Pics: Dressed to the nines in District Six

Published Feb 16, 2016

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Cape Town - Sundays in District Six in the 1960s were very special days for Rashida Essop.

She would wake up excited at the prospect of wearing her finest clothes for the day and by 10am, at her family home at 47 Chapel Street, everyone would be “dressed to kill”.

An outsider would assume that they were getting ready to attend a wedding, but for the family this was a Sunday tradition and all their neighbours did the same. “Back then we had no TVs, besides going to the town this was the highlight of my childhood.

On Sunday morning, everyone would get so dressed-up that you would think that we were going to a wedding. But we were not going anywhere, Sunday was when visitors came to us,” says Essop.

“My nieces and I would stand on the stoep, just so people could see what we had on and neighbours would walk down the streets just to see what everyone else was wearing. Every Sunday I would wear a different dress,” she says.

As a pattern maker in the late 1960s, Essop worked for the big retailers of those days and knew all the latest fashion trends. “In those days when we’d go to town, we were dressed to the nines (to perfection). Even if we were just going to OK Bazaars to do groceries we would have our full make-up on and high heels... as if it was a special outing,” says Essop.

“It’s shocking how people just dress up anyhow to go to town these days. I still dress up and they look at me as if there is something wrong with me”.

In her current home in Chapel Street, a stone’s throw from where her childhood home once stood before they were forcibly removed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s, she shows us her pattern sketch book from her student days. Essop has kept it intact for the past 49 years and says she used to charge R1 a pattern, which was a lot back then.

Pencil skirts, bell-bottom pants, hula-hoop and mermaid dresses were the must-have high-fashion looks, she explains.

“Our clothes were very nice and respectable… you don’t find those anymore.

Also you could wash the clothes countless times and they would stay the same, but not today’s quality,” adds Essop.

Nontando Mposo, Cape Argus

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