Ad Campaign – Johnson’s Baby Oil, 1972

When you have the face of a girl and the body of a woman you still want the skin of a baby.

A few days ago I wrote about how teens in the early 1970s were really into little girl prints and ruffles and such, and here is an ad that plays directly to that trend. It is from 1972, and I found it in a copy of Seventeen, which was the major teen fashion magazine of that time.  Ditsy print, ruffled cap sleeves, and curled pigtails:  that was high school in the early 70s.  (But not the exposed midriff, not at school anyway!)

Back to the Seventies

I graduated from high school in 1973, and this outfit would have been the very thing I’d have worn that year.  The girls at my school had just been granted the right to wear pants, mainly because the school officials didn’t seem to be able to control the shortness of the minis we were wearing.  Yes, there were rules, but they couldn’t send us all home.  So rather than have the constant parade of over-exposed thighs, the powers must have concluded that covered up, even if it meant pants, was better.

It was a whimsical time in fashion with lots of silly little prints of Holly Hobbie and cartoon characters that were popular with girls at my school.  We liked pinafore tops and I even had a dress with a back tie sash.  I guess we knew it was pretty much our last chance to really be kids.

So, sure, I’d have worn the mouse sweater.

I’ve had this little Bobbie Brooks sweater for at least five years, and possibly longer.  When I found it I had a perfect vision of the pants that would go with it.  First, they had to be plaid.  The main color would be light, or even white, but the blue would match, and there would be a darker color, maybe a deep gold or a red.

When I found these last week, I was pretty sure I’d found my pants.  Still, I was working the color from memory and could not be sure.  It helped that colors are fashion-driven, and this was a good color in the early 70s.

It was such a good match that you might think that the pants are also from Bobbie Brooks.  Actually, the label is Gordon of Philadelphia, which was geared toward a slightly older, more conservative consumer.  But I guess even the preppy had to capitulate to the way of fashion, at least for a few years.

 

1970s Up-Cycled Shirt

Up-cycling is a 2000s term, but the concept behind the term is not.  Taking old clothes and turning them into something new or decorated goes way back, even further than the 1970s.  But like so many young crafters on etsy and 10 thousand DIY bloggers who think they invented the idea of re-using a garment, we girls of the 1960s and 70s thought we discovered recycling and crafting.

I usually don’t buy other people’s craft projects, but the shirt above is the quintessential 1970s crafted garment.  It is actually a man’s shirt – a navy issue chambray work shirt.  It’s very possible that it came from an army-navy store, one of the chief suppliers of clothing for all of us who were protesting the Vietnam War.  I actually have a similar shirt, but in denim, that I embroidered flowers and butterflies and such onto in 1972.

Don’t you just love how the stem goes through the hole?  What is that hole for, anyway?

There are even more appliqued flowers on the back, along with a speckled butterfly.

Nothing like a little eyelet edging to add a feminine touch!

Making The Easy Scarf Dress

I recently picked up this 1970s pattern because I was curious about the process of making a dress from two scarves.  This is just the type of thing I was into when I was in high school and college.  In fact, I once made a mini dress out of a pillowcase after seeing it done on a local “home-maker” TV program, but that’s another story for another time.

This pattern says it is easy, and after looking at the pattern piece and the directions, I agree.  This is easy:

That is the entire set of instructions for the dress!  It would take you longer to cut this out than it would take to sew it up.  Two side seams, two inches on either side of the neck, and Voila!  A new scarf mini dress.  No finishing and no hemming required.

Seriously, I think this is a really fun idea.  The scarves would not even have to be identical.  And notice that in the view on the far left, two sheer scarves were made into a bikini cover-up.  But if you are tall and want to wear this as a dress, I suggest 36″ scarves.  Or you could use a smaller size to make a top.

Interview with Illustrator Kasia Charko

The logo above was drawn by my latest blog discovery, Kasia Charko.  Her name may not be familiar, but I’m betting that you will recognize the work she did for Biba, the London store and mail order company owned by Barbara Hulanicki in the 1960s and 70s.  What makes Kasia’s blog so good is that she is telling the story of the early 1970s fashion scene in the UK as only an insider could tell it.

Kasia graciously agreed to answer a few questions for me.

1.  Tell us about your training as an artist.

  I trained in graphic design at Leicester College of Art,  England from 1969 -1972.   All commercial art was taught, editorial illustration for magazines and book publishing,  typography and some photography, illustration for advertising e.g. posters and ad campaigns.

2.  How did you land the position at Biba?

One of my tutors was Adrianne Le Man who was the Art Director for The Illustrated London News at the time .   She taught us one day a week, and when I moved to London we kept in touch and she alerted me to the fact that the Biba graphics team  was  looking for an illustrator as the one they had was not working out.   I was already working for various magazines doing fashion illustration  and other drawings in an Art Deco style.   Much to my surprise I got the job.

