What We Wore in '74: Pantsuits (Lana Lobell, Fall 1974)

 If blue denim jeans were the casual wear chosen by young people, polyester pantsuits were the garments of choice for slightly older women.  Though some venues still insisted on women wearing skirts, pants were becoming acceptable in more and more situations.

DRESSES are out, pantsuits are in at the White House, as the Arab oil embargo accomplished what Women's Lib could not.

To conserve fuel, temperatures at the White House, along with other federal buildings, have been lowered to 20 deg. C., so—President Nixon's expressed disdained of women in pants notwithstanding—the dress-up rule has been changed.

The Australian Women's Weekly, 2 January 1974 

NEWEST LOOKS ON TWO LEGS!

1. DOUBLE DOTS PEEK OUT on the cuffs of a solidtone jacket and from a whole shell of them underneath.  Sleeveless shell returns the favor with a sold-color neckline.  Jacket ties with a self belt in front; flare-leg pants pull on with elastic waist.  All polyester doubleknit.

2.  PAJAMA SET pairs a peplum top that ties in front over wide-legged pants that hang loose from an elastic waist... it's today's newest way to dress up!  Fantastically colorful print on a soft matte jersey of acetate-nylon washes beautifully by hand.

"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!

Australian Home Journal "Winter Fashions" (1960)

 

I was looking at my files the other day, and realised that if I wanted to I had enough materials from the 1960s to post about nothing else for the next ten years!  While I'm not going to go that far, I thought it was time I revisited the decade.  Here, then, are some illustrations from the Australian Home Journal's winter pattern catalogue from 1960.

The catalogue has a minimum of information about each pattern illustrated—you are given a one or two-word description of the garment, and the amount of material needed to to make up the pattern sized for a 36-inch bust.

Fortunately the patterns themselves would have contained more information, including an instruction sheet and some general hints on the back of the pattern envelope.  However, we can only guess at what kinds of materials would have been used to make up these patterns.  (Some of the dressmaking guides of the time suggest that some of the "new synthetics" were hard to sew, so it's possible that home dressmakers used a lot of natural fibres!)

There seems to be an equal mix of slim and bouffant skirts depicted here.  On the whole, fashions are more formal and more fitted than they would become later in the decade.

There are two evening "frocks" on this page (one very formal), but the others are accessorised in a way that hints they may have been worn to cocktail parties or to a restaurant.

... And some more smart "frocks" on the back page.  Though there are four models in the illustration, in fact only two patterns are depicted here.  Dressmakers had choices in how they adapted the patterns for their own use: different waistlines, different necklines and wide or slim skirts.