"What the Parisienne is Wearing" (Woman's Journal, May 1939)

 I'm going to have one last fling with the frivolities of Haute Couture, before I settle down to the years of austerity, rationing and "make do and mend".  And it seems that the designers of 1939 were also having a last fling in the shadow of war.  Moma Clarke wrote in the May issue of Woman's Journal:

All the Paris dressmakers have "gone" womanly in the most feminine sense of the word... Schiaparelli announces that "women are ladies again".  One dares not reflect on the interim.  Better not...

It's one of the minor what-ifs of history: if there had been no Second World War, would fashion have given us a "New Look" a decade earlier than it did?

On to the designers—and we have some familiar names at this point.

Summer fashion plans have turned topsey-turvey. Instead of a plain suit with a figured blouse it is the other way about, and a gaily flowered tailor-made is the order of the going.  Jean Patou makes this delectable suit of brown and white figured crêpe with a white crêpe blouse, and the blue flowered ensemble of glazed cotton with a white piqué waistcoat.  Never have pastel shades been so loved.  A dress and coat matching in a pastel coloured crêpe is as chic as anything can be—especially when trimmed with scalloping, as in this lovely pastel blue dress and coat by Patou.

Patou died in 1936, but the house he founded lived on.  I have no information on who actually designed these dresses. 

New Fashions For You and Your Home (Singer, Fall-Winter 1938)

 Shown below is part of Vogue Pattern No. 8129, an evening dress "with a redingote over an independent slip-dress".  This is clearly the "slip dress"part of the design.  A small illustration of the "redingote", made up in lace, is inside the magazine.

Back in my very first post for this year I mentioned the introduction of the first backless evening dresses during World War I.  In they 1930s they were almost de rigueur in formal evening gowns, though they could be covered up by garments like the redingote included with this pattern.

All in all, there seems to have been quite a variety in evening fashions in 1938!  The Australian Home Journal reports:

In the evening we see princess dresses with drapings that stress the wearer's slenderness; further, there come dresses which cling till the knees and then start into greater width; some skirts are slit and somewhat cut away in front, trailing at the back in a line, and there are also reminiscences of the Empire, the Directoire and the 1889 style.

Australian Home Journal, May 1938

Hats For Summer (Le Petit Echo de la Mode, 13 juin 1937)

What smart outfit doesn't need a hat to complete it?

A few posts ago I showed you a typical hat from the beginning of the decade: close fitting and brimless.  These hats from 1937 seem to have gone to the opposite extreme, with wide brims and very shallow crowns.  (The crowns are so shallow that the artist depicting these hats makes it look as if the models have had the tops of their heads sliced off!)

The hats are worn tilted over one eye, and as we can see from the right-hand figure, held on by a band passing around the back of the head.

POUR L'ÉTÉ

Grande CAPELINE de paille fine, avec calotte basse ceinturée d'un ruban.  Bouquet de petite fleurs multicolores.

CANOTIER avec cache-peigne en fleurs de velours.  Voiletts posée un arrière.

[FOR SUMMER

Large straw hat with a low crown tied with a ribbon. Bouquet of small multicolored flowers.

Boater hat with a velvet floral comb cover. Veil draped at the back.]

Straw was the most popular material for summer hats, with felt being more commonly worn in winter.

 

Woman's Journal, March 1936

 In 1936, Woman's Journal introduced their Model Pattern Service.  The magazine boasted that 

Every design is now made up in fabric by an expert cutter and fitted on a living mannequin... Only when it is perfect in every detail is it made into a paper pattern...

 Of course this would be reflected in the price of the patterns! 

A TRIO FOR AFTERNOON

Finely pleated and stitched part of the way, are the front and back panels of the slate blue dress.  It has touches of white at the neck, slit front and belt.  The rust-red crêpe dress has unusual shaped inlets in the Raglan sleeves, outlined with black silk braid, while a waist length jabot, mongrammed and buttoned, gives a touch of distinction to the grass-green woollen dress.

Australian Home Journal, April 1935

 Here we have reached the mid-point of the 1930s.  It's worth stopping here to look back at how the fashions of the decade developed, and forward to see how they're progressing.

In 1930, fashions were ladylike and—dare I say it?—a little bit droopy, with skirts falling softly in godets from a yoke beneath the hips.  A couple of years later, and fashions start to get intensely feminine, with frills and ruffles decorating the necklines and shoulders of women's garments.  In 1935 we can see the start of a shift in styles, with skirts becoming straight and shoulders squared.  Frills haven't been entirely abandoned, but they have been moderated.  Eventually this silhouette would evolve into the square "military" look prevalent in World War II.

The Australian Home Journal, as usual, noticed these changes and communicated them to its readers:

Fashion's Dress Decrees
Figures are to be rather more statuesque, waists a little larger, less fussiness about the neck and shoulders and not so many detachable parts...

The Slim Sihouette
The line remains slim, long and simple, occasionally accentuating the bust with trimmings...

 More detailed and specific suggestions were made for different types of garment.

In Brief
Dark blouses worn with lighter coloured skirts are again shown in the season to come...

Fashion Pointers
Buttons of wood or metal are as fashionable as those covered with material...

A New Suit
You can make your last year's brown tweed suit into a perfectly new and up-to-date morning and country outfit if you add to it a bright green velveteen shirt-blouse with wide cuffs that go outside your coat.

