"Petticoat", 26th March 1966

 A friend sent me this Swinging Sixties issue of Petticoat.  Judging by the contents, it was aimed at girls between the ages of 16 and 21.  

It also seemed to make a practice of featuring amateur models in its pages: "Loads and loads of pretty Petticoat girls all eager to try their hand at modelling... and making a highly successful job of it."  Well, that was one way of cutting costs, I suppose.  The cover of this issue features "Ruth Stern, 18 years old and a secretary in a large accountancy firm".   In her profile she states "I sometimes have very heated discussions with Lincoln [her boyfriend] and my friends about big issues like racialism, wars and sometimes," she grinned, "equality for women!"

Next to her is seventeen-year old Christine Browne, who is still at school: "I want to work in a research laboratory... I'm very interested in science, it's my best subject at school," and she spends her evenings listening to folk music records.  

Now to the clothes...

Petticoat girls suit their fashion sense in two outfits by Wallis.  The pale blue wool Ungaro-inspired suit... the red-edged-in-white suit... flip-top berets by Kangol...

"To Freida..." (1927)

 This is literally a "found photograph"—I found it wedged between the pages of a secondhand book.  (The book was published in 1906, so for all I know it has been sitting there nearly 100 years!)

Best of all from my point of view, is the fact that the photo has an inscription on the back:

To Freida

With Love from

Rita & Eileen

1927

so I can date it exactly.

Though our two sitters, "Rita" and "Eileen", aren't particularly young or stylish, they are wearing fashionable evening dress from 1927.   They've had their hair bobbed, and adopted the dropped waistline of the twenties.  The sitter on the left is wearing a long string of beads (a very 1920s touch!)   The rosette-like ornaments worn on their left shoulders was an up-to-the-minute fad in 1927—as you can see from the pattern illustrations in this 1927 issue of McCall's.

"Wool" (Australian Home Journal, April 1948)

As Australian recovered in the postwar years, the Australian Home Journal was there to offer free dress patterns and fashion advice.  If the magazine was to be believed, wool was the fabric to be wearing in April 1948.

Wool Sweaters
It is but a step from wool jersey to knitwear and, with a considerable increase in supplies recently, pure wool sweaters in all colours of the rainbow have pride of place in many shops.  However, first favourite is black, often heavily embroidered with wool, like one which had a yoke worked in a closely-packed floral design in mauve.

Wool in Paris Theatres
Wool takes the stage in Paris theatres, for leading actresses are wearing wool frocks created by famous designers at present, states a special message to the Australian Wool Board.  Maggy Rouff, who dresses many stars, has just designed a frock in lime-green wool for Simone Renaud to wear in "Liberte Provisoire", one of the successful stage hits of the moment.  Made with ruched-up elbow-length sleeves, it has a novel hipline belt which comes from a low line at the back to edge slanting hip pockts and finally buckle in front at the natural waistline.

From France
Revelling in the return of fine woollens, French milliners are using them lavishly for draping turbans and even to cover brimmed shapes, while wool jerseys are being stretched or draped into beret and muffin toque shapes to match winter suits and coats.

Jersey Frocks
Perfect styling in jersey frocks depends on simplicity, and Pierre Balmain shows many models with slim skirts, perhaps with a hint of back interest.

Of course the wool industry was the mainstay of the Australian economy at the time, so perhaps the Australian Home Journal had a patriotic interest in ensuring that women used as much wool as possible!

Australia's Lost Department Stores VIII: Boans (Spring-Summer 1958-59)

 Most of the department stores I've discussed so far have been clustered in the big cities of the east coast, but now I'm heading to the city of Perth in the far west of Australia.  Western Australia is separated from the rest of the country by immense stretches of desert and Perth lies over 2,131 kilometres from Adelaide, the nearest capital city.  However the story of Boans is fairly typical for an Australian department store.  It begins in 1895 when Harry Boans arrived in Perth and set up a "grand palace of drapery".

(The cover depicts Boans's new—in 1958—suburban store at Cannington:

Boans Waverley, with its 35,000 square feet of space containing 80 departments, will be open from 8.35 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. on weekdays, and from 8.35 a.m. to noon on Saturday.

Facilities included free parking, a playground, a hairdresser, a subscription library, dry cleaning, shoe repair and a chiropodist!)

What We Wore in '74: Denim Jeans (Winns, Autumn-Winter 1974)

When I wake up in the morning light
I pull on my jeans and I feel all right
I pull my blue jeans on
I pull my old blue jeans on (cha, cha)

David Dundas released this song in 1976, but it's just as appropriate for 1974 (or for that matter, 1978).  For the young, the 1970s was truly the Age of  (Blue) Denim. 

D. Wide denim jeans with banded top, loops, contrast stitching piping on side seams, back-yoke and slanted pockets.  Comes in navy.

B. A splash of embroidery on brushed denim jeans, give a whole new look.  Fly front, slotted waistline, finish the pants line.

In 1974, fashionably cut jeans were relatively high in the waist, fitting tightly from the buttocks to the knees, and from the knees down, flared.  Ideally they were somewhat faded.  Teens and twenty-somethings whose new jeans weren't tight or faded enough often took matters into their own hands and "customised" them by wearing them in the bath until they shrank to fit!