"Color dress tomorrow." the words itself would bring tickles, warm fuzzy feelings for me. Like all the schools in India, mine too had uniform. Being a convent school, we had fewer occasions to wear color dress and doll around maybe or is the situation in other schools as well , I don't know. But seeing the schools in US where children go all decked up in school. Where comparisons galore, brands , style and social alignment and conforming to group all depends on kind of clothes and shoes you wear. I will always prefer and run back to "color dress" or charter school for my pilla if we manage to stay here longer.
Somehow the sense of color dress fazed off eventually when we no longer had to wear uniform. But even now sometimes when I sit down and think, color dress evokes fond memories in me. Blame it on uniform system or the frugality and unavailability at that time, we had few dresses to go out in. The ones short or old were used at home. Maybe that is still ingrained and my pilla ( who does not understand much about fashion ) and me (old habits die hard) end up using the clothes till they are in no condition to hold us. Charity be damned. Coming to think of it, we wore color dress only 4 times a day in school. Once for some feast ( remember I told you that I was in convent school) that came in month of June. Once of children's day, once for Christmas and on for the house feast. And of course birthday. Which a few privileged had during exams ( my sister and I) or during vacations, never wore.. Due to this and ever " bad hat baccha" phenomenon, we got shall I say, 2-3 dresses a year. Not that we minded it. Our tailor ( who was whining, perpetually late types) was our brand and fashion designer. Somehow less was more then.
Maybe our generation has become more indulgent or maybe we have more means to an end.. We seem to be indulging our kids more and more. But aren't we making them shallow and fragile? Where they are measured and they measure a person solely on clothes?? My mind fails or maybe refuses to answer and my another self still revels in the memory of "color dress"
