Love Those Dots!

By Roberta Beach Jacobson 

Young and old wore clothes with dots during the 1950s (smaller dots) and 1960s (expanded dots). I remember favoring dresses and blouses (even pajamas) with polka dots and this photo (taken at a Chicago restaurant) shows me in a “dotty” dress. 

To this day, whenever I see polka dots, I can't help but think of Bob Dylan, famous for his trendy fashion statements – dotted shirts and scarves.

Actually it was singer Brian Hyland who brought dots to the mainstream  America with his 1960 hit “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini”! 

Despite living on a lake, I never owned a bikini of any type. Summers I set out my mod beach towel decorated with (you guessed it!) yellow dots.  Everyone back then was crazy for dots. 

There was pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and his "comical dots". 

Another polka dot enthusiast was the then NY-based artist Yayoi Kusama. She shocked the world body-painting polka dots in the late 1960s. She regularly staged fashion shows and happenings with exotic dancers and was truly obsessed by polka dots. 

The girls in my junior high loved socks with every color of dots. Also t-shirts, although we couldn't wear those to school due to the strict dress code. I remember some friends had notebooks, book covers and even metal lunch boxes with polka dot motifs. 

Even though I broke them soon after getting them, I once owned shocking pink sunglasses with dots. 

We even played with dots! We grew up playing “connect the dots” and Dominoes

In my early high school days, Hasbro introduced a floor game called Twister It debuted in 1966. The point was, you put your hands and feet on various colored dots and all the players got “twisted up” together. 

Dot's all, folks! 

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