Mrs Depew's patterns

I am sure many of you have already heard about Mrs Deprew Vintage & Notions at Etsy. I have known about her for some time, but only recently bought a few patters, and though I haven’t really finished anything, I’m delighted enough to point the store out for you. Apart from vintage patterns and a few notions, like a reproduction bra buckle.

Hats from NK

Nordiska Kompaniet, or NK, was Swedens most exclusive department store, probably still is though it nowadays is more of an exclusive mall instead and to me it has lost a lot of the charm it had in my childhood. There are still some excellent stores though, especially when it comes to perfume. A lot of fashion has been sold there over the years and the museum Nordiska has many photographs that depict what was among the more fashionable in Sweden during the 30's and 40's. Recently i have been on a hat search binge in their archives and this is what i pulled up:


1936

Source: digitaltmuseum.se via Elisa on Pinterest

A review on Pleated beret with accent trim

The Pattern
I bought the pattern for the 1930's Pleated beret with accent trim as a PDF-pattern from Kalliedesigns at Etsy. When writing this the cost was $4.25. It was mailed to me very promptly, well within the time limit of 24 hours. The pattern is a copy of an old one, and is a bit sloppily executed, I'm sorry to say. The lines are broad and uneven and you need to redraw them to get an even shape. That is, however, not difficult to do. The pattern also contains 2 pages of sewing instructions. I find those easy to follow, but I suspect that you might find it a bit more difficult if you are unused to sewing.

Josephine Baker

I just re-read one of my childhood favourites, The Rainbow-children (1957). It’s a wonderful book and I think it’s rather odd that it isn’t a classic. The story is simple, the little hen Kot-Kot is black, when the other hens are white, and she has also lost an eye, which she hides with a piece of cloth. The other hens are very mean to her and don’t allow her inside the henhouse. Kot-Kot decides that she can’t be happy until she finds her missing eye and sets out in the world, asking everyone she meets to help her. Almost everyone is very kind to her, but not until she reach a wonderful castle and meets the rainbow-children, a group of siblings that comes from all over the world, does she realize that she doesn’t need to find her eye- if she accept who she is and that people loves her for that, she can be very happy anyway. She removes her cloth, stays at the castle and raises a brood of rainbow-coloured chickens.

Underneath it all- a few words about panties

After girdles and bras I think it’s time to talk a bit about underpants. Or panties, knickers, briefs, drawers- there’s a Swedish idiom that say that a beloved child has many names, and that’s seems to be true for the most intimate of all undergarments. It’s also a rather new one. Knickers have been worn under gowns earlier, but not until the 19th century it became more common. At the beginning of the 20th century, underpants were voluminous things that reached at least to the knees.

Briefly about bras

I talked about bras in the corset and girdles posts, but it’s a garment that deserves a post on its own. Breast supports of some kind have probably been around since people started to wear clothes. There is a Roman mosaic that depicts exercising girls clad in something that looks quite a lot like a modern bikini.

Girdles and corsets and the right shape, oh my

Let’s stay in the same time frame as in the post about fashionable figures, the early 20th century to the 1950’s, but remove the clothes and see what was worn underneath. The origins of corsets or stays are very hazy, the first known examples dates to around 1600, but those are already fully developed garments, two layers of fabric stiffened with reeds or whalebone. A piece of clothing designed to change the female body so it conforms to the ideals of the time. And ideals change- just during the first decades of the 20th century it went from super curvy, to super straight.

50 years of fashionable female figures

Even if this blog is about the 1940’s you may have notice that I sometimes go outside the decade. Nothing exists in a vacuum and sometimes I feel the need to reach outside to give a little perspective. Something it’s much too easy to look at something and isolate it from the before and after, but I think it’s important to see the larger picture. The forties isn’t my sole interest either, even if it’s a big one. This post began as a tie in after my posts on the ideal body shape, found here and here , but if grow to include 50 years of body ideal. I hope you will find it interesting and not distracting.




Consider these two pictures, taken about 50 years apart and still, the figures of the both women are not that different. Granted, both Camille Clifford and Jayne Mansfield had exaggerated figures, even for their times, but even so they represent the ideal of the time. The Edwardians beauty is all curves, a youthful, but mature woman with ample, but rather low bosom, a narrow waist and wide hips. Miss Mansfield’s breasts are placed higher, but she is also very curvy. If you didn’t know more about the fashion changes of the 20th century, it would be easy enough to think that this body ideal went on interrupted for 50 years. I think we all know that this is not the case.

Lord Peter Wimsey

A general feeling of being under the weather evolved into a nasty cold last week. Combine that with me trying to finish an 18th century ball gown until October 22 and you have the reason for the no posting. I’ll try to do better, butI may post a little more sporadically until the gown is done. I hate deadlines and try not to have them, but I have only myself to blame.

I hope you don’t mind if I fall back into a book post today. I’m currently re-reading the books about my favourite sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a number of novels and short stories about him between 1923-1940 and if you want witty and smart crime novels in an Art Deco setting, then you should read this.

Brox Sisters

Thanks to one of my workmates who has a wonderful knack of finding old music on YouTube (He once spent a whole Saturday when we worked playing only different versions of Plaisir D’Amour), I discovered an American group called Brox Sisters, who had their heyday in the 20’s and 30’s. Working first on Broadway and later in Hollywood, evidently doing a good job in both places. They were sisters, Bobbe, Lorayne and Patricia, though they were born Josephine, Eunice and Kathleen Brock. They last sung together in 1939, but I feel they can fit into this blog anyway, as people in the 40’s didn’t stop listening to music just because it was recorded in another decade.

"Exotic" beauties

The good old days weren’t always so good. Making a bid for fame when your ethnicity wasn’t white meant less screen time, stereotypical portrayals and losing roles to white actresses. Lena Horne lost to Ava Gardner in Show Boat in 1951 and Anna may Wong to Luise Rainer in The Good Earth in 1937. And some, like Merle Oberon, hushed down their heritage to ensure a better career. This post are for these beautiful and talented women. I hope you don’t mind if I reach back a little- some pictures are from the 1920’s and 30’s.

The ideal movie star

In one of my books there is a little list on various movie stars and their height, measurements and, sometimes, weight. It’s always interesting to see how a beautiful body was perceived during different time periods. The ideal was a slim body, but the almost skeletal figure that you can sometimes see on our modern movie stars are nowhere to be seen. No overly athletic bodies either, or the emphasis on the bust that you can see in the fifties. Though the book is from 1946, many of the movie stars had they heyday in the 30’s, but I don’t think the ideals changed very dramatically. As it is a Swedish list, measurements are in centimeters and weight in kilograms.