Butterick Goes Hollywood ("The Delineator" 1933)

Between the wars readers of Vogue got their fashion inspiration from the great Paris couturiers.  More ordinary women, however, got their fashion ideas from Hollywood.  The big studios had workrooms and designers on contract to create glamorous fashions for their larger-than-life leading ladies, and audiences lapped it all up.

Clothing manufacturers would do knockoffs of film fashions (and clothes inspired by film fashions) but there was still room for home dressmakers who wanted to try and make that movie star look for themselves.  Thus we come to these licensed patterns issued by Butterick and appearing in issues of The Delineator in 1933.

Here we start in May 1933 with a costume worn by Katherine Hepburn in Christopher Strong:

The Delineator, May 1933

It was her first starring role, but the editors of The Delineator were more interested in the way she wore her clothes:

"DELINEATOR is especially interested in Katherine Hepburn because of the way she wears clothes.  She has that thing called chic.  There are only about ten motion picture actresses who have, by the way, and Miss Hepburn is one of the most chic of them all, and what she wears in a picture to-day has a good chance of being what Young America
is going to wear tomorrow."

Butterick reproduced the pattern for her "plaid-blouse frock" (Pattern 5156).  The original was designed by Howard Greer.  Also designed by Greer for the same movie was this "organdy evening gown" worn by Helen Chandler.  The Delineator assured home sewers that the pattern (no. 5154)  "didn't represent lots and lots of work for that lace is sewed along the edge only." 

The Delineator, May 1933

June saw The Delineator promoting fashions from a Bette Davis film: The Working Man.  This time the designer was Orry-Kelly, working for Warner Brothers.  The magazine was happy to assure its readers that "Butterick is the only pattern company which has the right to reproduce these Bette Davis costumes in patterns."

The Delineator, June 1933

She's seen in the still above wearing a plaid gingham bathing suit—reproduced below in pattern 5216:

We're assured that this suit is "fashion news, for the cotton suit is the suit of the summer—much, much smarter than the wool one."

The Delineator, June 1933

We're told that the "two-color" dress above (Pattern 5214 below)

"tends to reduce a "Boss" to a state where he will eat out of one's hand.  That dress might be just the thing for any girl who is about to ease in some advanced ideas on the subject of an extra week's vacation this summer—with pay."

The still below shows Bette Davis in a four-pocket frock that is "a grand dress to be fired in!"

The Delineator, June 1933

Reproduced below as Pattern 5204:

 

Lastly, an illustration for Pattern 5212.  We aren't shown it as worn by Bette Davis in The Working Man, but we are told it would make "the best possible "Saturday dress"".

The editors of The Delineator note that 

"the patterns differ from the "movie frocks" only in the sleeves—the two long-sleeved frocks are reproduced in the pattern sketches here with short sleeves to suit the season.  However, the patterns are made with long sleeves, too, so you can make the frocks either way."

August 1933 showed us costumes worn by Helen Twelvetrees in Disgraced, and designed by Travis Banton "who is Somebody among Hollywood designers."  (He is best known today for having designed Marlene Dietrich's costumes for her early American movies.)  But back to Miss Twelvetrees and Disgraced. It seems that the clothes were one of the main selling points of this movie:

The Delineator, August 1933

 "As Gay, the beautiful mannequin who causes all the turmoil in this picture, Miss Twelvetrees wears lots of smart things... And modelling being her job, you get plenty of time to look at them to your heart's content.  In fact, so pleased were we to have a chance to look at the clothes in this film calmly—without having them whisked in and out in the usual manner—that we're thinking of starting a movement for all future heroines to be cast as models—for our benefit."

 
 Above is one of the costumes reproduced in pattern 5297. 

"Its role in the picture is in navy blue twill and navy and white gingham.  A perfect combination, just that way, for a campus frock for the college-bound wardrobe this fall."

The Delineator, August 1933

The highlight of this picture was a wedding gown:

"Miss Twelvetrees wears a wedding gown that is our idea of a wedding gown.  It had us practically in a swoon.  All  that blond loveliness of course helped, but even a plainer girl, we imagine, would look pretty glamourous in such a gown.  It's a satin affair, with a yoke of fine net, and a tulle veil that is like a cape and quite the most lovely one we've seen in years of weddings on- and off-stage."

Here it is, reproduced in Butterick pattern 5299.

 There was no way the home sewers of 1933 could ever reproduce these fashion exactly—to begin with, the movies were made in black and white, and our seamstresses would be sewing in colour!  What's more, the studios of the time dressed the stars of their 'A' pictures in the best of materials: supporting actresses and leads in 'B' movies could wear cotton, rayon and rabbit fur, but the stars had to wear real silk, satin and mink.  It's unlikely that the budget of the average home dressmaker in the Depression years would run to such extravagances.  Still, anyone could dream, and it's nice to think of the women of the 1930s trying to live their movie star fantasies through their sewing machines.