Vintage Fashion Consultant No.1 - My Mother

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Whenever I find a lovely garment or accessory and I need more information about it, I take it to Mum's and ask her about it. After all, she was a young woman going to dances and dating in the 50s, she made her own clothes, and she worked in a department store selling patterns and haberdashery. She knows what was in, what was passé, and what came later when she was a young mother.

Here is Mum, also known as Lorraine to most, as a young child in about 1940, pictured with her older sister, Joyce.

 

 She was so proud of her ringlets. She remembers wearing her hair to bed in rags. When she was in Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital with scarlet fever in 1944, she remembers being disgusted when the nurses plaited her hair, telling them proudly, "My mother doesn't plait my hair, she curls it." She was there for seven months, and not allowed to see her mother once. How hospitals have changed, thank goodness. Just look at the beautiful way the girls are dressed. Her parents had very little money, but my grandmother always took pride in having her girls beautifully dressed. Notice their matching embroidered dresses. I love Joyce's shoes that tie with a bow. Whenever I see photos in old knitting books of girls with ringlets in their hair, I think of this photo, and I think early 1940s.

My next photo is not one of sartorial splendour, and my mother always laughs about it. Here she is as a 14 year old, in the Goulburn River on a family holiday. She is modelling some not very gorgeous knitted bathers, on the right. They were daringly two-piece, and my grandmother made her wear her cotton singlet underneath for modesty's sake, as you can see. I imagine that these bathers not only went saggy when wet, but also embarrassingly clingy.

So, therefore we have... two-piece bathers - 1950. Knitted bathers still commonly worn - 1950.

When Mum left school she worked at several jobs, but as an older teenager she worked at Reed's Department Store, on the corner of Malvern Road and Chapel Street in Prahran, Melbourne. Later this store became Moore's, and is now Pran Central Shopping Centre, its distinctive dome a landmark in the local area. In this once grand store, Mum worked in the haberdashery department, and even did the odd modelling job. I was recently chatting to her about Madame Weigel and her sewing patterns, mentioned in the last post. She said, "Yes, they were very popular in the 40s, but by the time I started at Reed's in the mid 50s they were being phased out." Thanks again, Mum - Weigel's patterns - 1940s - early 50s.
Here is Mum at a dance with my father in about 1955 or 1956. Dad worked at Reed's too, also in haberdashery I think. Clearly, it's where they met.

 

Mum and Joyce made all their outfits themselves. Joyce was a superior seamstress and made quite complicated ensembles, and lingerie. Either Mum or Joyce would have made this dancing frock. You can see it has a halter neck, a ruched bodice and a full chiffon skirt. Mum has teemed it with a light throw and silver dancing shoes (and an enormous corsage, thanks Dad).  Mum loved to dance, but sadly, Dad hated it, so she gave it up after they married.

I love this photo of Mum sitting on a fence, on a date with Dad, (the photographer).

 

She made her floral print skirt, and probably the high necked blouse underneath. A cardigan was a necessity, of course. I recently showed Mum some garments which I thought may have been either late 50s or early 60s. She resolved the dilemma by pronouncing the dress "60s, because the zip's in the back. All zips, in dresses, skirts or pants, were in the side in the 50s," and added, "and only racy women wore trousers." She never did. Also, a  cardigan I thought was 60s, could easily be from the 50s, she informed me.

 

Here is Mum as a bride with her father in 1957.

 

 

 Her dress was a beautiful damask finished satin. The long sleeves came to a point over the top of the hand. She told me that it was the fashion in the 50s to be married in a full, mid-calf length gown, but she opted for the traditional length. It was also popular for the bridesmaids  to wear the shorter length, and often to wear matching but different coloured dresses, e.g. pink, blue and lemon, or pale green, lemon and apricot.

 

A friend recently gave me a lovely little straw basket embroidered with raffia flowers. Mum pronounced it "Definitely 50s. I used to sell the kits to do the embroidery at Reed's. They were all the rage. The basket is seagrass, but the embroidery is real raffia."

 

About some jewellery I'd found, she pronounced, "No, we didn't wear anything like that." Strike 50s, investigate 40s and early 60s.?????

 

Mum, I've always wondered what I would ever do without you. This consultancy is just adding another dimension to my need.

Gloves For Dainty Hands

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Is it just me, or are vintage gloves really small? I can rarely find a pair that I can actually get my hands into. Is it just that 21st century people are larger?
Actually, I think it's genetics. I clearly come from a long line of scullery maids and farm labourers, with big, useful, working hands. Some of my friends have elegant, aristocratic hands with long, slim fingers. Clearly their ancestors were more used to sitting about drinking cups of tea and arranging vases of flowers. It was my great-great-grandma out in the kitchen scrubbing the pots.

I have just had a flip through my history of fashion book, and the first picture I can find of anyone wearing gloves is at the marriage of William the Second and Mary Stuart in 1641, and it's the men who are wearing the gloves. They are then a firm necessity throughout the next three centuries, until they are ditched in the mid 1960s.

Here is the Parisian Fashion page from the Royal Ladies' Magazine in 1830. Note the fingerless gloves. Apparently, at that time "a Parisienne " insisted on having pretty shoes, pretty gloves and pretty ribbons - the dress in those days was just an accessory." (Batterberry p.223)
Victorian ladies always appeared at a ball with long white gloves above the elbow. Their popularity continued well into the 20th century.

Chanel - Little tweed suit, 1930.
 Suit with green jersey jacket, 1931

In the 1920s they appeared commonly as day wear. They were also standard evening wear (unless you were a flapper). They figure prominently in the designs of Coco Chanel from the 20s and 30s.