However, in 1935, Hollywood was not only enjoying its Golden Age, but had become a major (if not THE major) source of fashion information for the general public.  Women wanted to know what the stars were wearing, both on and off the screen.  Australian Home Journal was willing to oblige.

Furs Too
Furs dyed to match your gown is one of the new fancies of designers, and Myrna Loy introduced one of the first ensembles of this type.
Her royal blue dinner gown, worn at at recent function, was trimmed with a large cape of royal blue fox.

Joan's Novelty Bag
An evening bag, eighteen inches long and twelve inches wide, has been designed for Joan Crawford's use in her new M-G-M starring production, "Forsaking All Others."
The bag is fashioned of black velvet.  It is an envelope style and features two three-inch cuffs of white pique on either side...

Mauve for the New Season
Most conspicuous amongst Hollywood's winter fashions is the choice of mauve material...  Appealing particularly, is a gown worn by Sylvia Sidney, star of Paramount's "Behold My Wife."  It is a dinner ensemble of wool and metal cloth.  The skirt is the new shade of violet or mauve with a decided bluish cast.  The top of the dress is of the same hue in metal cloth.  Huge epaulettes of beaver, dyed to the same tone, trim the little jacket.

This last is interesting, because Miss Sidney's gown would most certainly have been shown in black and white on the silver screen!  Some Hollywood publicist must have decided that women would be really interested in the details of colour and fabrics for this dress.

"Special Lingerie Issue" (Roma's Pictorial Fashions, March 1934)

 Sometimes I have to search for the material I post on this blog, sometimes I just stumble across it, and sometimes it comes as a gift!  With that, I want to thank the friend who gave me a big bundle of 1930s dressmaking magazines.  The magazine below is the first in the collection to be blogged, with many more to come.

Roma's calls this a "Special Lingerie Issue", and it does have several pages devoted to lingerie patterns... but it also dedicates a few pages in its colour spread to bridal fashions.  The lingerie is presented as part of the bride's trousseau, though I'm sure that many a non-bride tried making up the patterns.

The free patterns available with this issue of Roma's Pictorial Fashions are shown on the left side of the cover.  Working clockwise, they were for a nightdress, a petticoat, a chemise, closed knickers (at the botton of the cover), open knickers and a bra.  The pattern for the robe on the right was not included with the free patterns, but could be bought for the bargain price of ninepence.

Strangely, lingerie wasn't discussed in the magazine, but the editors do offer some advice on fashion in general.  It seems that in 1934 accessories and trimmings were the main points of interest:

Fashion is very quiet about its tube-like silhouette, but it is very talkative about accessories.  It is the way you trim your frock, the way you set on your scarf or your hat, that makes you a chic woman these days.

As to hats—they seem to change over-night!  A little difficult the new hats, one must admit, but veils come to the rescue.  The new small cap is a gay affair that is a cross between a soldier's forage cap and a revolutionary bonnet.  It just perches on the side of your well-set coiffure, while attached to it, and shooting out all round like a modern halo, is one of the new stiff horsehair veils of the same colour...

Scarves!  The idea of the moment is to have a quite plain, sleek little woollen frock, and at the high, round neck to put three or four tabs, one on either shoulder, one in front, one at the back—north, south, east and west!  Through these you slot your scarf—in as many different ways as there are days of the week...

When you are choosing any new dress or suit of the tailored or sports variety, do not forget to plan for lots of buttons and as many pockets as you can carry.  These are the right trimmings...

Once again, this ties into the theme of economising in hard times. It was obviously much cheaper to ring the changes with one dress and multiple scarves than to maintain an extensive wardrobe! 

"Woolly Jumpers" (Bestway no. 442, 1933)

 "Knitted jumpers are once again at the height of fashion," begins the introduction to Woolly Jumpers

"but with what a difference from the loose, shapeless models that were previously in vogue!  The newest and smartest models fit every bit as perfectly as garments made from cloth, and they are knitted in an endless variety of dainty and attractive stitches, forming the most original designs and patternings."

Legend has it, that home-knitting became a popular hobby after World War I, as women who spent the war "knitting socks for soldiers" sought a new use for their needles.  Over the course of the 1920s, knitted garments changed from being mainly sportswear to becoming fashionable daywear.  These woolly jumpers from Bestway fit the fashionable lines of the 1930s perfectly, skimming the figure but not squeezing or constraining it.

Since my last few posts touched on the need for economy in hard times, I should comment that knitting books like this one enabled skilled knitters to achieve a stylish look at a low cost!

The jumpers depicted on the cover are described, going clockwise from the top left:

A TRIUMPH IN KNITTING
A PERFECT LITTLE JUMPER WHICH SHOWS THE HEIGHTS THAT HAVE BEEN ATTAINED IN MODERN KNITTING, BOTH IN SHAPING AND IN PATTERN WEAVING

A JUMPER AND CAP TO MATCH

Very slimming and particularly smart is the effect of the stripes in this simple waisted jumper.  The pattern is knitted in herringbone fashion with points arranged at the centre back and front and on the top surface of the sleeves.  The jumper is most attractively worked in a three-colour scheme, three shades of the same tone being blended in the stripes.

SMART AND SO PRACTICAL

A JUMPER FOR EVERYDAY WEAR IN A LIGHT OPEN STITCH WITH A STRIPING TO MATCH THE NOVEL JABOT AT THE NECKLINE