THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHIC AND CHI CHI

My friend Lee was wearing a gorgeous outfit and a person younger than the two of us complimented the outfit and Lee told how old the outfit was and said, ""I've got clothes older than you."  I laughed and said, "I had a picture of myself taken in this very sweater in 1981."

The picture on the left was taken in 1981 at my stand-up desk on the manufacturing floor at International Harvester.

In the picture below, I am wearing the same sweater.  It was taken in my library, using my laptop, while writing this article.   

This is my "blue week";  people who know me know that I wear the same color all week.  I began that practice in the 1970s because my work schedule was very demanding and I couldn't face making wardrobe decisions at 4:30 AM!  It made it much easier to have the wardrobe and accessories planned and hung in the closet for the entire week;   I would always say, "Ready for assembly.", a play on words for my work life, when I was ready for the work day.

I often say my closet looks like a Salvation Army store because I emulate them by having all of my clothes hung according to colors.

At a party recently a friend said,  "That's new;  I haven't seen it before."  I said, "This is an R and K Originals dress;  I wore it to a party at Rockwell in the 1980s."

R and K Originals was a brand that I thought was the ultimate in chic because, when I was a teengaer, my best friend's mother wore the brand often, and I thought she bought only "the best";  in an article about the history of the company it states:

"For the girl who knows clothes. was the motto of R and K Originals, a New York clothing company on Broadway that was established in 1932,  that sold fashionable and well-made, but affordable and moderately-priced clothing."  (The italics are mine, as I thought they were EXPENSIVE clothes!)

Obviously the clothes weren't the "height of fashion"  as I thought them to be when I was that impressionable teenager, although they were sold at Lazarus in the 1950s and 1960s and also when I bought mine in the 1980s.  See the labels change from the 1930s and 1940s (when it was "Original") to the 1950s (when it was "Originals" and the label from my dress from the 1980s

R and K Originals are now sold by JC Penney.  When I told my brother this, he said, "Oh, how have the mighty fallen!  I guess that's the difference between chic and chi chi."