3.  What were your responsibilities there?

The design team was Whitmore Thomas;  they designed the interiors of the new store and Steve Thomas led  the graphics team as well.  The day I started he gave me the brief which was to come up with ideas and drawings for all logos for each department that was going to be in the new Big Biba store.   He then went to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks. It was nerve wracking to say the least , but when he came back he liked what he saw and took the drawings to a meeting with Barbara Hulanicki who made the final approvals  and we were on our way .  Now we had the look , Steve and I expanded the work to include all kinds of  things like postcards, badges, food packaging – it was never-ending.  I did not really deal with Barbara, I hardly ever saw her, but she gave final approval of all work.

4.  How did Art Deco become so much a part of the imaging of Biba?

  I think that is explained better in Barbara Hulanicki’s autobiography ‘ From A to Biba’.   In the early 70′s in Britain there was a great nostalgia for old things from Victorian right through to the 1940′s. This was seen in fashion , graphics, music.  I think it was in America too.   I touch on this in some of my blogs.  Also old clothes , furniture, etc. was still available very cheaply  and clothes in particular were much sought after.  Biba clothes had that old glamorous look.

5.  How were you personally influenced by the Art Deco movement?

   I was influenced unconsciously at first by an old Art Deco cinema around the corner from my house when I was a kid.  You can see a photo of the interior on my first blog.    Those three Art Deco ladies certainly made an imprint on me.   I did not know what Art Deco was but I loved it. Also we were exposed to an enormous amount of old Hollywood  movies on the T.V. as kids in the 60′s.  At college I studied all aspects of Art Deco and loved it, still do.

6.  After your work at Biba was finished, did you continue to work as an artist?

When Biba ended it was very strange because a door had definitely closed on that style of work, there was a lot of change in the air.  I still got work but felt a bit typecast.      The situation in Britain was very bad , very gloomy so my husband and I had a break and went to Canada . We worked mostly in advertising,  I got into childrens’ book     illustration in the early 90′s which I am still doing today.

Many thanks to Kasia for taking the time to tell us about her experiences at Biba.  And to read more, be sure to visit her blog, Kasia Charko.

Harper’s Bazaar, June 1972

A couple of weeks ago I posted a Vogue cover from 1971, so I thought I’d better give the competition a little boost as well.  In the late 60s and the 70s Vogue covers were, for the most part, head shots, but the covers at Bazaar were often action shots.  This cover from June, 1972 is a good example of a typical early 70s Bazaar cover, with the model leaping down a stretch of beach.

Until early 1972, the editor at Bazaar was Nancy White.  White was pretty much the opposite of Vogue‘s Diana Vreeland, and in the late 1950s both women were up for the editorship of Bazaar.  Vreeland had been working there some time as fashion editor, and the new-comer White had been most recently at Good Housekeeping.  But White had an advantage, as she was out-going editor Carmel Snow’s niece.  White got the job, Vreeland left Bazaar for Vogue, and the rest is history.

Interestingly, while Vreeland was replaced at Vogue for being too flamboyant, White was replaced at Bazaar a short time later for being too old-fashioned.  Her replacement was James Brady from Women’s Wear Daily, who quickly made the magazine more political in nature, with less emphasis on fashion.  He lasted fourteen months before he was fired.

Photographer: Hiro
Model:  Pam Suthern
Copyright:  Hearst Corporation

Ad Campaign – Talon Zippers, 1972

We put as much care into the things we make as you put into the things you make.

By 1972, the metal zipper was considered to be terribly old fashioned, though the zipper makers continued to produce them for the many old fashioned seamstresses who did not trust the flimsy nylon ones.  (It did not help that the very earliest models on the market were prone to failure, and that it took a while before people realized that nylon zippers and hot irons do not mix.)  My grandmother was one such home sewer who distrusted nylon zippers, though she didn’t have to worry about it much because she had been forced to retire her sewing machine due to arthritis.

But in 1972 I was a thriving sewer, like the young woman in the ad.  If people think that DIY is a new phenomena, then they do not know the 70s.  By the time I started sewing in the mid to late 1960s, all the bugs had been worked out of the nylon coil, and I had no trust issues.

One of the big items of debate is recent years has been the question of the start of the nylon coil zipper.  Thanks to Robert Friedel’s book, Zipper, I can now say with certainty that the Talon Zephyr was introduced to the US market in March, 1960.  That means that any garment with the original Talon nylon zipper cannot have been made before that date.

The story is different in Europe.  The German zipper company, Opti-Werk, began manufacturing nylon coil zippers in 1955.

So it all depends on the little name embossed on the zipper pull as to whether an item with a nylon coil zipper could have been made in the 1950s.