The Color Purple vocabulary

4 fashion terms (clothing, hair styles, fabrics, etc.)

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4 [fashion] words
Mother Hubbard
plait
conked hair
boater
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Mother Hubbard

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Definition:
a long, cumbersome, ill-fitting dress, completely shapeless, that inevitably gets dragged in the fire, causing burns aplenty.

Alice Walker. The Color Purple, p.191 (1982)
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a long, wide, loose-fitting gown with long sleeves and a high neck. Intended to cover as much skin as possible, it was introduced by missionaries in Polynesia to "civilise" those whom they considered half-naked savages.

Although this Victorian remnant has disappeared elsewhere in the world, it is still worn by Pacific women, who have altered it into a brighter and cooler garment, using cotton sheets, often printed in brightly coloured floral patterns.

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Uses:
none of our clothing is suitable in this climate. This is true even of the clothing the Africans wear. They used to wear very little, but the ladies of England introduced the Mother Hubbard,

Alice Walker. The Color Purple, p.191 (1982)
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Chapter 10, In which the Author recounts the arrival of the I-Matang, who introduced fair trade (say, one bead for three women), the Wonders of Civilization (tobacco, alcohol, cannons), the Maxims of Christianity (Thou shalt wear thy Mother Hubbard, never mind the heat),[...]

J. Maarten Troost. The Sex Lives of Cannibals, p.109 (2004)
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Her gray hair was braided, and she wore a dirty, flowered Mother Hubbard.

John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, p.226 (1939)
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The old-fashioned people; women in aprons and Mother Hubbards of calico and gingham, men in their overalls and patched alpacas;

Ralph Ellison. The Invisible Man (1952)
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Yet, in Port Vila, one finds a town inhabited by daring French fashionistas clicking down the sidewalks in designer heels alongside plump Melanesian women in modest flower-print Mother Hubbards.

J. Maarten Troost. Getting Stoned with Savages (2006)
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