I know, I know, you were T-minus 15 years or so. Me, I was watching Neil Armstrong take man’s first step on the moon. I was eight years old, just the right age to be completely riveted on space travel, knowing all the details of Apollo 11 that I could get my little mind around. You can bet I was glued to the television at this very moment:
Neil Armstrong descending onto the moon’s surface
For a denisebrain moon landing tribute, I invited one of my favorite people and models, Gianna, to join me, and she did the most fantastic job of channeling a mod Twiggy vibe.
We had an awful lot of fun taking these photos. I didn’t plan it this way, but when I looked at the pics, I saw that Gianna had captured a bit of what it was like for me, being a kid in 1969. I remember being clothing crazy even at that young age. I would have LOVED any of these clothes! 1969 was tumultuous in so many ways, and fashion was no exception. You might have been wearing space age synthetic knits or hand-embroidered muslin, looking fashionably mod or anti-fashionably hippie. The length of your skirt could be micro mini…or you might not have been caught dead in a dress.
My brother was 10 at the time, and could not possibly have been more consumed by the Apollo 11 mission. We built model rockets, and even launched a few into backyard orbit.
I had an Earth globe, as well as a moon globe. I knew exactly where to point out The Sea of Tranquilty, where the lunar lander came down on the moon, and had a star on the Earth globe’s Cape Kennedy, the place I wanted to visit more than anywhere else in the world.
On July 16, 1969, we had lift off.
As exciting as that successful lift off was, nothing could possibly have prepared me for the moment when the lunar module, The Eagle, came down so gently on the moon’s surface.
If you want to relive the final minutes before the lunar landing, check out this very cool site.
Just the idea of setting a foot on the moon, and seeing the Earth in the distance. Believe me, it was an 8-year old’s dream come true!
We all wanted to be astronauts, eat space food, collect moon rocks, bounce in zero gravity…and we wanted to have moon shoes. It wasn’t too long after, in the 1970s, that Joe Famolare came out with his Amsterdam, an outsized fiberglass clog that I remember calling a moon shoe. I had a pair in navy blue.
It happens that I found five pairs of these unorthodox and cool shoes some years back. I’ve been holding onto them for just this occasion.
Famolare Amsterdam: A big step for woman kind
Many thanks to Gianna for helping me relive my moon landing dreams!
Find all these fashions from the era in my shop in the coming week.