Leafing through wartime copies of Woman magazine, a British publication, I can’t help but admire certain aspects of the severity of UK fashion during the war. I’m not a particularly girly girl — I’ve discussed my love of a little light cross-dressing elsewhere — so I find some common fashion trends of the 1940s (frills, Peter Pan collars, puffed sleeves) hard to wear because they feel fussy and infantilizing, which is the last thing a 21st-century woman needs. But in wartime Britain nearly all women were working women, so fashion also had to focus hard on function. Before there were jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, the tweed suit was the British woman’s Getting Things Done outfit. Really good suits often featured gloriously lean, stiletto-sharp tailoring. Check out Sherry here. She may be mad, but man does she look hot. That outfit’s as streamlined as a shark.

Actually, I feel like I’ve seen that look somewhere before.

I would love to get my hands on one of those rakish little lady-trilbies — all the vintage-inspired milliners on the internets seem to be exclusively hung up on things involving feathers and netting. And a smart little tweed SUIT! I wonder how many more years it’ll take me to feel confident making my own vintage suits.

Here’s another woman sporting some sexy cross-dressing at work (the article is a breathless military-romance story about peril in the jungle). When was the last time the ordinary woman could rock jodhpurs?

"How badly hurt are you?" Stephen asked Harriet. "I could sit in front of you on your horse," she replied. Yeah. I'll just bet you could.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, here’s a DIY design for a fabric-economical blouse with a tie waist and horizontal tucks to add bust interest. With a toned-down sleeve cap, this would make up very nicely today into a slightly boxy blouse to wear over high-waisted skinny jeans or a pencil skirt.

Here’s another article highlighting a newfound problem for women: how to stay beautiful while balancing a demanding work schedule and a personal life. Ah, the old third shift!

Here’s a glimpse into some female bedtime rituals of the time: “It’s a bitter disappointment for a man who led a glamorous bride to the altar to have to spend his life with a greasy-creamed, curling-papered, chin-strapped wife.” Very true. Men must never be exposed to the machinery of beauty. Which is why I always sedate my boyfriend with a tranquilizer dart before embarking on my nightly toilette.

The good news: smoking still okay

Speaking of real vs. ideal:

But one takeaway message from women’s magazines is the same in every era and on both sides of the Atlantic: Purify your foul, noisome lady bits!

Dettol + “delicate tissues” = AAAAAHHHH.

The wardrobe, reimagined asks how women in fashion eras that offered fewer wardrobe options got around the problem of style line/body shape mismatch (corsetry?), and hammers home my dilemma with this simple infographic for dummies on What the Short-Waisted Woman Should Not Wear:

I don’t know about you, but my eyes instantly gravitate to the outfit on the left. Completely scrummy, right? Only it’s completely WRONG. We short-waisted types are supposed to line up to the right, behind Bella Swan there. I have been coveting the high-waisted, figure-hugging, demurely slutty pencil-skirted secretary look for years, but apparently it and I were never meant to be. I blame you for this futile passion, Joan Holloway.

Click the image and prepare to lose hours of your life. Many, oh so many, Mad Men fashion postmortems await.

We are very lucky to be living and sewing at a time when we have a proliferation of styles to choose from, so even though it might be difficult renouncing my Mad Men dreams, I’m not condemned to wearing silhouettes that don’t suit me. Right now I’m shifting focus away from waist/hip-conscious eras (40s, 50s) and experimenting with leg-conscious ones (60s, 70s). Bonus: the UK is still somewhat stuck in the Benny Hill era sexually, so its collective leg fixation is alive and well.

I’m finding this vintage Playboy photo immensely inspiring. Talk about playing up your assets. She could have Starbucks-sized muffin top tucked inside that dress and no one would notice.

Via The Selvedge Yard.

Here’s one vintage pattern I have plans for:

Here’s another:

Still a bit of Betty Draper going on in View C's hat, and isn't that a teenage Joan in the back?

Right! I’d better get cracking before the British summer ends!

What are your thoughts on picking vintage looks or projects to suit your body type? What do you do when your taste doesn’t suit your own shape?

The lack of any bottoms in light neutral tones is a serious gap in my wardrobe, especially in summer when black just won’t cut it. As in, I have a stupid amount of stuff I like but can’t wear because I have no beige pants. Enter EvaDress 3322, a multi-sized modern reissue of a 1940 Simplicity trouser/overall pattern.

