DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've been thinking a lot about my mom lately, prompted in part, I think, by our discussion earlier this week about growing up in a tea or coffee household. In the image that immediately comes to mind of my mom in the kitchen, brewing her perocolater coffee, she is wearing a half apron made from a terrycloth dish towel. She made these herself, and I remember them as being striped in the ugliest colors imaginable, perhaps gray, brown, and orange together, with the waistband and ties made from whatever cotton scraps must have been handy. She would not do anything in the kitchen without the everpresent apron.
My mom's aprons did NOT look like this! Nor did she ever serve my dad tea from a teapot.
I also thought of mom and her aprons when I was cooking the other night--without an apron, as usual--and splashed a big spot of hot grease on my thigh. Ouch, and a good thing I was wearing old pants.
How did I not aquire this very practical apron habit from my mom and grandmother (who preferred the pinafore type apron with a bib)? Partly because I am a slob when home and wear such ratty clothes that a spill or a splash is not a disaster, and partly, I think, because aprons had gone out of style by the time I was beginning to cook in my own kitchen.
Aprons have been worn as far back as the 1300s, and the name is thought to have come from the French word napron, "a small piece of cloth." Here's a lovely painting from the French artist Leon Bonvin, circa 1862.
The 1950S and 60s were the heyday of aprons in the US, when ads and TV moms always featured a woman wearing an apron. (June Cleaver, anyone?)
But if the advent of feminism, more casual clothes, and women who worked sounded a death knell for the trusty garmet, it is apparently having a resurgence. Etsy is awash in aprons, vintage and new, and they pop up in upmarket clothing lines, too.
I do remember to put on an apron when I'm cooking for company--therefore wearing nicer clothes! Here's my favorite, from Anthropologie. Who could resist? (It does have to be ironed, unfortunately, as you can tell from my not very professional ironing job...)
How about it, Reddies? Do you have an apron handy in your kitchen?
