Wikipedia says that the popularity of rickrack is attributed to the 1970’s following of the trendy pioneer look thanks to the  TV program Little House on the Prairie, but I know better. It was much earlier than that.

Having graduated from  the dresses  Mom made with the long ties on the back that always, always dangled in the toilet to dresses without the ties for my second grade wardrobe, one of the constants was her love of rickrack trim.  The dress in this picture is a beautifully made light grey plaid with black and white rickrack trim and I hated it.
Maybe I only hate it in retrospect since our perception of things can be tarnished…. or shined by our experiences later. Maybe pyramids and valleys of rickrack felt like sharp biting teeth to me. Maybe the up and down, rise and fall were too much like a wild roller coaster to me.  Maybe…  Regardless,  as the story goes I don’t often wear grey; I’m not comfortable in it and I never, ever wear rickrack.