Bonnes Vacances!

Just a quick post to take my leave of you all for a week. I’m off down to the Cornish coast for a wedding- hurrah!- and a spot of good old fashioned sandcastle building, knitting on the beach and rootling in rockpools. Oh, and romantic moments on cliff tops while enormous white sailing boats glide past in the background, just like in this picture from the Gazette du Bon Ton from 1921 :)

(I’ll be leaving my Etsy store open so that you can still nab patterns, but patterns will be actually shipped on the 20th July when I return.)

Have a good week!

Any more for the Christian Dior?

I’ve popped a few new patterns up in my  Etsy store. As I was reading the back of this pattern and writing the listing description I suddenly sat up a little straighter. “Fitted jacket features padded hips”  proclaimed the envelope. Padded hips? Hips? Padded??!

Now it was Christian Dior who first introduced padded hips in 1947 with the Corolle line, his collection which introduced the New Look and the 1950s shape as we think of it today. Below is one his first famous creations from this collection, the “Bar” suit. The padding in the hips of the jacket here makes the waist look even teeny-tinier. (Check out this  page at the V&A’s Golden Age of Couture site for more about the tech specs of the suit and detailed photos.)

I suppose as this exciting new silhouette was reproduced in home sewing patterns, inevitably the construction techniques had to follow, too. But I’m still oddly thrilled to come across such tangible evidence of Dior’s techniques being offered up to the home sewer. I’ve certainly never come across any other patterns that feature padded hips- has anyone else? The pattern doesn’t tell you what to pad your hips with, but coyly speaks of ‘hip interlining’, so I guess one could use anything from layers of batting to something a lot thinner, depending on how padded you like your posterior to look. (I’m sure there’s great potential for awkward moments/underhand insults there somewhere: “Why daaaarling, what marvellous hip padding! How do you do it? You must tell me what interlining you use!” “Hip padding? WHAT hip padding?!!?”)

I wonder how long hip padding remained in vogue? Sometimes it can be really difficult to pinpoint to death of a trend. Over at the website Clothes Journal, Heather Vaughan notes an editorial in the September 1948 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine entitled, “How will you look this winter”  which dictates to readers “you will discard the . . .Padded Hips as unsound elements in last year’s radical changes…”

(The title of this post is a line from an Adam Ant song which is stuck in my head. It’s been there all day. If you fancy a bit of 80s New Wave and the charismatic Mr. Ant himself live in full dandified military braided waistcoat check out the video of him singing “Christian Dior” here. The expression on his face as the final chords die away at the end has me in fits every time.)

Everybody’s talkin’

I’ve long wanted to actually own a copy of a vintage Vogue magazine, and finally took the plunge last week on Ebay. My copy, from June 1954, arrived at the weekend, and I made a large pot of coffee, made a little me time, and sat down to peruse it. By the time I’d finished I began to feel that possibly high fashion in the 1950s was not at all about ‘personal style’ as we know it today, but more about looking absolutely Stepford immaculate and “practically perfect in every way”. (A touch ironic then that some of us now work aspects of 1950s fashion into our own highly individual and personal look?) The adverts (of which there were MANY) were all for: a) nylons/stockings for immaculate legs, b) make up to help you achieve that immaculate mask-like face, and c) fearsome looking underwear and girdles to help you achieve that immaculate figure.

Having said that, though, there were some lovely dresses:

It was fascinating reading the articles. Of which there are quite a few about dieting. One diet menu plan suggests a dinner of prawn cocktail, roast chicken, bacon rolls, French beans with water chestnuts, strawberries and cream and coffee or tea. (Now that’s my kind of diet…)

Vogue bills the summer of 1954 as “the prettiest summer for years”. Everything is soft and flower-bedecked. Including underwear and petticoats. Which actually seems like a great idea, making a petticoat that’s pretty enough to be seen:

I loved the “People are talking about” column. Apparently, in June 1954 “people are talking about….The extraordinary prevalence of summer clothes in the shops practically all the year round- only to be explained logically as psychological war against the English climate….The rise to star popularity of the Plain-Jane or Ungly-Mug style of looks in actresses, probably originating in the French films, now spreading to the English stage and screen…The nice way we have Gregory Peck about the place in England…The astonishing way in which tea-addicted Londoners are piling into the new coffee bars for great draughts of espresso….”

Great draughts of expresso? Great scott!  Steady on, chaps!

