Category: vintage fashion

sewing, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion, Vintage Kids

Frugality at Its Best

Lisa
Advance 4442, ©1947.

I love this pattern. Vintage boys’ patterns often go overlooked, in part because, like mens’ patterns, there just doesn’t seem to have been as many printed. The looks are a bit more dated that in little girls’ styles, but they are so cute. What makes this one special though, is that the coat is constructed from a man’s suit. It’s upcycling, before it was cool.

It’s from 1947, so it’s post World War II, where the US was beyond fabric rationing (which didn’t apply to home sewing anyway). Businesses were starting to thrive after the war, so many families could afford a new coat, but apparently the frugality of the war extended to the years afterward. Remember, these moms were raised in the Depression era, and many remained frugal their entire lives, so it’s not surprising that they were using fabric they had on hand to construct new garments.

These days, a lot of sewists get their fabric from thrift stores, especially using vintage sheets in all sorts of patterns. Have you ever thought of repurposing a man’s suit into something new? I have this ebook in the store on how to mend mens’ suits, and of course you can buy this particular pattern in the webstore. I’ll have to do a bit of digging but I think I have a woman’s suit pattern made from a man’s suit as well, though I think it is included in one of my books. Have you ever upcycled a man’s suit? What did you make? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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1950s fashion, designers, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

Echoes of the New Look

Lisa

Christian Dior rocked the fashion scene with his 1947, which was ultimately called “The New Look.” Gone was the fabric rationing of the era. The pronouncement that Paris fashion had not only survived the war, but that it was back in new and exciting ways was obvious, as Dior showed his “Corolle” and “Figure 8” styles. These styles were minimalist while over the top, with voluminous skirts, requiring yards of fabric never seen before. He stripped down to the details when showing them, keeping colors deliberately muted and hats very simple. The Bar Jacket is iconic, and seen in museums all overthe world.

Bar Suit, 1947. Photo: Vogue.

Echoes of the Bar Suit are seen throughout the late forties, fifties, and early sixties. It returns in the 80s, and is seen even today. Sewing patterns are reflective of its popularity. Remember, this is a time when sewing pattern companies and fashion designers sent representatives to Paris with their only assignment being to replicate the styles seen in the fashion shows. This brought Paris fashion to housewives in America, making real style attainable. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, designers were not always given attribution, so it would take some deep diving to find which designer matched with which “Paris Fashion” pattern, but they definitely exist.

When I saw this pattern the other day, I saw the echoes, with it’s tiny “flap” (they don’t call it a peplum). It’s a one piece dress, as opposed to the Bar Suit, which is two pieces, but wouldn’t you agree that there is a definite influence here?

Marian Martin 9133, ©1950.

It’s not exact, of course, but it’s like hearing echoes of one musician in another’s music. The influence is definitely there.

sewing, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

The Ultimate UFO

Lisa

You, like me, may have some UFOs around your house. UFO, in our world, means “unfinished object”, and I have several. I have a crewel embroidery pillow that I’ve been working on. I don’t even like crewel embroidery, but I found this vintage crewel kit that features a bunch of different flowers. Since my mom loved flowers, and my dad did crewel embroidery until shortly before his death at age 92, I decided it might be a nice tribute, so I started it. But again, I hate crewel embroidery. Hate doing it, hate how it looks, so I don’t know if I will ever finish it. I also have not one but two embroidered baby quilts that I started but haven’t finished, because it flares my tendonitis and I decided that my daughter likely wouldn’t like them anyway. I guess unless my boys have kids one day, I will likely never revisit them, and even if they do, I still will probably leave them as UFOs.

A lot, if not most, of crafters/sewists have at least one UFO in their space. So imagine when I came across this. This is truly the ultimate in UFOs — 1740s silk that was cut into a dress. It was a mystery, and these women unravelled it. Here’s the short version:

Fascinating, yes? Well let me tell you, it’s even more so when you read the long version. Amazing, yes? That those pieces survived in a bag for almost three hundred years, all while being made into three different garments along the way. Perhaps in the year 2300, someone will find my baby quilts and finish them. It’ll stil be earlier than I’d get them done.

Celebrity, designers, family stories, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

Oscars Season

Lisa

Oscars night is a big deal around here. I call it Pretty Dress Night, and my husband has zero chance of watching anything else as I enjoy the parade of fashion. It’s been this way for years.

When my now adult son was six, he had strep throat on Oscars night. We knew he wasn’t going to be going to school the next day and, being a huge movie fan even at that age, he begged to stay up to watch the Oscars. I think that Harrison Ford was going to be presenting one of the last awards, and he wanted to see him, so I relented. Since that time, it’s been tradition for us to watch them “together.” I have quotation marks because when he went to college, we were on AOL Instant Messager during the awards, and now we might get together, or we might be texting the whole time, but we always watch them together in one form or another. To say that he is a huge film buff would be a gross understatement.

