The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things....

...Of sleeves with puffs, of pants that flare, and things the Brits call fringe...

(Forgive the bad rhyme.)

Do you remember Anne’s longing for puffed sleeves in Anne of Green Gables? On first reading, I got teary-eyed at the scene where Matthew finally gives her a dress with the coveted puffs....

So I loved reading LMM’s inspiration for this longing:

“Anne’s tribulations over puffed sleeves were an echo of my old childish longing after ‘bangs’...Well, bangs were ‘all the rage’. All the girls in school had them. I wanted a ‘bang’ terribly. But grandfather and grandmother would never hear of it.... ‘Bangs’ remained in a long time--nearly twenty years. When I was fifteen and went out west I got my long-wished for ‘bang’ at last... It is only about six years since bangs went hopelessly out. It is not likely they will likely ever come in again... But I shall never forget them. I longed for them and how humiliated I felt when I could not have them.” (January 27, 1911)

How well I understood Maud’s longing.... Not for bangs themselves; I had bangs and loathed them--I had so many cowlicks they never fell nicely. No, my insatiable desire was for a pair of “flares.” I was ten or so when they came into style, and I thought they were gorgeous. All my friends had them. My parents, like Maud’s grandparents, thought them rather silly. They remembered when bell-bottoms had been the rage in their youth, and they were certain that this new incarnation would be just as short-lived.

To be clear about the matter, I am fairly certain I had never asked for certain clothes before--well, not since I begged for a “fur” coat when I was three. I wasn’t picky about my clothes, and I generally couldn’t care less about fitting into the current styles. But...flares. I became obsessed. I tried everything from insinuating to begging to flattery. (“Mom--look at this picture of you in high school! Your pants were so cute!”) Mom still insisted--with each passing month--that the rage for flares was going to die within the next week or two. Finally, on my twelfth birthday, she surprised me by bringing me to the mall for the sole purpose of buying me a pair. I floated through the crowded lobbies...a lot of crowded lobbies. I’m pretty certain we tried every pair of flares in the mall, and not a single pair fit me properly.

A year or so later, a friend sent over a bag of hand-me-downs--and her old flares, worn in and wonderfully comfortable, fit as if they had been made just for me. I think I walked around smiling the entire day. Anne must have felt precisely the same sporting her puffed sleeves.

And this, my friends, is why I will never wear skinny jeans. (Okay, one reason.) As long as stores continue to sell them, I feel the need to prove to my mother that flares are not a dying trend. (Just teasing, Mom. You look cute in your flares, too. ;)