Colours that pop..
Sometimes looking at a lot of vintage magazines and paper items it’s tempting to assume that the process of printing colour wasn’t particularly developed back then. It’s easy to forget that what you’re actually looking at when you hold an old brochure or catalogue are the ravages of time. Age related ‘jaundice’, fading from too much sunlight, damp patches. So coming across these 1940s newsprint brochures for Simplicity patterns was a bit of a revelation. The print colours are as clean, as fresh and as vivid as the day they were printed. They really do “pop”, and the actual colour combinations on each page are really rather lovely. So, here we are- lots of eye candy for a Saturday which I hope is as sunny wherever you are as it is here!
I’ve just squeezed in a little store update– and listed two lots containing two each of these little eight page catalogues. (One here, one here.) And there’s a couple of patterns too, one by Pierre Cardin for Vogue Paris Original, and one, well, I suppose “Grecian rockabilly” wouldn’t be far off the mark.
Glass of Fashion 
Great combination of colors. It reminds me of my paper dolls collection before….
I grew up wearing the clothes my grandmother made for me. So did my mother. So did Grandma. Her first memories were of learning to make bound button holes for her doll’s clothes. She made those scissors sound as big as sheep shears.
When HER mother found out she knew how to make bound buttonholes, she became the seamstress for the whole family – 15 children in all. She loved her Singer sewing maching – a treadle that she had motorized at some point. She also tatted, knitted, and crocheted for unknown numbers of nieces and nephews.
Taking a home-ec class in high school, I learned to sew, too; and made clothes for my two girls til they started refusing to wear homemade! Thanks for sharing these beautiful patterns and reminding us of the days when the modus standard was ‘use it up, wear it out, make do or do without’.
You’re so welcome, Stephanie! I loved hearing about your family’s sewing (wow, 15 children to sew for? Now that’s a serious amount of sewing- practically a full-time job…)
Ah, It’s so sad when kids start to think homemade isn’t cool. But, you know, I think the situation is slowly starting to turn about- the craft-y “I made myself” look seems to have found its way into designers’ collections, and has made its way down onto the High Street…