Simplicity, you say? I know, I know. Barely two months into my no-Simplicity vow and already I’m backsliding. I tried, really I did. I ordered this sweet Hollywood slacks pattern from the unimpeachable Mom’s Patterns in March and waited weeks for it to arrive, but thanks to the vagaries of the transatlantic postal service, it never showed up. Are Royal Mail in league with the devil? Who knows. The clock was ticking — it was late May and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it English summer was due to arrive any day now. I couldn’t afford to wait for another pattern to ship from the US; I had to put shears to cloth. The Simplicity pattern was in my stash, so back to Simplicity I went.

Just to be on the safe side, I checked the measurements scrupulously to make sure there weren’t any of the wild discrepancies I’ve come to associate with Simplicity patterns and made a rare muslin before cutting into my fabric, a beige cotton/viscose twill I bought from Cloth House in Soho. It needed surprisingly little tweaking, although of course this didn’t stop me from compulsively tinkering with the fit later to the point of courting ruin. However, for my first ever pair of pants, I’m fairly happy with the result. I added big patch pockets and belt loops to soften the spartan look of the original design and give me more wearing options.

Thanks to my project dysmorphia, I could point out a whole host of problems and defects that render these pants torturously unacceptable in my eyes. BUT I WON’T, because when I debuted the pants to the two main men in my life and started to moan about all their flaws (the pants’, not the men’s), they (the men, not the pants) very sensibly told me to STFU, the pants looked great. So instead, I will tell you what I like about them and what I got right and leave my FAILs to the “Lessons Learned” section below.

I love the comfort of these pants. I cannot remember the last time I had a pair of pants that hung from my natural waist rather than from a point below it. Starting from the break at the fullest part of the hip, these pants have a lot of ease. They also have a very low crotch relative to modern pants and jeans — there’s plenty of room in there for a girdle, for instance, or a pair of old-timey French knickers. (Ooh, swishy!) These elements, combined with the drapey fabric I used, make the pants feel flowy, full and unconstricting. They churn fascinatingly along the pavement when I walk and allow a much freer range of motion in hips and legs than I’m used to after years of tight, stretch and low-rise pants. I can high-kick in these if the mood takes me (although probably not while wearing the girdle). Great for lindy hop!

I love their versatility. The high waist makes them ideal for wearing with all my 1940s blouses, and I can pair them with modern tops and sweaters to make them work- and street-appropriate, like so:

Paired with restyled thrifted Brora cashmere sweater, £12 (no coupons!)

I like the fact that I got the topstitching on the patch pockets right. “Simple” tasks like stitching a straight line are usually a minefield for me. I also like the fact that I wore these out of the house for the first time today and two people complimented me without suspecting that I’d made them.

I like the secret banjo I embroidered on the inside waistband (a detail shamelessly cribbed from the blog now known as Adventures in Couture):

I like the fact that these pants have jailbroken about half a dozen items in my wardrobe. After a year and a half of ownership, I can finally wear my vintage 1940s utility shoes!

These shoes are more than 60 years old and still going strong. They may not be dainty or elegant, but they were certainly built to last. Here’s the maker’s mark, complete with the CC41 “cheeses” to indicate that the shoes comply with British utility standards:

Like Tabby, the original owner was smart enough to have a cobbler attach protective half-soles and heels to extend the life of the the shoes themselves:

But back to my pants!

This is the most practical piece of clothing I’ve ever made, and definitely the first I’ve made with the presumption that I’d be wearing it regularly in situations requiring me to look normal and presentable. Ooh, pressure. But it is a challenge in its own way to make something that has to stand up against our RTW-trained aesthetic standards for street and workwear. I can see the appeal. Maybe Self-Stitched September isn’t out of the question after all!

I think I’m starting to understand the Simplicity problem (wacky drafting aside). As its name implies, Simplicity marketed itself in the 1940s and 1950s as the easiest and most accessible pattern company for novice seamstresses — its promotional film Pattern for Smartness, which I’ve featured before, emphasizes how easy Simplicity patterns are to use because the brainiacs at the company have done everything for you.

However, simplifying design and construction that much must involve sacrificing some quality in the finished product. Beautiful garments require finesse on the part of the maker — more finesse than can possibly be included on a single instruction sheet without printing it on monster A0-size paper. Therefore, a lot of vintage Simplicity patterns, because they favor easy-to-explain or apparently easy-to-master techniques, make it easy to sew a finished garment that looks homemade.

