Aprons: What do they mean?

I have an automatic response to aprons: They make me uncomfortable. It's not that I disapprove of their function, rather I bristle at their implication that I should be in the kitchen AND looking good! To me, they are better left in another era, one when my grandmothers toiled silently dressed in colorful aprons they stitched themselves.

And yet, these adorable aprons from Jessie Steele might make me change my mind: