Well, I’ve got a new sewing project to share.  Seems like I always gravitate toward those 1970s Butterick Young Designers, and this time was no exception.  I was looking for a fairly straightforward shirtdress, and this pattern from Daniel Hechter fit the bill.

As with so many designs from the 70s, the collar looked huge in the drawing, so when I cut the piece, I made it considerably smaller.  Still, after stitching up the thing, I still thought it was just too large.  If you are a sewer, you know that at that point, the thing to do is to take the collar off and recut it.  But after removing the collar, with the band still attached, I decided that I liked the look of the dress with just a collarband.

Too big…

so a whole new look.

And here is the finished product.   I didn’t make the self-belt.  They always come off as looking too matchy-matchy for my taste.  And I have about a dozen belts and scarves that will work nicely at the waist.  When I think of chambray, I automatically think of red accessories, but what other color would make this look a little fresher?

There’s nothing like it… absolutely nothing.

Charcoal glowing, sirloin sizzling, Budweiser bubbling – and you pouring!

Live life, every golden minute of it.

Only three years after the war was over, European countries were ready and open for the tourist business.  This great print was the cover of Holiday magazine in May 1948. The article talks about how people were getting over the sorrow of German occupation, and were getting on with life.

It also mentions the fashion business, and how the haute couture was struggling with various problems – the continuing fabric shortages, the high wages and taxes that must be paid, and the lack of foreign customers.   Many houses were pretty much surviving on the profits from perfumes.   And the article mentions a “baldish, stubby newcomer named Christian Dior” who was helping to bring the fashionable back to Paris with the introduction of his “New Look.”

As overdone as the talk about this series has been, I had to post about it today, if for no other reason than to carry on about Lady Mary’s hunting ensemble.  If this is not the British tweed of perfection, then I do not know what is.  I’m not much of one for shooting at birds, but otherwise I could put myself at that hunting party and be quite happy thank you.  That is, provided I could have an equally fabulous tweed outing suit.

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the clothing of this era (1910s), but I do want to say a thing or two about the costuming.  The designer for the series, Susannah Buxton, says that the clothing is a pretty even mixture of actual vintage from the era, clothing the costume department has recreated from vintage fabrics and trimmings, and costumes hired from costuming companies.   On a site that I can’t seem to locate at the moment, a British blogger posts photos from Downton Abbey and photos from other costume dramas of the same period, and you can see how the costumes often led a prior life in other shows.

I’d like to have a score card to guess which costumes are actual period pieces.  It would be a fun game, don’t you think?

All through season 2 the women seemed to continue to wear their mid 1910s Poiret-inspired evening wear, so last night it was a jolt to see them suddenly sporting clothes from the early 1920s.  Unfortunately the show does not show them in London and Paris, shopping for the post war fashions, but it was pretty obvious there was a chunk of  Lord Lady Grantham’s money being spent on the Couture!

Before the shopping trip to Paris:

After the shopping trip to Paris:

I couldn’t find a decent photo of the new clothes, but you can sort of see what I mean in this dress worn by Mary.  Earlier in the show she wore a very unfortunate choice – a straight chemise that from the rear made her look about twice her size.  And just when are those girls going to cut their hair?

All photos copyright Carnival Films for ITV.

A vest, properly worn.  Too marvelous for words…

I was about to just give up on ever finding something I wanted on ebay and actually being able to buy it.  I don’t know if it is the influence of all the museum exhibitions of sportswear, but ephemera related to sportswear has gotten a bit crazy, pricewise.  Last week I was going to blow a whole $20 on a tiny little beat up and ratty 1919 Keds catalog.  Imagine my surprise when it went for $103!

To console myself, I went looking vintage Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, being reminded by a recent blog comment that I probably do need to add a few of these overpriced gems to my library.  I was delighted to run across nine summer sportswear catalogs from Von Lengerke & Antoine, the Chicago Branch of A & F, at a very reasonable price.

Von Lengerke & Antoine was a longtime Chicago sporting store, and was actually a division of a New York store, Von Lengerke & Detmold.  This store was the competition of Abercrombie & Fitch, and in 1928,  A & F bought out the Von Lengerke stores.  That is why you will sometimes see the initials VL&A on Abercrombie & Fitch labels prior to 1960.

VL&A actually came with a bit of notorious baggage – the store was located in Al Capone’s territory, and it was the store in which two of the Colt Thompson machine guns used in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre were purchased.

But there are no machine guns in my catalogs, which start 20 years later, in 1949, and run through 1958.  According to the catalogs, VL&A carried the same merchandise as A&F.   In 1960s the Von Lengerke & Antoine name was phased out, and the store became known as Abercrombie & Fitch.

The catalogs are a delight for a lover of vintage sportswear, full of men’s and women’s clothing, picnic and travel accessories, sporting goods and just all around fun stuff.

We tend to associate Mary Quant with the 1960s and the Mod look, but apparently her name was still selling in 1973 when this ad was seen in Seventeen magazine.  These body crayons in brighter colors came our a bit earlier – some sources say 1966, while others say 1969.   They were a sort of all purpose makeup, but it was also suggested that one could use them to draw designs on the skin – sort of a 1970s temporary tattoo.

And the back of the tin, with a Mary Quant Blush Baby.

Given to my Great-aunt Adore, by my cousin Nancy Harbin, 1955.  I was not even born yet!

Today we have come to expect that each new fashion season will include a healthy dose of borrowing from other fashion eras.  It seems like every collection is a nod to the 20s or to the 70s, or to the early 60s.  This is nothing new.  Read late 1930s fashion magazines and you will see a lot of buzz about Victorian influences.  The mid 1960s reminded people a lot of the 1920s.

But it was in the late 1960s and into the 1970s that looking back at trends became what drove the trends themselves.  We think about the 70s, and many things spring to mind – hippie ethnic looks, disco, and the romantic looks of Laura Ashley and Gunne Sax.  All these trends were a big part of what the 1970s were all about, but one of the biggest influences was nostalgia, especially nostalgia for the 1920s through 1940s.

Nostalgic Scenes on Sweaters, in a 1974 Pandora ad in Seventeen magazine

There’s nothing unusual about fashion looking to the past for inspiration, but in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, fashion was driven not so much by copying fashions from the past as it was by a nostalgic view and perception of life in the 1920s through the 1940s.

And it wasn’t a view of the era as it actually was so much as it was a look at our grandparents’ and parents’ time as it should have been.  So what if there had been Prohibition, the Great Depression and WWII?  Nostalgia made the past look like so much fun.

Please forgive a little trip down memory lane this morning, but thirty-five years ago today I made one of the wisest moves of my life.  Yes, that is me, the bride in my Gunne Sax clone dress, with my handsome Tim and our parents.

And in other news:

*   I really like this blog about 1960s and 1970s crafts, and this post about Vera points out the important of collecting American Fabrics magazines! via @SllabStudios

*   Real or Reenactment?  Can you spot the Civil War era photos? via @CostumeSociety

*   Another museum, another sports clothes exhibition: Fashion Museum, Bath, UK.

*  See how L.L. Bean recreated some of their vintage catalog covers as part of the company’s 100th anniversary.  And there is also a look at how they have recreated the boot that started it all – the Maine Hunting Shoe.

*   There is a super interesting article at the Wall Street Journal about how one company went about developing a high-end polo shirt.

*   The importance of the New York Garment Center, from one who knows – Nanette Lapore.

*  A big thanks to bloggers who have mentioned me on their on blogs in the past few weeks:  Jonathan at Kickshaw Productions, Jessica at Truth Plus,  Louise at Catwalk Creative and Stefanie at Copycat Collector.

*   And the question we’ve always wanted to be answered:  What does SHE carry in those Launer London handbags?