"The profile hat and the three-quarter length glove:
 Madame Martinez de Hoz, famous Parisienne hostess and
 beauty, dressed by Vionnet, photographed at
Chantilly in 1935

 By the thirties, the three quarter glove was in fashion for day wear.







In the 1940s gloves continued to be a staple of the well dressed woman's wardrobe. Many of the glove patterns in my collection are from the 40s. My most popular pattern has been  mentioned in a previous post, http://vintageknitpatterns.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/crochet-in-fashion.html and was published in the 40s. Here's another lovely one.

Crochet Lace Gloves - 1948

Crochet Lace Gloves - 1940s

And I think this pattern with the black contrast is very elegant:









Gloves in the thirties, forties and fifties were made of leather, felt, crochet, nylon, rayon and knitted and crocheted in wool as well as cotton.


I recently had a tragedy when I learned that you cannot wash fine leather gloves. What were a lovely pair of above the elbow 50s evening gloves in the softest "kid" leather turned into a pair of potato crisps when I submerged them in soapy water - well, they shrank first, then dried into crisps. How do you soften leather? I thought. I couldn't help thinking of stories I'd read where Inuit women chewed leather to soften it. Needless to say, this idea was quickly dismissed. I found that rubbing the leather repeatedly did soften it, it also rubbed the skin off my fingers. If you have any ideas about how to restore fine leather, PLEASE add a comment.

Gloves seem to become even more popular in the 50s. My mother, who was a teenager and later a bride in the 50s, says she would never go anywhere without gloves. As a school girl, she had to wear her gloves to and from school on the tram, because if someone reported her to the school, boy was she in big trouble. This even applied in the hottest days of the summer. I notice that three-quarter length gloves were popular for day wear in the 50s, as well as "shorties".

Christian Dior's "New Look"
 for 1947.

I love this photo of Audrey Hepburn in 1958 in

Givenchy. How different are the ballerina flats (and stance) with such a gown? But of course she carries it off brilliantly. And the gloves, of course. I would never have thought to wear white gloves with black gown and shoes.

Gloves feature in some of my books from the early 60s, but Jean Shrimpton sounded the death knell of the glove as a fashion accessory at the 1965 Melbourne Cup. Not only did she dare to wear a mini skirt to Flemington, but she wore no stockings, no hat and NO GLOVES! Just look at the expressions on the faces of the disapproving matrons in the background, and the admiring smiles of the young women, (gloved and hatted).

I can see that I will have to test my crochet skills and try to make some of the patterns in my shop. Maybe I can make them in thicker cotton so that they come out BIGGER!

Reference:

Michael and Ariane Batterberry; Fashion - The Mirror of History; 1982; London; Columbus Books

Bedjackets and Sleepwear

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Bedjackets

Knitted Nightingale, or convalescent's slip-on - early 20s



When I first started collecting vintage patterns, I thought, what is this with the bedjackets? There were so many books of bedjackets around. They were obviously a must have for decades, but you don't see or hear of them these days. That got me thinking, when did the bedjacket drop out of the well dressed woman's wardrobe?

I have bedjacket patterns in books from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and the newest bedjacket pattern I can find is in a Patons book from the late 70s - early 80s.

They were considered lingerie, and a necessity for the bride's trousseau. They also feature occasionally in books of baby patterns. I thought about this for a while...why? Aha! Because a pregnant woman needs a new bedjacket for her impending visit to hospital, of course.



Book of Bedjackets and Baby Wear - 1940s

 Bedjacket patterns tend to be lacy, but not always. They are usually knitted in 2 or 3 ply.

Many would make beautiful cardigans or jackets. Here is one which I thought would do particularly well as a cardy, I just love it.

Sun-glo pattern from the 40s

Sun-glo pattern from the 30s









I think the bedjacket capes were especially beautiful. Here is one from my favourite Sun-glo book. This book was one of the first in my collection and belonged to my grandmother.







                                                              
 Here is a more dramatic bedjacket cape from Patons in the 30s.

I have also found bedjacket patterns for children (but only for girls) and even one included in a layette for a baby in a very old book.

I remember knitting a bedjacket for my grandmother when I was a teenager, after her eyesight failed her. That's the last time I thought about bedjackets, until I started collecting with a vengeance earlier this year. Let's finish the bedjacket section with an entry from 1954.

1954 Bedjacket

 

But not just bedjackets...

 In a book I acquired last week I found this pattern for a knitted nightgown. Now that would be nice and warm. But not so sexy. And difficult to launder, I would think.

 The Lux Knitting Book for 1936 says: "And why not? - don't you think we've laid the old-fashioned bogey that woollen nighties are dowdy? Just look at those frivolous cape sleeves!"

I have also come across several patterns for knitted dressing gowns. What a huge quantity of wool must have been required, and how cheap wool must have been in those days. Surely they would have had trouble with the weight of the garment making it drop out of shape. And imagine trying to get it dry if you washed it in those cold houses, and having to dry it flat. Here is my favourite dressing gown pattern.



Loveliness Dressing Gown - 1930s



What a huge amount of labour with all that lacy knitting, but what a beautiful garment. This is from the same Sun-glo book as the lacy cape bedjacket above, from the 30s.

And finally, you couldn't be without these:

Bed Socks

My nana knitted me some when I was a child in the 60s. My daughter laughed when she saw these, and I thought, "Gosh, don't people wear these any more?" Of course they don't, 40 years have gone by, Joanne!