Lana Lobell (Holdiay, 1962)

 Welcome to my last post for 2022!

 

 

 This isn't a picture of two dresses—this is a picture of a dress and overskirt.

TWO WONDERFUL DRESSES IN ONE!

YOU'LL GET 2 RAVISHING STYLES IN 1 BEAUTIFUL DRESS with our gayest, most glorious fashion for the holidays!  Wear the dress alone and look absolutely fabulous in glowing rayon and mylar metallic lamé.  For a glamorous change of pace, don the full skirt by zipping it on 'neath bias waistband... glimmering sheer nylon lace generates lots of excitement over the sheath beneath!  Sweet bow in front is a charming finishing touch.

Happy New Year everyone!

Ho, Ho, Ho! (The Delineator, December 1922)

 And a Merry Christmas to all my readers!

In honour of the day, I'm posting a picture of "Saint Nick in Fresh Gay Suit and Jingling Bells" from the Delineator of December 1922.  It is, of course, illustrating the pattern for a Santa Claus costume.

Not only is father in demand at home, but the various church and Sunday-school committees ask him to play the rôle of Santa Claus for their entertainments.  It is especially exasperating to drag out a dingy red suit, moth-eaten and four sizes too small, and foolish to wear it when one can make this suit so easily.  A cap and leggings are included with the coat, breeches or knickerbockers.

This costume seems to owe a bit more to folklore or ethnic dress than the modern versions of Santa Claus, and the recommended material for making it is red flannel rather than synthetic fibres.  The material trimming it is probably not real fur, but you never know!  Otherwise, this version of Santa Claus is completely recognisable today.

"Elegance", December 1964

 

ON OUR COVER: a look that took Paris by storm, the ultra-feminine pyjama suit.  Late day version in printed pure silk organza, Simon Masse, 15 gns.

The December 1964 issue of Elegance (Flair in Britain) devoted a number of pages to "Fashion After Dark" and a number of inches in their "Flair for living" column on the topic of women wearing pants:

... Smart leaders of society are already receiving their guests at formal dinner parties in pyjama suits...  But just because you are wearing the pants, don't throw femininity to the winds! If you want men to continue to treat you like a woman, you must behave like one.  Move like one.  If you wear the fluttering new evening pyjamas, don't fling yourself into tomboy attitudes.  Now, more than ever, you will need to move like a gazelle and sit as gracefully as your grandmother.  Look helpless and appealing and you'll find this combination of the female in fashions, stolen from the male, the most provocative thing that has happened in years.

"La Mode" (19 Décembre 1915)

Hems had been rising steadily since the beginning of the 1910s.  At first they only revealed the tips of the wearer's shoes, then they stealthily rose to her insteps, before clearing her ankles around the start of the First World War.  Here, just shy of eighteen months into the War they have risen to around the bottom of the wearer's calves—much to the shock of older and more conservative members of society!

This cover also illustrates, right at the end of 1915, an early version of the "war crinoline".  Unlike Victorian crinolines, these wide skirts weren't supported by a wire under-structure.  They remained fashionable through 1916 and most of 1917, before deflating towards the end of the war.

If these costumes look rather plainer than the fashions of 1910, it was because war shortages were starting to bite.  The editors of La Mode comment:

"La difficulté des approvisionnements on étoffes, passmenteries, dentelles impose forcemént des limites a l'imagination de nos grandes faiseuses."

["The difficulty of supplying fabrics, trimmings, lace, necessarily imposes limits on the imagination of our great creators." ]

Ladies' Treasury (December 1877)

 Christmas is nearly here, and once again it's time to get dressed up for parties.

At the left we have a dinner dress "of grey faille or satin... The princess form is perfectly plain in front, with the exception of the embroidery, which passes across the front, and is joined on one side with the side seam."  On the right is a "toilette for dinner or soiree in two shades of blue silk... Cuirass bodice and petticoat with train."

The Ladies' Treasury sold paper patterns for both these garments, for 3s. 7d. and 4s. 2d. respectively.  In other words, they were fairly expensive—but then again, these dresses would not have been worn by the average woman.

The Ladies Treasury also liked to keep abreast with the latest fashion news.  What was the latest gossip from Paris in December 1877?   Well it seems as if the House of Worth was making some innovations: 

"WORTH makes no more Princess robes!"  That is the greatest news of the day, and of more interest to the ladies than all the politics of the last four months.  What is the change of a Ministry, or even of a President, compared to the change of a sleeve?

The magazine hastens to reassure its readers that the Princess robe is still fashionable (in fact the dinner dress in the plate above is a fine example of the line).

I have said that the Princess robe is no longer to be worn.  This is nonsense, the robe and the Princess polonaise are still very popular, especially for walking.  Some are buttoned at the back, some in front, and some shawl-fashion, sideways, and across the figure.  There is but one rule— study your figure, and whatever best suits it adopt.  

100 Years Ago (The Delineator, December 1922)

 At last we reach December 1922, and the end of our look at the fashions of a hundred years ago.  To finish the year off, I'm going to look at some of the patterns for  "wearable gifts" advertised in the The Delineator.

At the left is "A gift which mother would appreciate—a becoming morning dress!"  On the right is a "gay apron of the slip-over type and in Russian effect."

On the left is another morning dress, "seasonable for any month; when one wears them on the street for marketing etc., a coat slipped over them is amply warm."  On the right, a "dainty gift" of a step-in combination.  "The chemise and drawers are embroidered in a delicate butterfly motif."

At the left, a "bright-colored fuzzy bathrobe" with a matching pair of soled slippers.  On the right, our model is holding "the newest kind of nightgown... with lattice trimming and which slips on over the head."

And lastly: embroidered boudoir caps!  Boudoir caps could be worn during the day to conceal undressed hair, or at night to protect one's hair while sleeping.  There was clearly room for them to be ornamental as well as useful!