People are also talking about Marlene Dietrich, just about to do four months cabaret at the Cafe de Paris “seen here in a ringmaster’s costume that emphasizes the eternal perfection of thos poetic legs”:

And I couldn’t resist a chuckle at the snide comment below:

“People are talking about… The awful way English seaside towns will keep advertising their phenomenal holiday weather- choose between Weston (”for fun in the sun”) Clacton (”glorious sunshine”) Sunny Worthing (” for l-o-n-g-e-r sunshine hours”) Hastings “South Coast sun spot”) and Felixstowe, which merely says with rather touching honesty “facing south” and hopes for the best…”

The cooling power of stripes

Does anyone else’s brain feel like it’s melting in the heat? The weather, here in Oxford at least, has tipped this week from being newsworthily sunny into downright unbearable. I’m sitting here typing in a pressure-cooker of a flat with a tiny fan redistributing hot air around me. I can think of no alternative but to think Stripes.

Why not ice-cream? Fjords? Polar bears? Why not glaciers sweeping majestically down the Alps? Because that would be denial. I am ultimately pleased that summer is here and I’m certainly not in a hurry for winter to come back any time soon. My brain craves beach cool, the cheery breeziness of the seaside. And almost everything at the seaside seems to be stripey. Whether it’s the faded awning of a beach cafe, a jolly beach towel, or a stick of rock like the one below, there’s nothing so soothing to the summer spirit than a good dose of stripes.

photo copyright: Damon Hart-Davis

And deckchairs. Definitely deckchairs. Which brings me deftly onto a company that does stripes in spades. Deckchair Stripes carry a beautiful selection of striped fabrics in a deckchair canvas weight and an interior dec weight (some of which are in the screenshot at the top of this post). I like “wakeboarding” below:

They also sell ready made items from their stripes, such as this gorgeous tent:

And you must, must, check out their customer photos of what people have done with their fabric. Especially these burlesque outfits.

British stripes=deckchairs, French stripes=espadrilles! Check out the beautiful fabric and readymade goods at Maison Artiga, a France-based store. (But mute your computer if you’re at work.) I would be snapping up a pair of their Ballerines espadrilles if I could choose between them (which would YOU choose?) and if I thought they would fit. (Shoe shopping when you’re a size 42 sucks. But at least it’s, er, inexpensive…)

Or I suppose I could whip out some stripey fabric from my stash and knock up something like these:

But that sounds like too far much work in this heat. On the whole I think I might settle for making an iced coffee instead…

Green with dress envy

There was a certain froideur that had been unmistakable since she arrived at the party. She had the uneasy feeling she was being snubbed. To give herself something to do she took out a cigarette, and a lighter appeared from nowhere. A lighter which appeared to be attached to a tall Cary Grant lookalike. Things seemed to be looking up.
“Thank you. I was beginning to think I must have something disgusting on my face.”
He laughed. “It does seem a little Siberian over here.”
“Siberian?”
“Frosty. Cold. Shall I tell you what the problem is?”
“Oh, yes, please do enlighten me.”
“‘Don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s Kipling. Rudyard Kipling. A line from one of his poems. You really should know that, you know, being newly appointed Professor of Poetry and all. Yes, I know who you are- welcome to Harvard, by the way. And you don’t seem to have realised there’s a dress code.”
“A dress code? No one told me.”
“Yes, look around you at the wilting yards of chiffon everywhere. The ribbons, spangles. And all that jazz. It’s a classic case of dress envy. The women are all too green with it to even meet your eye. So you’re clearly too wise, and you look far, far too good. I’m telling you this completely impartially, of course, merely to provide information.”
“Oh! Oh.”
“But there’s a solution.”
“Oh yes? One that doesn’t involve a lobotomy or me changing into a sack?”
“Much less painful. In the unconventional poetry of T.S. Eliot: ‘Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go…’”

Yep, it’s that time of week again. More fanciful pattern back story writing, more patterns up in the Glass of Fashion Etsy store! :)

The perfect summer dress?

Part of the downside of thumbing through old magazines is that you fall in love with outfits you can’t get hold of. (Although, yes, I know the trick is to use the magazine for inspiration and whip out the old sewing machine…) I love this summer sun dress sported by Merle Oberon in the June issue of Harper’s Bazaar from 1939. There’s just something about the vivacious print that’s perfect for a hot summer’s day.  The designer isn’t listed, but apparently the dress was sold at the store Bergdorf Goodman in the United States. I know the photo is in black and white, but can you imagine what colour the dress must be? (Happily the magazine provides a caption to let you know. It’s a “red and yellow printed silk”. But you guessed that anyway, right?)

