It’s been a while

Those of you who have been following the saga of Hettie’s bridemaid’s dress will know that there’s a wedding in the offing. This Saturday, in fact! Over the course of the last couple of week’s there’s been much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth while we manufactured my wedding dress and Robin’s groom outfit. (There’s nothing like cutting it fine, is there?) But everything is finally hemmed and tweaked and just about ready. I won’t be posting for a few weeks, but look out for bumper posting on wedding outfits and pictures when I return!

As a parting shot, let’s have a little therapeutic eye candy and see how the professionals do big frocks. These pics are taken from the French magazine Qualite from 1946:

Enter Spring?

Is it Spring? When I can walk outside and see trees looking like this, I’m going to believe it is regardless.

To mark the occasion, here are some sage words from my Vogue Pattern book from April-May 1935:

Spring isn’t just a question of first robins and sunshine. It is essentially a matter of new viewpoints, fresh enthusiasms. Its outward and visible sign is not, as commonly supposed, the first crocus, but the flowering of new fashions up and down the land.

Indeed. So what were the new fashions blossoming in Spring 1935? (And how many of them sound familiar from the catwalk for Spring 2008?)

Big Sleeve Story:

Sleeves, for example, are charmingly dramatic…

Personally, I wish that I could pull off sleeves twice as big as my head, although I fear they’d get dragged through everything, like the dinner. I love the red number in the pic below, and its fascinating neckline:

Fabrics with a future:

An amusing novelty- the tiny new animal prints- Scotties, Sealyhams, and other dumb friends in surprisingly good little motifs forming rather close patterns. Fashion must have its little joke, and they’re better that they sound.

The magazine apparently disdains to illustrate this amusing novelty. I have to admit I had to google an image of a Sealyham as I’ve never come across one. They seem to look a lot like Scotties but with longer necks. Anyone interested in reproducing this look should head over to Fabric Finders, where they have the fabric to the right.

Things happen behind your back:

Jackets and coats are just as interesting seen from the rear as from the front. When an admiring public turns to look after you as you pass by this spring, your retreating back will leave a ripple of enthusiasm in your wake.

The re-discovery of the Regency:

Capes- the Season’s gallant gesture. You’ll feel like D’Artagnan in the long ones, and a jaunty Beau Brummel in the short ones…

Femininity, or what every woman knows:

There’s a rustle of taffeta in the air, and chiffons have fluttered back into fashion for evening. Of course, every woman knows she look best with a ruffle around her neck…more fragile in ethereal chiffons….Flowers in the hair and sheer fluttery fabrics by night…

Pack Evening Dresses

The exhortation in the post title comes from the Vogue Patterns catalogue for August-September 1951.

Doesn’t it make you wonder what kind of Autumn holiday would offer the opportunity for wearing a coral coloured duchesse satin number with a “fabulously wide swirling infanta skirt”?

Certainly none of the Autumn holidays I’ve ever been on. Last year I managed to get away with not having a bouffant ball gown with a skirt “gathered into a cloud of filmy organza or tulle” on a cycling trip through the Bavarian Alps.

Clearly I don’t take a very Vogue kind of Autumn holiday. Oh well.

Perfection

Remember my mysterious French pattern catalogue from 1941? I found another, also optimistically titled Perfection, also on ebay, but this time for summer 1937. Isn’t this a gorgeous front cover?

It becomes more apparent in this particular catalogue (I think my other 1941 one may have a page or so missing) that Editions Bell were indeed a pattern company based at 25, Avenue de l’Opera, Paris (although Google doesn’t turn up much on them). Perfection was one of selection of catalogues with names like Prestige and Inspirations that they offered, promoting patterns for menswear, hats, coats etc. They offer to send you a pattern of “impeccable cut” drafted to your measurements within 48 hours.

This particular catalogue smells very strongly of gauloises. I love to imagine a terribly elegant lady reading it, perhaps sitting in a cafe with a small verre de vin, narrowing her eyes through a haze of blue cigarette smoke at delicious frivolities like these:

Of course she’d go for the orange number at the back. I know I certainly would.

Winter Season 1941, Paris

Now and again I buy something on ebay that so far exceeds my expectations that I’m well and truly gobsmacked. The latest arrival I bought for its inexpensive air of mystery and because a couple of the listing pictures intrigued me. I’m thrilled by what a great find it is.

