Down at Downton

Downton Abby was so delicious six years ago when the curtain went up on the year 1912 and all those “upstairs” folks started carrying on with their speech like butterscotch topping. Then there were the real people "belowstairs" who you always liked better, or I did anyway. I've often thought I would find it sort of cozy to live all together in a house like that.Of course what a lot of us loved most in those early 20th century scenes was the women’s clothing, the silks and velvets, the wide skirts circling like lassos around the ankles of rodeo cowboys And the colors of both clothes and furnishings! I could never decide what I loved more, the outfits Maggie Smith wore as the Dowager Countess or the window treatments in what I think of as her 'throne room'.Now, in the year 1925, the younger women we see in that candybox  of a library wear hair that is bobbed and gowns that have evolved into "frocks." I bobbed my hair once, seven years ago this month, and did it hang straight down in a perfect Lady-Mary-style wedge? It did not. Ten minutes out of the shower it looked like this.It took me seven whole years to get it back where it belongs.Moral of the story for me: fashions come and fashions go but you’d do well to know what you look good in. Tell your future undertaker NOW what you like, before it's too late and they trick you out in a perm and bright pink chiffon ! (And how's THAT for a dark post in bouncing baby year?)