Around the time of the first Oscars we watched together, our video store had a contest for choosing the winners. I got stuck waiting in line and just dashed off my guesses and put them in the box. I won. I got ten free rentals, which the ex used. That was fine, because I didn’t watch a ton of movies — I was working evenings and home schooling three kids during the day. The ex, on the other hand, always tried to see the Oscar nominated films. He couldn’t believe that I won, given my lack of film viewing, so the next year, he brought me the ballot from the video store and challenged me to beat him. I did. And I won another twenty movie rentals, which he again used. Now he was unhappy, because he went to the time and expense to watch all these movies, and I may see one Oscar nominated film a year. So he did it again the third year in a row, and I won again. Twenty movie rentals, but now the video store required showing ID in order to get the free rentals, so he couldn’t get them.

He swore that I told them not to rent the movies to him. I didn’t. I think we eventually used them up, but after that, he refused to compete with me. My oldest, however, did not. It was ON. Year after year, he tried to beat me and failed. Finally, maybe four or five years ago, he finally beat me. I don’t pay as much attention to the buzz as I used to, but now all of the kids and I have a running contest to see who guesses the most accurately. We usually come in pretty close. But really, I’m just there for the clothes.

It’s funny to think that the Oscars weren’t a huge event when they started, and have only gotten huge since the seventies or so. Now, it’s the red carpet night, arguably even bigger than the Met Gala, which is only watched by fashion fans. Oscars night is seen by anyone who loves movies, so its reach is massive. This is huge for the designers who want to get their designs out there. I listed the book shown above in the Etsy shop the other day. It’s a great view of the Oscars up to the early 2000s, and has tons of photos, black and white and in color, of the stars of the day. Meantime, I’ll be on the couch with popcorn, passing judgement on the stars on Oscars night. Who’s gonna join me?

1970s fashion, designers, sewing, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

Vogue French Boutique

Lisa

I listed this pattern in the Etsy shop today. I’d never seen a Vogue French Boutique pattern before.

The French Boutique series seems to have been a shorter lived series that was distributed between about 1976 and 1981. Most of them are designed by Christian Aujard, though Renata has a couple as well. These were lesser well known boutique designers in Paris at the time. Renata, the designer of this one, was known for creating loose, comfortable styles.

I love this one. I’d wear the blue version with boots. It looks unbelievably comfortable, doesn’t it? I think you could get through Thanksgiving with this style and never feel the need to loosen anything after the feast. The top would be great with jeans, but would work with loungewear pants as well. I do prefer the belted version though — unbelted, it reads maternity.

I’m going to be keeping my eye out for not only more French Boutique patterns, but also Renata. Her aesthetic reads as contemporary even today.

1920s fashion, designers, sewing, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

When a Designer Pattern isn’t a Designer Pattern

Lisa

I’ve been uploading some patterns to the Vintage Sewing Patterns Wiki. They are from an August, 1926 issue of Pictorial Review magazine, and wow are the styles beautiful. I’ve come across this lately more than once, and figured it deserved a bit of a spotlight: sometimes designer patterns aren’t designer patterns.

We all know about designer patterns by Vogue, which include everyone from Schiaparelli to Oscar de la Renta. Many of you know about the designer series by Advance, which included designers like Jo Copeland and even Adrian (I have two. See them here.). Spadea, of course, did tons of designer patterns by Ceil Chapman, the Dutchess of Windsor, and many, many more. McCalls had patterns by designers like Givenchy and Geoffrey Beene. There are even some mail order designer patterns — Charles James did two. I’ve been lucky enough to have one. But did you know that some designer patterns are not labelled as such?

The pattern above, for example, was “designed after Lanvin.” It is Pictorial Review 3405. It was not labelled as a designer pattern, and most likely was not approved by the couture house, but back in the day, it was regular practice to send people to the couture fashion shows in Paris, with their only purpose to be making copies of the designs. They would sketch out the designs, then come back to America and have patterns made from the sketches. This Pictorial Review has four pages of “designed after” patterns from Lanvin, Worth, Molyneux and more. They’re gorgeous.

In the more modern era, you can find patterns attributed to Alexander McQueen by looking at Givenchy patterns from the era when he was their designer. Here’s one:

I recently sold a Chloe that was most likely Karl Lagerfeld as well. These are the things you find when you do a deep dive into sewing patterns. I find it fascinating, and maybe others do too. I just really love nerding out over the history involved in sewing and the patterns women used. Perhaps they knew what they had. Perhaps they didn’t care. But the details in it are so interesting to me. You never know what you have till you know what you have.

sewing, sewing patterns, vintage fashion

Where I’ve Been and Other Stuff

Lisa

Well, I’ve been gone for a while and it’s not been fun. I’ve been fighting a terrible case of tendonitis that has just left me miserable. I did something stupid that I knew would cause problems, and now I’m paying the price. I decided to start doing some gentle workouts but historically, I cannot do any type of upper body exercise at all, or it flares things up. This is the worst it’s ever been. Stupid is as stupid does. I’m trying to figure out the name of the chiropractor I went to several years ago. She adjusted my elbow, which I didn’t even know what possible, and it was the first time in my adult life that I went six months without elbow pain. I need to find her again, but I’m having problems.

