By Michelle Studer

It’s no big secret that fashion recycles its old trends. Ask any fashion slave, and she’ll be happy to confirm that the styles are cyclical. Currently, this fashion practice seems to be taking place more than ever. Recent fashion is taking its clothing cues from numerous 20th century styles, running the gamut from the 1950s through the 1980s. What does this mean for us Baby Boomers? Whether you once wished you were old enough to be a Beatnik or a teenybopper, or as a teenager turned into a hippie or a Mod, you’ll easily spot some of the fashion elements from your formative years in today’s trends. Still have a pair of cigarette pants stashed away? Go find them, because they are today’s skinny jeans. Same goes for 1960s-era pyramid coats, A-line shift dresses, and pea coats.

If tracksuits, tweeds or fringed boots from the 1970s were more your style, you’re in luck. Those are back in, too. You might also want to look through your closet for 1970s granny skirts, peasant blouses, and anything resembling the hippie look. It’s all the rage again, only now it’s called bohemian style. Feel silly wearing this look? Give it to your trendy daughter in college, she’ll know what to do with it.
All of this fashion “borrowing” from past trends may seem to cast current style makers in a lazy light, but it’s been common practice for ages. The hippie and Mod looks of the 1960s borrowed elements from the 1920s flapper style. The 1980s “big shoulders” look was a throwback to the 1940s.

Yes, the term for hip huggers is now low-rise jeans and Mohawks became faux-hawks, but everyone knows they come from our generation. Remember what your mother said? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Baby Boomers, consider yourselves complimented.

Have something to add to this story? Continue your trip down memory at Boomer Yearbook, a social networking site connecting the Baby Boomer generation. Share your thoughts, rediscover old friends, or expand your mind with brain games provided by clinical psychologist Dr. Karen Turner. Join today to discover the many ways we are helping Boomers connect for fun and profit!

So, I splashed out big time on two of those 50’s dresses from Daddy-O’s.

I decided on these two-

It seems navy is the new black for me right now, I really like it for the first time in ages, in fact, I realised that I have no cardigans or jumpers to go with navy really, I’ve lived in black for tooooo long!

The postage from the US to the U.K (had to get them posted to the same address as my creditcard is registered to for security reasons) is 46$ for 7-10 day delivery, pretty steep, but I’m so used to Swedish postage prices that it seems OK to me now. All in it’s going to cost me about 250$ for both dresses so with the Dollar still so weak it work out as about £140 or 1690SEK…..not too bad when I love,love,love them!

-voice of reason ”oh God, I can’t really afford these, oops!”

The film ‘The Edge Of Love’ is released in Australia this week and our shops are about to be flooded with pretty tea dresses in time for spring. And I, for one, can not wait! I’ll always have a little inner nanna!

I found some GORGEOUS dresses on a website for UK store Oasis only to discover they don’t ship overseas. Oh I could just cry, but that’s ok. Oasis do the dress featured at the top of this post. I adore the bow details and the fabric! They also do these:

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I think some adjustments to these patterns will do just the trick. I plan to have a whole new wardrobe by the time it’s warm

Butterick B6582

~~ Fancy another cuppa? ~~

History of the tea dress and how to wear it

Raise a cup of Earl Grey to the tea dress

Top 10 Tea Dresses

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:

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Meet the Silent Three- schoolgirl comic book heroes who appeared in their own strip in the story paper “The Schoolfriend” which ran from about 1950 to 1963. And, if this Advance pattern from around 1940 didn’t pre-date the Silent Three, I would swear that their subtle style (because of course no one will notice you sneaking around and breaking into houses in a floor length hooded robe and black mask) was a major inspiration for it:

I love old bathing suit patterns, and the suit on this one is quite cute (not sure about the Mrs Mop headwear) but the beach coat looks unfortunately rather like something one of the Silent Three would wear to go undercover at the beach…

Click here to view a full episode of the Silent Three’s daring exploits here at Gateway Monthly.

]]> http://kitchenretro.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/the-grandest-chicken-in-the-easter-parade/ Thu, 01 May 2008 13:14:42 +0000 Lidian http://kitchenretro.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/the-grandest-chicken-in-the-easter-parade/

It’s a little late for Easter-themed posts, but how could I pass up the chance to share this 1947 ad with you? It is from the New York Times. The ads were not all that amusing, mostly - it being the Times and all.

