Taking care of your clothes

I don't know if that will be happening today, but I do have a soft spot for vintage photographs that explore childhood but beyond the shoes and black dresses it's really their pinafores that grab my attention.
The girl on the right appears to feeling it by the hem - perhaps it was starched?- while the other looks as though she's pointing to a stain as if to say "You'll be in trouble for that" although the entire point is to protect her actual dress from any spills and the like.
I'm always getting them on me.
In an era when wash was done by hand taking ages, perhaps it can be understood why that generation took great care to avoid your main clothes getting stained rather than today with easy to machine wash materials.