"Winter Fashions" 1958

The Australian Home Journal put out a summer and a winter catalogue each year from the early twentieth century until 1963.  They contained illustrations of the patterns (mostly for women and girls) available through their publication.

Up until the 1960s there were many smaller sewing pattern manufacturers around the world, most of them advertising their wares through magazines similar to the Australian Home Journal.  There was demand for their products as most women learned dressmaking skills as a matter of course, and it was cheaper to make one's own (or one's children's) clothes than to buy ready-to-wear.  By the mid-1960s, however, more women were working outside the home, leaving them with more money to buy clothes and less time to make them.  One by one, the smaller firms folded, leaving the bigger players like McCall's and Butterick standing.  The Australian Home Journal stopped advertising its own patterns around 1964.  For a short time it promoted McCall's patterns instead, then changed its focus from fashion and home sewing to interior decorating and home improvement in the late 1960s.  It finally ceased publishing in 1983.