However, some of these “simplified” techniques actually involve false economies of effort. It’s easier to illustrate and explain how to make a “simple” straight waistband than a faced contour waistband, but I loathe and dread straight waistbands because they are never simple. The necessity of easing the garment into the waistband, for instance, often isn’t mentioned. You need to account for turn of cloth because it is physically impossible for three layers of fabric cut to the same length (waistband right and wrong sides + interfacing) to curve neatly around the waist without buckling or bulging. The traditional methods given for finishing the waistband (fold both seam allowances under and topstitch or handstitch to secure them) nearly always create too much bulk. And it is often fiendishly difficult to topstitch through multiple layers of fabric without creep, even using a walking foot. And on and on. I’m not sure this deceptive simplicity in patterns is helpful to those just learning to sew.

Anyway, despite the fact that I’m learning to understand Simplicity instead of just, you know, hating it, this will be my last. I really mean it this time!

Lessons learned:

• Apply a twill tape waistband for fitting. Any garment that hangs from the waist needs a stable waistband for accurate fitting. Sandra Betzina’s tip in Power Sewing about using twill tape for this is invaluable — I used a marker to draw the waistband “notches” on the twill tape and basted it just inside the seamline before trying on. This also gave me a better idea how much easing I’d have to do when applying the waistband to the garment (in this case, none).
• A method that looks simple on the instruction sheet may conceal hours of struggle. In this case, “topstitch waistband through all layers”.
• Avoid the Colombo Effect by resisting the temptation to tweak “just one more thing”. In my quest for the rare and novel sensation of snugly fitting trousers, I made one last impulsive fitting adjustment that nearly ruined the whole project. I took too much off the hips, distorting the fit and causing seam slippage, and had to let it out again. In the end it left permanent and visible flaws in the project. Ouch! Leave it alone!
• Use the best interfacing you can find. This may mean importing. You can have any interfacing you want in Britain as long as it’s Vilene (made with real paper!), which means I often come up empty-handed when searching for suitable interfacing for projects. So I didn’t have anything in my stash for interfacing the button and buttonhole plackets on these trousers (not mentioned in the instructions, by the way) and my buttonholes are already distorted. Waaah.
• Hemline brand anorak snaps are total crap. I had three people working on the problem and none of us could get the male half of the snaps to stay in the fabric. Avoid avoid avoid. In the end I used jeans buttons.

Coupons spent: 6 (2 less than a pair of store-bought pants!)

Coupons left: 41

The internet tells me this pattern dates from 1946. I can believe it. This is definitely a non-austerity blouse. The body is cut in three big sections: one front bodice and two back bodice with cut-on facings. I had sufficient yardage, but, you know… not all in one piece. Matters were complicated by my cutting one back bodice on the wrong side. (Oh, for basic spatial awareness!) But being the cool, collected make-do-and-mend whiz I am, I kept calm and carried on. I cut out a replacement back section in three parts (top, bottom, facing), pieced it, ran a mock seam (pintuck) across the other back section to make the two look symmetrical and proceeded as usual. The piecing is below the waist and I intend to wear this blouse with high-waisted trousers (in progress), so it won’t even show.

The sleeves were also supposed to be cut double, folded and attached, but to prevent bulk, I cut them single and hemmed them narrowly instead. I skipped shoulder pads. I put in ordinary machine buttonholes instead of bound buttonholes because life’s too short. Then I covered the buttons in the same red polycotton I used to trim the Bestway dress.

Silk headscarf (in my colors for this season!) found on the street during a night out in Soho. Coupon-free!

This pattern taught me the true worth of the fabric recommendations on pattern envelopes. The pattern came with no recommendations, so I only discovered after beginning the project that it was designed to work best with much lighter, drapier fabrics — a silk georgette or crepe would have worked wonderfully. The gathering at the neckline was far too bulky for the relatively heavy cotton pique I’d chosen. So I converted the gathering to darts using the, uh, “eyeball” method — stitching a long single dart at CF, then putting the blouse on my dress form and pinning radiating, shorter darts in more-or-less symmetrical pairs until the excess fabric had been absorbed.

The "eyeball" method is not endorsed by London College of Fashion.

It was probably also due to the fact that this pattern was meant to be made up in floaty, drapey fabric that it included so much design ease. Either that or it suffered from some seriously wacky sizing. I am a 34 bust and the pattern was marked for a 30, but when I came to measure it up I found I didn’t actually have to grade it at all — in fact, it was so roomy I had to take it in by 0.75″ at each side seam (enlarging the armholes by eye FTW). I’m trying to imagine an actual 30″ bust woman in this blouse as cut. I see her as a waif floundering helplessly in a sea of chiffon.

This is me looking wan and apprehensive because I am about to attend a beer festival and pig roast in James’s hometown and fear being glassed by an Essex girl tanked up on WKD Blue.

