullet. Let's hope that never reaches the internet.
You're a vision Cam! Thanks for bravely sharing. Mine still feels too horrific to share...
LOL - I will have to play along with my formal photo when I dig it out. My formal dress was an apricot mother of the bride number, with huge 1989 hair and heavy makeup. I still have it at home on top of Mum's cupboard - and it is actually too big for me now!!
I think you look fab! We are the same age (i was also year 10 in 1989). My formal dress is jade green and of course taffeta and mum still has it. not sure what for - perhaps if she needs a parachute...
(typing one handed as Louis is in the other so sorry foir any errors)
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