Up at the villa

The sun was just setting behind the olive groves. The shadows fell vermilion now on the faded grandeur of the villa on the hill top. She’d painted on through the damp violet mornings, the white hot citrus noonday light, through the shining blue afternoons. And if it wasn’t Stephen’s birthday, and if there weren’t guests coming, she’d darn well paint on into the deep crimson evening. They would be dressing now up at the villa. Soon there would be music and twinkling glasses and laughter and dancing on the terrace. She painted on. She had bought herself this hour with cunning foresight. For this morning she’d dressed in her evening gown and sapphires, thrown her painting smock over the lot, and set off with her easel. As soon as she saw they first car creep up the driveway she tear off the smock and sprint up the hillside. They would forgive the streaks of burnt umber and raw siena and the cobalt blue she suspected she had across her ear. After all, as an artist she had a reputation of delicious eccentricity to uphold.
It was funny that the more eccentric you were, the more talented people assumed you to be. Perhaps a couple more splashes on her face? A hint of viridian and prussian blue should bring out her eyes nicely…

This pattern and a couple more are up in the Etsy store. Click on the pics for the listings and more pattern back stories!

Sabrina pages are up!

I blogged about the movie Sabrina over a year ago in connection with a McCall’s pattern that channeled one of the dresses Audrey Hepburn wears in Sabrina. I see I mentioned back then that although Edith Head was credited with the costume design for the film, and that she received an Oscar for Best Costume, but Hepburn’s outfits were by Hubert de Givenchy. (The story runs that Head didn’t want Givenchy’s name alongside hers in the credits. There’s also a legend that when Hepburn called on Givenchy for the first time in Paris, he assumed that it was Katharine Hepburn in his salon.)

Last night I watched the “Making of” documentary which is part of the Sabrina DVD extras. This documentary states that Edith Head actually did design Audrey’s “pre-Paris outfits”, and that Givenchy designed the outfits Sabrina wears on her return from Paris. What that doesn’t make clear though is who designed the outfits she wears IN Paris (although these garments don’t get much screen time). It seems logical to suppose that Head designed what I’ve called the “Chef’s Whites” that Sabrina attends cookery school in, and that Givenchy is responsible for the glamorous silk robe she wears post-makeover as she writes to her father about her return home?
Wikipedia has some interesting info/scandal on the production of Sabrina (although noticeably a bit scant on quoting its sources):

Cary Grant was initially considered for the role of Linus but declined,^[1] and the role was taken by Bogart.
During production of the film, Hepburn and Holden entered into a brief but passionate, and much-publicized, love affair. Bogart, meanwhile, complained that Hepburn required too many takes to get her dialogue right and pointed out her inexperience. However, his behavior towards Hepburn was better than his behavior towards other members of the cast and crew. [citation needed]
Bogart was very unhappy during the filming and was convinced that he was totally wrong for this kind of film, mad at not being Wilder’s first choice, and didn’t like Holden or Wilder. But his offbeat casting produced one of his best and most celebrated performances. Bogart later apologized to Wilder for his behavior on-set, citing problems in his personal life. [citation needed]

1^ Jaynes, Barbara Grant; Trachtenberg, Robert. Cary Grant: A Class Apart. Burbank, California: Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Turner Entertainment. 2004.

I love this film, but the only thing that mars it slightly for me is that I just don’t “buy” Humphrey Bogart in his role or the romance between his character, Linus Larrabee, and Sabrina. But that’s just me- what do you guys think? (Frankly it always amazes me that Sabrina would find either of the Larrabee brothers attractive- one a playboy who doesn’t notice her until she gets a haircut and some new threads, when he can’t dump his fiancee for her fast enough, and the other brother deviously trying to divert her attentions to himself and pay her to stay away from his brother purely so business will prosper. Whew. What a choice.)

My pages on the outfits Hepburn wears in Sabrina can now be found here. Let me know if anything isn’t linking right (there’s a whole lotta linkin’ going on…). Also, I’ve made the odd comment about the construction of some of the garments- feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

And the winner is…

Sabrina! Thanks so much to all of you who voted for helping make that decision. Stay tuned- I’ll be adding it to Project Audrey tomorrow when I’ve done all the pages and screen shots :)

Help me choose!

 

I think another movie needs to be added soon to Project Audrey, my mission to catalogue Audrey Hepburn’s film outfits via screenshots and other images. Last week I kicked off the Project with Paris When it Sizzles. Now, I’m totally racked with indecision. So many great films, so little time! It occurs to me as I eye up my Audrey Hepburn DVD box set speculatively that perhaps I should simply turn the decision over to you chaps. So, what’ll it be?

Voting is closed. Results: