A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

I've written a lot (a  lot ) about why it's wrong to put Chanel, and even Chanel plus Poiret, up on a pedestal as the pivot(s) of a sharp turning point in fashion, but I've only touched on Dior and the New Look once or twice. Just like the earlier narrative compresses time to juxtapose frothy Edwardian gowns against the short, narrow dresses of the mid-late 1920s, the centering of Christian Dior as the inventor of stereotypical 1950s fashion in 1947 is a big oversimplification. Women's fashion for much of the 1930s was streamlined: the overall emphasis was on a sleek line from shoulder to ankle. At the beginning of the decade, the tubular figure of the 1920s was still common, but within a few years dresses and skirts were being worn with waistbands and belts at the natural waist. By 1935, it was common for jackets to be made with built-up or padded shoulders, turning the silhouette into a long, slender carrot shape "Afternoon suit: solid-colored silk dress, t...

The housedress as we know it - a very informal garment to wear at home while lounging or working, loosely-fitted and easy to wash - seems to date to the early twentieth century. Previously, the term could be used to refer to more elaborate  and structured clothing, essentially what I'd label "day dress", made of less expensive fabric for the morning and more expensive fabric for the afternoon; around 1910 a shift in usage  occurred where people started to label much less formal wrappers, kimonos, and tea gowns as house dresses - although it most commonly seems to have been applied to plain wash dresses (ie, dresses that could be fully laundered). Basically, the nineteenth century housedress was something you were considered "dressed" in, and the twentieth century housedress was coming to be something that was more suitable for doing the morning housework, or just sitting around in. From the Dry Goods Reporter , July 1915 I forget how I first found out abou...

Modern Style is the title I gave to my Pinterest board intended to help me build up my wardrobe, which is kind of funny as most of the patterns are either vintage reprints or designed in a retro look. But the board is for everyday 21st century life, so. I started the board and the plan to revamp my dress in a retro style at a time when I thought I was going to have the perfect job for my skills and interests, and when that fell through I dropped the revamping. My part-time job didn't pay enough, and anyway you don't care too much about looking nice when you're icing cakes and bagging bread as quickly as possible - skirts, tights, and decent shoes are not what you want to wear in that situation. I did most of Simplicity 3673 while waiting to hear back on the job: I found out that I didn't get it before hemming it or putting in the zipper, so ... that's how it stayed for over a month. It wasn't until I got settled in and set up my sewing area and then worked fo...