7 Ways Your Grandmother Dressed Better Than You

It's a common problem when discussing vintage fashion: Just how different clothing was "back in the day" versus now. If you're like me, you nearly start to turn into a one-off version of Andy Rooney, grumbling about the sloppy hems, plastic buttons and the rarity of natural fabrics in today's shops.

Such was the case when I chatted with the fabulous Janie Bryant (@JanieBryant), who is the lucky person who gets to dress the cast of "Mad Men." She's not an Andy Rooney type -- in fact, Bryant has the gift of being able to discuss vintage fashion through the context of the era, rather than through a lens of judgment.

"The priorities were different. I do love that about the period [the sixties] -- people did dress for occasions, up until the 1990s. You'd dress for the theater, the grocery store, for dinner," she says. "It wasn't as casual as it is today. The priority today is more about comfort than it is on glamour."

From my perch, I do think that, on the whole, people who grew up in the eras of my grandmother and mother had more style, despite us being more fashion-conscious today. Here are a seven key ways the fashion of our mothers and grandmothers' eras differs from the present:

1. You dressed to impress at every occasion.

Even in devastating summer heat, you’d still dress up to go into the city, at any income level. Work clothes were infinitely more polished. A party had its requisite dress, even for the hostesses who entertained at home (see Lilly Pulitzer’s hostess-friendly dresses, such as the one worn above by the designer herself, along with functionless niceties like organza aprons).

2. Clothes were made better.

Anyone who has looked at a vintage garment can tell you one thing: They were constructed much better than clothes today. You could actually let out seams, the stitches on hems were practically invisible and every dress had a lining.Clothing cost more.

A wonderful blog post by Elizabeth Cline, author of the must-read book "Overdressed," contrasts our current buy-cheap-then-toss clothing habits compared to what the mass market used to offer in earlier decades. An average dress from a place like Sears, in the 1950s, cost $8.95 (which worked out to be equivalent to $72), says Cline. Though tons of garments hit that price point today, you're not getting the same quality as previous generations.