"Winter Trends" (1970)

Confession time: I either love the fashions of the seventies or (more often) hate them.  Either way, my reaction is seldom indifference.  This example, from right at the beginning of the decade, falls squarely into my "love" category.

It certainly catches the eye!  The colours are vivid (and coordinated!) and the line is simple.  The bold geometric pattern on the jacket and skirt is striking but simple.  (This in contrast to many of the patterned styles prevalent in the seventies where a variety of different patterns in clashing colours were mixed together.)  All in all you could wear this outfit today—though you might want to change a few of the accessories!

A paragraph inside the magazine tells us that this was part of "the Italian collections", but alas, it doesn't name the designer.

Found Online: "Ponds" catalogues, 1937-1941

"Ponds" was a mail-order business that manufactured and sold women's clothing in Brisbane during  the 1930s and 1940s.  The State Library of Queensland has digitised a handful of their catalogues and put them online.  Taken together they are a wonderful illlustration of what Miss and Mrs Middle Australia were wearing on the edge of World War II.

But why waste time standing here chatting?  On with the main event:

Summer 1937: "Spring is upon us and swings into its stride with a host of new fashions that make their bow—this motion is passed and seconded by the new freedom of these glorious Swing Dresses, created in lovely new materials by Ponds' clever designers."

Winter 1938: "A great deal has been written about "BUYING DIRECT", by us and by others, and as this is our 14th Style Book of Fashions,it isn't easy to find attractive new phrases. On second thoughts it isn't very important either, because thousands of satisfied customers buy again, and again, from each new catalogue"...

Summer 1939: "A change has come over fashions. Suddenly all clothes look young. Suddenly all people look younger. "Little-girl" dresses are therefore the rage and heartbreaking on the "right" girl."

Summer 1941: "Clothes are not yet rationed in Australia but the combined effect of shipping losses, quotas, import restrictions, shortage of fast colour dyes, Defence Department needs, and such like all make for a shortage of popular materials. To overcome that shortage Ponds have used every endeavour; and the beauty of the frocks advertised here speaks for itself."  

"French Fashions Seen Through An Englishman's Eyes" (1947)

Every once in a while, towards the middle of last century, fashion magazines would stop to enquire, "What do men think about the latest women's styles"?  Here, for the enlightenment of its mostly female readership, is the version published in the November 1947 issue of Woman and Beauty.  (Drawings by Gruau.)

Top: Balmain.  Bottom: Christian Dior.

The  Paris collections were shown after the London ones, and a member of our fashion staff who was over there invited tall, dark, attractive Peter Jordon to  view them with her.  Director of a French news agency, he has been a journalist practically since the cradle.  Like most Englishmen he has never seen a dress show and found the first impact a little dazzling.

Hat by Christian Dior: Cocktail suit by Jacques Fath.

 However, he rallied swiftly and shook us by alleging that the figures of the professional mannequins weren't normal and that he much preferred Mr Cochran's Young Ladies!⃰  He thinks the latest Paris fashions beautiful, if a trifle too exotic for English life today.  Here are the ones he liked and why.

(⃰Mr Cochran's Young Ladies—a popular troupe of chorus girls at the time.)

Hat by Legroux: Suit by Jean Dessès.

So there we have it—the New Look at its newest and most shocking, and one man's reaction to it.

These types of articles continued to be published until the 1970s  (I own a splendid example where The Man on the Street is asked what he thinks of the midi-skirt!) but they faded out sometime in that decade.  I'll leave you to decide whether it was because fashion became so fractured that this kind of question became meaningless,  or because Women's Lib meant that women no longer cared what men in general thought about their clothes!

Advertisements for Myer (1983)

Myer was (and still is) a department store based in Melbourne and with branches all around Australia.  I found these advertisements for the store in a 1983 issue of Vogue Australia.  

Some of these outfits obviously owe a debt to the New Romantics.  The picture above shows the model dressed like a cross between a pirate or a cossack.

Speaking as someone who was around in 1983, the hair and makeup on these models is clearly exaggerated.   You would have been unlikely to encounter anyone quite like this on the streets—though you might have found someone trying to emulate these looks in a nightclub or at an expensive party.

Some slightly more subdued clothes here...

... And some late-70s, early 80s classics.

The thing to note about all these clothes is they weren't cheap.  (Who takes out full page advertisements for cheap clothes in Vogue?)  They were created in France and Germany and imported by Myer to Australia.  The potential buyers of these fashions would have been well-to-do women, almost certainly a bit older and a bit more conservative than the models wearing them in these ads!