My Mum never left the house without taking off her pinny and slippers, combing her hair, applying a dab of Nivea face cream then a bit of lipstick and max factor face powder, her coat, her proper handbag and also a shopping bag if she was going to shop, a scarf folded into a triangle around her neck and neatly tucked into the front of her coat which always had a brooch pinned to it. In the very early 60`s she still wore a hat when she went out but by the late 60`s she only wore a hat in Church or at special events such as weddings.
Her weekly shampoo and set would be put back into place every morning and lacquered into shape after her wash down with Pears soap and a a good sprinkling of Yardley April Violets talc. She always seemed to smell soooooo nice, a heady combination of face powder, hairspray, soap and talc which on paper should smell nauseating but in reality smelled of "Mum".
She had wool coats with big buttons, one had a fur collar, pockets deep enough to hold a hanky, sweets and anything else she might need to hand. In Winter she wore leather gloves and I can honestly remember her wearing white lace ones with Summer frocks and a cardigan. Her things seem to last her forever and probably because she actually owned just a handful of dresses, a couple of pairs of shoes, 2 leather bags, one black , one brown, a good Winter coat, a lightweight gaberdine mac, her best coat with the fur collar and lots of scarves and costume brooches. The thing is back then, coats, shoes, bags etc were made to last, working class people didn`t have pots of money so when they bought something new (which was rare) they wanted quality and something which would "see them through" as my Mum used to say. They were the same with furniture, carpets and pots and pans.
My Mum died in 1987 and I`m still using one of the pans she`d had for years, plus the original collander she bought as a newly wed in 1941 and also her bread knife also bought in 1941.
(missing her every single day).