I’ve also been to rheumatology and she is going to start me back on infusions for my rheumatoid arthritis, because I’ve developed a nodule. It makes my right index finger go numb, as if pain in every joint of my body isn’t enough. Sheesh. I’m getting a lot of relief from my paraffin bath (scored for $5 at Goodwill!), and recently bought these mittens and these compression gloves, so I can settle in with my mittens and my lavender neck roll and look like the mess that I am. At least it smells nice.

So I haven’t been listing much for almost two weeks because yeah, pain. Severe pain. I did power thru and have the horror quilt almost done. I do the final class today and whilst it looks kind of wonky and she will have to help me straighten it out, I’m going to tell my son that the chaos is just part of the theme. The quilting teacher is looking for help, so I may finagle some lessons from her in exchange for some social media love. Either way, I’ve learned a lot (you learn more from your mistakes, right?) and am going to probably try this again in the future. I’m going to use some of the leftover fabric to make my son’s girlfriend a horror-themed floppy hat that she can wear when they go to horror marathons at the drive in. I’ve never made a hat before, other than knitting, so I’ll probably use McCall’s 8254 and use View B.

I have plans to do a jumper dress for the grandgirls after this, but I think I have to learn to do buttonholes. That’s where either the quilting teacher or YouTube comes in. It’s insane to think that I have sold sewing patterns for nigh on 25 years but have never learned to sew other than basic seams. I’m going to keep plugging away though.

There’s a 25% off sale on all of my venues. Click here to access all of my shops. Sale ends at midnight tonight.

designers, sewing, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

Van Martin and Being a Creator

Lisa
McCalls 7575, ©1981,

A new listing in the Etsy shop: this track suit style jacket by McCall’s, labelled Van Martin. It’s from 1981, when track suits were starting to become a bit more stylish. The pattern is only for the jacket though. It looks comfortable, because it has an inverted pleat down the back, to give you room to move, and you can make it with anything from poplin and linen to double knits and velour. It’s pretty versatile (and this one is a bust 40, which is nice for today’s ladies).

Van Martin was a sportswear designer. I like what he had to say in this article from the White Plains Journal-News. He said [sewing] “is a means of expressing my creativity. When you cook a meal, you create something that’s never before existed, and that’s what you do with sewing.” Isn’t that cool? You may buy a pattern, even a pattern that’s existed and been owned by various people for a hundred years, but you still are creating something that’s never existed before, because you are choosing the fabric, buttons, zippers, trims all yourself and making it your own. You are a creator. I love the existentialistic idea of that.

Deep thought for a Monday, isn’t it?

designers, sewing, sewing patterns, vintage fashion

Leona Rocha

Lisa
Simplicity 6433, ©1984

I listed this pattern in the Etsy shop this week and thought who in the world is Leona Rocha. Well, first and foremost, she is apparently not related to Coco Rocha, who is the first person who came to mind. I went looking, and here is what I found.

Leona Rocha was a fit expert. Born in Hawaii, she originally enlisted in the Army’s dental technician course. She used her GI bill benefits to train as a designer at the FIT, she was a past president of the American Home Sewing Association, and even wrote a book about fitting with simplicity. She was a founder of a sewing notions company called Fashionetics, and was the inventor of The Fashion Ruler while still a student, and it is still sold today. In the early 80’s, she partnered with Simplicity to do seminars about fit. At that time, she also hosted a TV show called The Sewing Show on cable four days a week, twice a day. It was a thirteen week series about how to sew at home and properly fit home sewn clothing. She later became an executive at Vogue-Butterick patterns — and married one of their executives. She ran for office on Maui, where she still lives today.

Seems like with all of these accomplishments, I would have known something about her, so I’m glad that now I do. She has left a great legacy to the sewing community.

sewing, sewing patterns, vintage clothing, vintage fashion

Kinda Surprised

Lisa
Simplicity 9846, ©1980.

I just added this pattern to the Etsy shop, and I am surprised. It’s from 1980! When you think of the 80s, you probably think of huge shoulders and Dynasty-esque fashions. That is partially right, as those types of styles started showing up around 1984 or so, but the cusp of the 70s and 80s had some very soft, beautiful fashions. The most popular Gunne Sax patterns were from 1979-1981, so there was a lot of gorgeous stuff before it got all serious.

That being said, I would’ve put this one in the late sixties or early seventies. It has a Game of Thrones or Renaissance vibe to it because of that cape, and those weren’t seen commonly in the 80s. If you take the cape away, it’s a distinctly Victorian vibe as was common in that time period. That cape definitely IS the look. Make the dress in a deep color with metallic trim and it could be Mother of Dragons cosplay. Am I wrong? Maybe, but it’s a stunning combination nonetheless.