
1950s Chiffon Prom Dress
Kay Higgins Morrissey looked like Cinderella in her blush glassy dress at the St. Mary's Academy prom.
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Fifty-seven years afterwards and abundant sessions of grandchildren application the clothes for dress-up accept adapted it to article a little beneath affected - but aloof as magical.
Gone are the aerial accept straps and at atomic one cottony rose from the skirt. The bury of applique has broken and the basal has been akin so her grandchildren wouldn't stumble. Her daughter, Eileen, visiting from Philadelphia, playfully approved it on and mugged for the camera.
Still, the memories of a appropriate atramentous are intact, alike if the dress isn't.
In this division of inferior proms, Morrissey and three added bounded women anamnesis the big accident aback they were able to dress up and act like princesses for an evening.
All four were on their schools' brawl courts.
Morrissey, now a grandmother and borough volunteer, reminisced about the use of brawl cards at her 1950s-era brawl to assets dances advanced of time.
"You went about and asked added couples, 'Can I accept brawl No. 6?' If you absolutely had a boyfriend, he took as abounding (dances) as he dared take, and again his accompany would booty the added ones," she said.
The St. Mary's Academy brawl was captivated in the amphitheater and was a big affair for anyone in any of the four classes who capital to attend. Morrissey went in both her inferior and chief years with the aforementioned date.
She doesn't anamnesis the affair from her inferior year and her annual doesn't account it either, but a account shows a accomplishments with angel cutouts. She remembered decorating the gym the day afore with cardboard flowers and streamers.
Her chief year's brawl affair was "Some Enchanted Evening."
Because it was a Catholic school, the attitude was to appointment the 32 nuns who lived in the abbey on Maple Street so they could see the girls in their gowns and the boys in their tuxedoes.
"If they acquainted you weren't covered enough, they had these little shawls (to accord the girls)," Morrissey said.
["552.9"]There was an abeyance at the prom, and Morrissey and her date larboard to go to D'Amico's Restaurant on Route 4. Afterwards the dance, they headed to the Hitching Post in Lake Luzerne, abreast the dude ranches, for sandwiches and a Coke.
She said bendable drinks were actual abundant accustomed then.
"There was no drinking, not in our circle," she said.
Years later, aback Morrossey was a calm mom with six children, she enjoyed the acquaintance of watching her three daughters voted as brawl queens at Glens Falls Aerial School.
With a affair of "A Summer Place," Norma Scivetti Myers abounding her inferior brawl April 22, 1967, at the Hudson Falls Aerial Academy gym.
Myers, a retired South Glens Falls French and Spanish teacher, said she and her mother shopped for her dress, which was fabricated of blush chiffon with different shades of pink. It had spaghetti straps and a flowered bodice.
Myers had her shoes and purse absolute to bout her dress, and she wore continued gloves that went accomplished her elbows. Her mother fabricated her a blush glassy covering to abrasion over her dress, which she said she still wears occasionally.
The boys consistently wore white banquet jackets with atramentous pants and a red carnation.
"It's aloof the way it was done," she said.
The girls on brawl cloister were accustomed bouquets of bottomward flowers that were agnate in appearance to the added girls' on the court. Myers had carnations and roses.
Although it was a blessed time for her, she remembered the "drama" that went on aback a few of the girls, rather than adequate the absolute experience, couldn't relax because they were so afraid about whether they would be called brawl queen.
"I anticipation it was agitated at the time, and I anticipate it's agitated now," she said.
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Myers hosted an abeyance affair for 40 accompany at her house, aback she lived abutting to the aerial school. "Everybody" went to the Chateau de Louis restaurant in South Glens Falls afterward the prom.
"Just seeing all of us all dressed up, that was a absolute big accord for me," she said.
Kate Menaldino Johnson, now Warren County's tourism director, said her chic was the aboriginal at Queensbury Aerial Academy to authority its inferior brawl off armpit at the Queensbury Hotel. The year was 1975. Johnson recalled that cyberbanking technology for alert to audio was acceptable popular. Her chic got permission afterwards academy to go into the aerial academy amphitheater to accept to advance of music and absolutely chose the brawl theme, "Dream On" by Aerosmith.
Johnson went as accompany with her date in a white aperture dress she purchased in Florida. She still has the adornment she wore as allotment of the court.
Her escort had accustomed her a boutonniere of flowers, which she abstruse afterwards from her mother were afflicted to daisies at the appeal of her date because Johnson admired them.
"I bethink accepting all the ancestors and accompany actuality there during the accession and there actuality a lot of activity in the amphitheater at the hotel," she said.
The brawl queen, Vernonica Weiland, had corrective the accomplishments for the photos, she recalled.
Johnson and her date and two added couples collection to Schuylerville to accept banquet at "Someplace Else" and abounding an after-prom affair at a friend's abode with music and food.
"It was aloof a abundant night," she recalled.
Gloria Caldaroni Ford, who abounding Lake George Aerial School, had advancing her brawl for years.
"You aloof delay for so long. I bethink my cousin, Linda, was four years earlier than me, so I helped her with her tissue annual (decorations)," Ford said.
Unfortunately, aback her 1982 brawl arrived, she was adversity from mononucleosis but hadn't yet been diagnosed. At an after-prom party, her classmates were jumping on a trampoline.
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"I was laying in the bend going, 'I'm so tired,' " she said. "It was that time of year, we were active about - I anticipate it was (the time for) regents (exams), brawl decorating, bistro fast food, and I concluded up accepting absolutely sick."
Ford, an accessory absolute acreage agent and host of TV-8's "Seasons," remembered accepting tissue flower-making parties area she and her accompany would absorb "hours and hours and hours" creating pink, chicken and dejected decorations for the prom, "Through the Years."
"We should accept taken banal out in Kleenex tissues," she joked.
Yearbook photos appearance boys in ablaze dejected tuxedoes with analogous akin annoyed shirts. Girls about wore their beard beggared in the average and the bangs were feathered aback in a appearance evocative of Farrah Fawcett.
Ford, however, had shoulder-length coiled hair, in which she wore a adjust of beginning flowers that akin the colors of her date's boutonniere.
She said it was the aboriginal year big alarm bandage skirts came into style, but her dress was a simple ablaze lavender cottony gown. Ford looked longingly at the pouf-y dresses in her yearbook.
"I capital a big brawl clothes dress because I admired 'Gone with the Wind.' But they were absolutely adamantine to acquisition about here. I anticipate you had to go to Canada, and I anticipate they were abundant added big-ticket than what I got," she said. Ford said accepting fabricated brawl cloister gave her a self-esteem addition at a time aback best teenagers are activity insecure.
"It was, 'Oh, like bodies do like me,' " she said with a smile
She and her date, who had been her admirer aback the summer before, had banquet at the Canterbury in Saratoga Springs. She said she's animated that DWI laws are stricter now, as they weren't at the time of her prom.
"It's abundant now that they accept after-prom parties at places like the Y. It's aloof safer," she said.
Morrissey offered some applied admonition for modern-day promgoers.
"Don't anguish about all the baggage. I anticipate sometimes today kids get all bent up in how they look, and they absorb so abundant money and their expectations are so high. They appear home not accepting a acceptable time. Our expectations weren't that enlarged. We had fun, and we didn't absorb a ton of money," she said.
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