Off the Beaten Path: Kitchen Chic | Video

Cliff Naylor | 7/15/2012

JoAnn Olson always wears an apron when she`s baking or making a meal. When she`s out of the kitchen, you`ll find her scouring through thrift stores and rummage sales looking to spice up to her collection of over 200 aprons, or you just might catch her giving a presentation on the cooking accessory that dates back to the 700`s when people only had one or two outfits.

"Fabrics were hard to wash and they didn`t have many clothes. Now we have closets full of them, but they didn`t, they just had enough to get by with. Even the wealthy didn`t have a lot of clothing, so they would wear aprons to protect their clothing."

Olson has researched the history of aprons and says they`ve gone through many changes throughout the centuries.

"Aprons are like other clothing, they change with the style and so you might have a cobbler apron, and we might have a smock apron, we might have one made out of handkerchiefs."

These little garments aren`t just for women.

"In England the men wore them, bartenders wore blue, so they were the men of the blue. There were horsemen, who took care of horses, they wore aprons and garbage men wore aprons to keep from being smelly."

Olson says even there are countless styles of aprons.

"This material was so popular for making aprons it was actually called apron material for quite a while and there are no two alike. I have about 25 of them out here."

Her collection includes smocks, aprons made out of flour sacks and neckties, garments sold by Sears Roebuck and Company at three for a dollar, and some made out of modern material.

"This is from the 60`s, psychedelic material, handmade. And this is from the 50`s because pink and grey were very popular."

When Olson is working in the kitchen, she usually wears the same apron: the rest are for show and tell.

Olson started her collection a dozen years ago, and she says she has plenty of room in her kitchen for more aprons.

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