There can be nothing more beautiful than watching a stunning woman cascade down a flight of stairs in a enchanting outfit that just accentuates her amazing curves in just the right classic way. There is even a stair way designed  by architect Morris Lepidus in the famous Fountain Bleu Hotel in Miami.  Located in the lobby of the hotel, it was to be a stairway to nowhere.  It existed to provide a grand backdrop for elegantly dressed ladies to make their entrance into the room.

It is obviously a tradition from a distant past that I just love to see in all those old movies where women wore dresses and men wore the pants with a jacket , tie and cool hat.  Ok Catherine Hepburn gets a free pass in her pants.  She was elegantly sexy no matter what she wore.  Maybe it was her distinctive accent too that made her elegant.   Find the Thin Man movies from the thirties, in particular where the two detectives find their clues wearing tuxedoes and evening gowns through out the movie as in the 1936 After The Thin Man movie.

The only thing I like about the popular series Downton Abbey  is their attempt at elegant costumes.  In the old movies, those people looked comfortable in their fancy clothes not like the constant annoyance of people these days feeling awkward cause they have to look good once in a while.  Even in the old TV show Leave It To Beaver, that Mom looked great in her kitchen for any occasion or even no occasion.

What happened to our society?  These days shorts and flip flops are good for any occasion.  In the 1939 movie called Dark Victory the women were dressing up for a picnic complete with matching hats.  Have we become a nation of slobs?   There is only one person I could find that is addressing the problem of how awful our people look these days. She is  Professor Linda Przybyszewski  at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend Indiana who teaches a course called A Nation of Slobs.

She remarks on how her students are in awe of the attention to details found in vintage clothes and the soft natural fibers that made up the fabrics.  No itchy synthetics were used then near our skin. She even preserved old magazines and plans for making the clothes.  All the sketches were even in classy sexy poses.  We have lost the design details, color details that used to be part of a design vocabulary.

Proper dressing was so important, it was taught in school from first grade through college.  She has the books to prove it.  What happened to those sexy gloves women used to peal off their long slender soft supple hands?  That alone could be an erotic moment for some people.   Up until the 1960’s gloves were considered a requirement.  If you didn’t have a hat on men or women, you were considered slightly under dressed. 

Because of creating the suburbs in the 1960’s people became more used to wearing casual clothes all the time.  The demand for simpler and cheaper cloths took off. So, simplicity slipped into stupidity. It became hard to tell if a girl was 15 or 50 when they both wore a straight cut piece of fabric just laying down from her shoulders in the 60’s. Now everyone wears pants.

We need to rescue our nation from our own sloppiness but I know it won’t happen.  College students wear pajama pants to the dining hall.  Slippers are being made with rubber soles so you can wear them anywhere too.  I should just have a pillow strapped to my ass all the time too as a fashion statement. 

Make an effort please because a little style can go a long way.  Tell your secretary to wear those heels at least part of the day please.  Forget it.  Where are my shorts and flip flops, I have a meeting to go to.