Flour Sack Fashion

Flour Sack Fashions

In our flour sack shirts and my mother in her flour sack dresses, I and my three brothers were in the height of fashion. My brother when asked about the advertising on his shirt used to grin and tell people that he bowled for Gold Medal Flour.

Though I don't really want that fashion to return, I do on occasion find myself nostalgic for those days when overalls, flour sack shirts and bare feet were the norm. But to meet the requirements for this story, with tongue in cheek, I will say that I would like to see a return of this fashion along with the free-range lifestyle that accompanied those days.

While a google search will find depression era flour sack clothing, in my house and in the houses of some friends, the fashion continued through World War II into the late 1940's.

Up until the mid-1920's, flour, grain, seed and such were shipped in wooden barrels. Looking for less expensive and more efficient shipping alternatives, the industry discovered that burlap and fabric sacks were more efficient. Depression-poor ladies, poor but ingenious, took the fabric and repurposed it into clothes for their families.

Flour and other makers and distributors recognized this and started printing the fabric in fashionable designs as a selling point for their products. I remember in my house when the fabric on the twenty pound bags of flour from the A & P store changed from all white to printed designs. As a result our meager wardrobes became much more colorful. Manufacturers generously printed multiple designs, some flowered and others geometric and some artistic, giving those reusing the fabric a wide choice from which to choose.

The pedal Singer Sewing Machine on which my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt created their flour sack fashions got a good workout and Mr Singer should be proud of his product. In addition to it being used for its intended purpose, generations of grandchildren tested how fast they could make the flywheel turn by sitting in front of the machine and pumping the treadle by hand.

Part of the fashion was bare feet. Shoes, being a luxury, were in short supply, and when they were purchased they were hightop work shoes where the last three or so eyelets were actually hooks that sped up lacing when putting the shoes on.

But barefoot was better, and soles of the feet toughened enough to walk on hot summer asphalt while visible heat wavelets shimmered off the blacktop in summer's heat. The soles were even impervious to oven hot railway trestles that crossed over the streams and bayous. And blackberry briars gave way as readily as they would have if encountering a leather shoe.

Bib overalls completed the look. As toddlers those overalls were striped like train engineers purportedly wore, but blue denim overalls displaced the striped overalls and blue denim continues to be dominant in the overall market.

While shoes were added during the middle and upper grades, bib overalls did make a comeback during high school. Some of our athletes decided as a group to wear white tee shirts and blue bib overalls as a fashion statement. So for several months school fashion included overalls, and the halls of the high school were a sea of blue and white.

I am reasonably confident that my brothers and I were among the few who did not have to buy new overalls. We already had them!

Oh yes. Those were the days, and those were the fashions. They were happy days; they were nostalgic days. They are probably better left in the past. Probably better to visit them through pictures. Although seeing hordes of kids wearing tee shirts and bib overalls would be delightful.