Lessons learned:

• Use the pattern envelope. Fabric recommendations (if there are any) are there for a reason. Pattern illustrations are not fantasy renderings but technical drawings, from which a lot of useful information about the design can be gleaned. Cutting layouts, in particular, are meticulously planned and can’t usually be improved on.
• It’s okay to be relaxed about your sewing sometimes. It’s only a top, not the mirror on the Hubble telescope. As usual, I fudged around with this top a lot during the wrong (construction) stages, but it looks okay from 3 feet away, so I’m not sweating it.
• Back button blouses rule. They give a nice clean look that invites accessorizing with brooches, scarves or jewelry. They provide back interest (rare and unusual these days). And the independent woman need not fear — they can be fastened and unfastened solo.

Tagged: 1940s, patterns, sewing ]]> http://cargocultcraft.com/2010/06/08/mccall-6569-button-back-blouse/feed/ 33 Susannah mccall 6569 http://cargocultcraft.com/2010/06/07/the-new-austerity/ http://cargocultcraft.com/2010/06/07/the-new-austerity/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:33:28 +0000 Susannah http://cargocultcraft.com/?p=1866 ]]> Fashion is not metaphysical. Researching WW2 austerity restrictions in Britain has really brought home to me how heavily it is influenced by practical constraints. What we think of as the defining style of an era doesn’t fall from the sky or arise from the unfettered brains of a few geniuses — it’s determined, at least in part, by what materials exist, how much labor is available and what it costs, the lifestyle of the people who wear it and the mood or mores of the culture it serves. Fashion may have its head in the clouds, but its feet are always planted firmly on the ground.

1940s Britain is one of the most clear-cut illustrations of this phenomenon. Design was all but dictated from Whitehall by austerity regulations (after all, there are only so many things you can do with 6 seams in a skirt). Voluminous silhouettes were impracticable, as they wasted manufacturers’ fabric rations and cut into their profit margins. Women’s dresses were styled to favor wool and rayon because the Nazis were squelching trade from cotton-growing countries. The war spread to Asia, rubber disappeared from the market and suddenly French knickers came in again (they buttoned up instead of using elastic). And so on.

The more I see of these chains of material cause and effect, the more I wonder whether we’re not living in the midst of a new austerity ourselves. Only this austerity isn’t brought about by war; it’s brought about by globalization, fiercer market competition, accelerating turnover, increased demand for growth and the race to the bottom dollar. In the name of the new austerity, material and labor costs must be cut, production runs must be increased, standardization must be encouraged and near-instant turnarounds must be facilitated so that retailers can keep selling us more, faster, for less. And although these austerities may help make the industry bigger, leaner and more profitable, our clothes are getting smaller, flimsier and shoddier.

From Dana Thomas’s Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster:

Luxury brands that were publicly traded had to answer to their shareholders, who wanted more of a return, more profits… How could luxury brands slash the production cost of their goods and maintain the same high level of quality? In fact, they couldn’t. There had to be concessions. In the name of profit — or, to put it more bluntly, greed — luxury brands began to compromise their integrity.

Some cut corners in ready-to-wear. “I remember being in fittings in the  mid-nineties where the CEO came in and said, ‘Women don’t really need linings’,” one former major luxury brand assistant told me. Soon that became the industry standard. “There’s a raw-edge cutting, which is deemed post-Japanese avant-garde from a design standpoint, but actually is an easy way to cut production costs,” another luxury brand design assistant explained to me. “You can imagine how much less time and money it takes to make a dress or jacket if you don’t have to sew the outer fabric and lining together, press them, fold them back on themselves, press them again and add another seam to keep it together. If you do a raw edge, you just cut the edge and it’s done.” Another Italian brand trimmed costs by cutting sleeves half an inch shorter. “When you get to a thousand, you see the savings,” the assistant explained.

Many luxury brands cut costs by using cheaper materials. Example: In 1992, I bought a pink sleeveless Prada cocktail dress that was made of iridescent cotton and silk faille, fully lined and finished beautifully. It cost $2,000, but it is couture quality and will last forever. Ten years later, I bought a pair of thin cotton-poplin cropped trousers at Prada for $500. I put them on, and the gentle passing of my foot ripped the hem out. I put my hand in my pocket, and it tore away from its seam. I squatted down to pick up my two-year-old, and the derriere split open. I hadn’t had those pants on ten minutes and they were literally falling apart at the seams. I mentioned this to a former Prada design assistant. “It’s the thread,” he told me. “It’s cheaper and breaks easily.” When I told him about my gorgeous dress from 1992 that was as solid as a Rolls, he nodded. “That was then,” he said with a sigh.