This is what ladies wanted to get from their beaux at Easter. The jeweled Easter egg with It’s You perfume is at the top, and would set a guy back $6.50; at the bottom is a lovely Acetate Corsage Box with Violet Essence for an even $5.

I’ll tell you what I would have liked to get - and it’s the most expensive thing, too ($8.50)! Check out the Satin Chicken (containing Blue Grass sachet) and the jeweled egg with the It’s You perfume in it. The chicken appears to be nesting on a plastic box. Egg’s not going to hatch like that. But who cares? A satin chicken  - I love it. I wish they still made them. I’d be hinting around, you know. Even the hinting would make me laugh.

This is just to get the party started - I have a couple more posts for today: a meme and a vintage show-and-tell. So I’ll be back. Have to hunt down something to show you. Hopefully something almost as great as a vintage satin chicken!

It must be the “DOUBLE lemon rinse” that puts the heartbreak in the blonde. Although I think the idea is that she’s supposed to make the menfolk unhappy, not turn the heartbreak inward. That’s the wrong message to give the readers.

She doesn’t look all that happy, does she? Maybe it’s the housecoat that’s worrying her. That’s not really very glam. And wartime or not, the ads for hair and makeup products were usually, well, very glam indeed. This is supposed to be an “after” pic, isn’t it?

This ambiguous ad is from a 1940s British women’s magazine, for Snowfire Shampoo. It does a lot for you (don’t they all): it’s a root-stimulating, brightening, burnishing treat for your dull horrid lifeless hair. And if you throw in the Tinted Wave Set you can have enchanting - um, tinted waves. Nothing wrong with that!

But why does it come in Henna for dark hair as well? Do the dark-haired Snowfire users also become heart-breaking blondes? Heart-breaking brunettes? Do the brunettes do something else altogether? Maybe they hypnotize the men instead. That’d be good.

If you’re brownish blonde, like me - what they used to call a California blonde in the forties (i.e. you had light brown hair with sun-lightened bits) - maybe you could do both! The power of hypnosis and heart-breaking beauty. I’d like that.

I still wish the model looked a little perkier though. Since she seems to have used both the Snowfire shampoo AND the Tinted Wave Set. Man, she ought to be levitating and laughing hysterically with all that  on her head!

They roam the ice skating rinks of local parks, smirking and taunting. They compare the skin of their so-called friend to a prune (it wouldn’t make it any nicer even if they did say, as we do now ‘dried plum’ - let’s call a prune a prune!). 

They’re there when you are having “cocktails in a tower” (perhaps they lock you up in one like a pruny Rapunzel). And if they relent and finally take you out for a 4 am hamburger - well, golly, they just can’t stop talking about your horrible dry scaly flaky skin.

Oh, just lend her some of your Tussy Special Night Cream, you fiends!

And then she can become one of you and join your dark forces of evil…

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…)

McCall’s have always been a bit of an innovator in the pattern world. (Although I don’t own a single modern McCall’s pattern- they’re all too fearsomely hip for me- and now even American actress Hilary Duff has a line of patterns for them. Perhaps when they bring out the Cate Blanchett line I might rethink.) I believe it was McCall’s who were the first to introduce the “printo gravure”pattern, or a pattern in which all the pieces were marked out on the paper, rather than being precut blank pieces with all manner of confusing holes punched out to indicate the grainline, darts and every other marking under the sun. I could be wrong, but their patterns were probably the first to use colour on the envelope illustration in the 1920s. I could also be wrong (I’m wrong about a lot of things) but I think they were also the first to use live models and photography on their pattern envelopes in the 1950s.

But I think this pattern shows another more subtle first (this particular pattern may not have been the very first, but it’s a good example of it), another example of McCall pushing the boundaries of fashion illustration back an inch or two: use of a background setting. Yes, these models actually have a place to wear their clothes, rather than white space, and it actually makes the clothes live by putting them in a context. Like all good marketing, it’s appeal is aspirational. Not only could you make this dress and wear spotless white gloves and look impossibly well groomed with very shiny hair, but that you could also do so in the kind of establishment that has white linen tablecloths, gentle palms, a sense of space between tables and an entrance behind a sweeping silk curtain. Although sadly it would still be possible to run across some hussy wearing the same dress.

Some things will never change.