It’s still not really clear to me what the purpose of this publication was. I’m not sure having a better command of French would help- it seems to be a publication that would have been known to its target audience and perhaps available from a particular outlet or by postal subscription? From my limited French, it seems to be a pattern catalogue for a company based in Paris called Editions Bell. However, the patterns are of such staggering complexity and intricate cut that this must have been a service aimed at a professional dressmaker rather than a home sewer. The company offers to express you a pattern cut to your exact measurements within 48 hours. Wow.

What amazes me even more than the cut of these styles is that these patterns are for the 1940/41 Winter season. In France. Wasn’t the fashion industry in France hit pretty hard by the Second World War?? Here is the front cover:

I love the way that in the 1940s fashion ran through a whole range of shapes and lines from utility clothing and rationing, the draped sophisticated “film noir” look, the romantic “I’ve just stepped out of an MGM musical” look with sweetheart neckline and puff sleeves, to Dior’s “New Look” in 1947.

Click on the pictures and thumbnails of a few pages below to enlarge in order to really appreciate the details. (Apologies for the wonky pictures- my scanner is A4 and I’ve had to use a camera for this A3 booklet…)

“Incontestable Seduction”

We’re in a very French spirit here at the moment. We’re just full of joie de vivre and esprit de corps and savoir faire. It must be something to do with this issue of Nouvelle Mode magazine from 29 December 1912.

Mademoiselle Dastry flashes a neatly turned ankle on the cover while indulging in a spot of croquet. (A little investigative googling does not turn up much on Miss Dastry, apart from the fact that she is probably Huguette Dastry, who seems to have been an actress.) What a demure but slightly cheeky pose! I remember reading somewhere (although where exactly escapes me at the moment) that croquet was looked on as being simultaneously ever so slightly scandalous and great for flirting, as it presented the opportunity for flashing an inch or two of leg…
As well as offering the usual advice of dubious usefulness on how to achieve pearly teeth, softer hands, whiter skin and shinier hair (sounds familiar….) the magazine showcases the latest trends.

I love the richness of embellishments and fabrics that went into fashion of the post-Edwardian period, and the clever draping that turns the body into a column or a Greek statue (although it must have been a bit of a bore to be effectively restrained by the “hobble skirt” into taking tiny steps). I always think that this period was the first time that layering in the sense that we know it now really began to reach its potential. There’s a lot going on in each of the costumes in these pictures, and yet in each one the layers really enhance the overall effect.

The ensembles in the pics above are titled “Incontestable Seduction” and “Exquises Visions”. Some things definitely do sound better in French.

The New Black

I was flicking through a copy of the victorian journal The World of Fashion for the year 1837 and gazing at all the beautiful hand-coloured fashion plates, which are a riot of pinks and blues and yellows and just about every colour under the sun. And then I got to July… July 1837 saw the death of the then King of England, William the Fourth and the journal prints the order for Court mourning:

COURT MOURNING

Lord Chamberlain’s Office, June 20.

Orders for the Court’s going into mourning on Thursday next, the 22nd inst., for his late Most Gracious King William the Fourth, of blessed memory, viz. :-

The ladies to wear black bombasines, plain muslin or long lawn linen, crape hoods, shamoy shoes and gloves, and crape fans.

The gentlemen to wear black cloth, without buttons on the sleeves and pockets, plain muslin or long lawn cravats and weepers, shamoy shoes and gloves, crape hatbands, and black swords and buckles.”

The journal’s correspondent responsible for relaying the Paris fashion clearly felt that there was little he could contribute that could add any value and that it might perhaps be a little cruel to taunt English readers with tales of their Parisian counterparts swanning around in Rosebud pink taffeta and peacock brocade. So he shrugs his shoulders of the whole business:

“As the General Mourning for our late lamented Sovereign would render out usual details of the Modes de Paris useless this month to our fair readers, we present them in its stead with an account of what at present occupies the whole attention of the Parisians, namely, the magnificent trousseau of the newly married Duchess of Orleans, and a description of her Royal Highness’s apartments….”

[The Princess Helen of Mecklenburg Schwerin had just married the Duke of Orleans, heir to the throne of France, and a lot of column inches were devoted to her. The Victorians seemed to have looked to such beautiful "celebrities" to set the direction of fashion in the same way that we do today.]

Although nowadays black clothes are looked at as being as close to chic as just about anything, there clearly wasn’t a Victorian equivalent of the Little Black Dress and most readers would have been pretty miffed to be plunged into black, especially in July.

(Strangely, the magazine didn’t think of just printing the black dress colour onto the page along with the rest of the design, and as I look at these plates I imagine that I can almost hear the crazed screams of glee of the woman who would have been employed to laboriously tint each plate by hand, as plate after plate got the BLACK treatment…)