I’ve been mulling over my “new austerity” theory for a long time, but as a shopper only. It would be nice to get the perspective of someone inside the industry who’s seen the changes of the last 20 years. With that caveat, here are some exhibits for the prosecution.

Exhibit A: Two decades of “shrunken”, “skinny” and “cropped” styles — sleeves, pant legs, jackets, belts, jeans. Our clothing has been literally shrinking, receding from our ankles, wrists and natural waists and squeezing us tighter and tighter. It may just be coincidence, but I can’t help noticing that these styles use less fabric and thus cost less to make. Apart from “boho” skirts made of cheap tissue-thin cotton, when was the last time we saw a truly voluminous mainstream look?

It’s weird. Throughout human history, the rich have paraded their wealth by dressing as big, as bling and as flamboyantly as possible.

If you’re like 90% of my readers, the two decades that have just ended were an era of unprecedented wealth for your country. So why is the vocabulary of that era’s styles — “shrunken”, “skinny”, “cropped” — more appropriate to the inmates of prisons and workhouses?

Exhibit B: The disappearance of nuance in sizing. Remember when buying shoes meant having your feet measured and then being offered multiple sizes and even (surely I’m dreaming this) multiple widths? I can grudgingly understand why catering to various widths might not be feasible in an increasingly competitive market, but when did shoe manufacturers decide that even half-sizes were not worth their while? More importantly, why did we let them?

Exhibit C: When did real leather become a luxury so rare that it had to be universally simulated? Even goods marked “genuine leather” are more often than not Frankenleather, made up of low-grade hide scraps held together with glue, coated with a thin layer of hide and textured to look more like the real thing. (This still counts legally as leather.) I suspect this is why patent and other deliberately fake-looking leather surfaces appear on the high street season after season but finishes like suede are less often seen. Where is all the leather going?

Exhibit D: Thinner and thinner knits (like J. Crew’s Dream sweaters, for example). Yes, some of them do drape nicely and look lovely, but I’m freezing.

Exhibit E: The decline of tailored design. Many of the women’s styles I see on the street are fit-free — either so stretchy as to be form-fitting on anyone, or shapeless. I also see stretch used inappropriately to replace tailoring in classic women’s shirts and jackets, which doesn’t look so great. Designing RTW in tailored styles is not impossible — as late as the 1920s, ready-to-wear women’s clothes were sold in standard sizes with the expectation that purchasers would have them tailored to fit — but it is more complicated. Now styles that depend on tailoring for success seem to have fallen by the wayside and clothes are designed to “fit” (stretch) right off the rack. (The small amount of tailoring that still exists is woefully confused about its identity. Women’s suits in the UK are a trainwreck.)

The new austerity: is this really a thing that is happening or am I going crazy? I welcome your comments. What have you observed on the streets and in the shops where you live?

Here’s a silent film short of unknown date (looks postwar to me) showcasing austerity fashions by designer Peter French. I like how curiously astringent some of the models look, even when smiling. However, there are some interesting fashion ideas here — love the cascading pleat detail on that straight skirt, and now I just have to try elbow gloves with a button-back blouse.  I particularly like the playsuit/convertible skirt beach ensemble — the cape is perfect for huddling under on those summer days when lashing winds are whipping damp sand across your exposed flesh.

[Link]

Back in the days when designers could be bothered with plus sizes, in-store mannequins (i.e. models) were needed to show them off to customers. This wartime film follows a chic plus-size model with the delightfully gothic name of Mrs. Danvers through an average day.  Note to furriners: Mrs. Danvers weighs 182 lbs. or 82.5 kg. For some unknown reason, the British claim to understand human body weight only when given in “stones” (units of 14 lbs.) Honestly. Tell a Brit how much you weigh and they’ll pretend they have no idea what you mean.

[Link]

Attention ladies: the time has gone when smart women wear slacks in the house! That’s right, the war’s over — drop that spanner/scythe/anti-aircraft gun and get back to pouring tea, tinkling on the piano and making bright, inconsequential chitchat. “Day Wear, Gay Wear” features some admittedly very smart little outfits in enviable fabrics (chenille on a georgette background, anyone?).

[Link]

This 1941 film with the amusingly patronizing title “Ladies! Here is news for you!” features fashions from an America not yet at war. The timing is particularly cruel when you consider that less than a month after this fashion flash was released, the UK would enter the long dark night of clothing rationing, which was to last a brutal 8 years. Also, from the sound of the commentary, our narrator seems to have had a few himself. Eek!

[Link]

A great way to use up all those spare petticoats you’ve got lying around the house. Enjoy!

• Download: Re-Make Wrinkles (PDF, 1.14 MB)