It's official; Memorial Day is here and so now you may wear white shoes, sandals, patent leather or any of the winter fashion don'ts.

And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you must be too young to remember the days when fashion rules ruled the seasons.  For some things, print cottons and flowered hats, for example, the benchmark date was Easter.  For others, May 1 or Memorial Day (depending on where you lived) was the begin date.  And then there were the "house rules."  One of my mother's was "No shorts until Memorial Day.  It made no difference that the thermometer read 85* F, the rule was to be obeyed.

I looked in the great Elegance  book, by Frenchwoman Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, and saw only one such rule - No print silks before May 1.  Perhaps the French had not heard that wearing white shoes in the winter was not proper.