Hey Viv! Need a Crinoline?

Theresa sent me this link to the Hey Viv! store, where you can buy yourself a brand new 50s-style crinoline, for all your swishy-skirt needs. They're about $27, not including shipping, and also come in black, pink, and red.

I'm not a big crinoline-wearer myself -- I have enough trouble getting in and out of cars as it is -- but I'm tempted to get one. Just for parties, I'm telling myself, although I know if I had one I'm sure I'd try to wear it every day, like a six-old-girl with brand-new patent maryjanes.

I think some of you have sent me links to other retro-undergarmenty places in the past, links I have carefully filed, never to see again. If you feel generous, leave them in the comments?

Hints for actually managing the wearing of a crinoline are welcome, too.

Somebody Thinks I Think, I Think

Julie (of the blog High Fiber Content) has nominated me for the Thinking Blogger Award! Which, whoa.

In order to claim my award, I have to link to five blogs that make me think. Which, upon reflection, was harder to do than I thought it would be: I really ONLY read blogs that make me think, because I prefer thinking to almost any other form of activity. (Except, perhaps, roller-skating.)

Anyway, here are the five blogs that routinely make me think HARD, in alphabetical order:

Fashion Incubator. I love to read Kathleen's blog, because I like to know what goes on behind the curtain of the garment industry, and she pulls it all the way back.

I Blame the Patriarchy. Twisty is helping me try to reduce my complicity in the patriarchial system. Somewhat. I'm working on it.

Jane In Progress. Again, another blog that pulls back the curtain, this time on television. I love to see how things work with their cunning gears and wires! And Jane shows how scripts work. And jokes. And lunch. Delish.

Raw Thought (from Aaron Swartz). Is it cheating to nominate a blog with "thought" right in its title for a Thinking Blogger award?

Think Denk. I know NOTHING about classical music, and in the real 'nothing' sense, not the "I know NOTH-ink!" Hogan's Heroes Schultz sense. But when I read this blog I can sometimes see things swimming toward me out of the fog.

Thank you, Julie, for nominating me!

Any Chinese Translation Help?

Dress A Day reader Erma's husband is a non-native speaker of Chinese and a linguistics professor, and he has a dress-related translation question. Does anyone know the meaning of the Chinese character bai3 (摆)? It's used in compounds such as qun2bai3 (裙摆), where qun2 means skirt. It was used in a sentence which translates to something like "Under the rustling of the evening breeze, the entire bai3 of the skirt was billowing".

The dictionary defines bai3 as "hem or lower part". But a native speaker told Erma's husband that bai3 refers to width -- a narrow skirt has a "small bai3" and a wide skirt has a "big bai3".

Anyone have some input? I have to say, if we figure this one out, I'm going to steal that word into English and use it to refer to this concept all the time. "I only wear skirts with big bai," I'll say.

[The image is an artwork called "Memory Dress" by Yu Hong.]

Whatta dress!

This dress is actually made of awesome, is it not? It's from Jen, at MOMSPatterns -- you know Jen, her ad's right there on the right (your right, my left, as I face you through the computer).

If this weren't a B32, you'd never see it here, as I would be jealously guarding the auction like some kind of medieval guardy thing, waiting for my bid to go through at the very last second. But since it's on the small side, I'm happy to share it with you. Go! And if you win it, make it IMMEDIATELY, and send me a picture, please.

Of course, if you're not on the small side, Jen has something for you too -- in fact, she's running a special sale! MOMSPatterns is having a Weekend Spring Cleaning Sale and A Dress A Day readers get 1st dibs on more than 1,000 vintage sewing patterns ...

The sale starts today [Thursday] and ENDS at midnight Sunday, April 29, 2007. Use coupon code 'springcleaning30' to save 30% off of ANY sized order. Don't forget that Jen ships for free to the US & Canada with the purchase of 5 or more patterns ...

That panel-ly thing on the side of the skirt, up there? Actually BUTTONS ON. For extra swoosh. Man, I wish this was in my size!

Dvorak or QWERTY?

Angela at Dorothea's Closet sent me this -- it's not for sale, though, so put your credit cards away. She bought it to sell and had to keep it (that's one of the reasons I'd never be a good vintage store proprietor: I'd keep too much)!

Angela said her four-year-old daughter told her it looked like the dress had "buttons" -- she meant "keyboard keys". (I remember when my son was four; he was obsessed with pushing buttons. We spent a lot of time in elevators that were making unscheduled stops at all floors.) And, yes, don't they look like keyboards?

Isn't this a great dress? I'm happy just knowing it exists. I'm even happier knowing it has pockets:




Pockets that LACE UP, no less!

Overuse of Flash Animation is Probably Not the Main Reason the GAP is Going Down The Tubes, But It Doesn't Help, Either

I saw this Doo.Ri for GAP dress in an actual GAP store when I was in NYC, and I was tremendously impressed -- it was even cute on the hanger, and I loved the versatility of it -- you could belt it with any number of scarves and ties and whatnot, wear it as a white dress all summer, and then (when it got grimy, as it eventually would) dye it black and wear it all NEXT summer. Genius!

So I went to the GAP site to check it out and the GAP site is now a horrific swirling mess of crappy Flash animations. You can't click anywhere, you can't find anything, it's all five second movies by wannabe web auteurs. I hate hate hate it. Catch me plunking down my money at a site like that. And to add insult to animation, the dress isn't even available online!

So if you're walking by a GAP anyway (check their site for the stores that even HAVE this "Design" line, not all of them do) and feel like checking for this dress, it's probably worth it -- it's only $88. Otherwise, feel free to use my irritation at the complete suck of the GAP website as an excuse not to hand them any of your money.

Every Dress Tells (or Sometimes Reads) a Story

Robin sent me this adorable dress, which is being listed (by fandon) on eBay and ends TODAY so scoot scoot if you want it.

Here's the full dress:




I was actually thinking about dresses and stories yesterday, because Friday I was at the GEL conference and heard Ira Glass talk about what good stories do, and how they do it. And of course, whenever I hear anything I particularly like, I think "how does this apply to dresses?"

And then I realized: stories are why I sew. Personal sewing gives a garment an inescapable story, with an inherent narrative that pulls you along to the next bit: where I found the fabric and the pattern, and how long they waited to be made; how difficult or easy it was to put together and what halfassed compromises I made with my original vision; how it turned out, and so on. (Compare this with "I saw it at the Gap and bought it.") Every dress I make is an opportunity to recount a story, as well, and being (mostly) Irish and an aspiring raconteuse, I rarely turn down an opportunity to tell a story ... especially ones that are (as so many dress stories are) stories of triumphing over adversity, however small that adversity is.

Sewing's not the only way to give a garment a story, of course. Think about your favorite clothes: don't they have stories? The clothes you bought on vacation, or received from a friend or inherited from a relative, the clothes you wore on a special day or with a special person ... I heard a great story about a jacket this past weekend from Henning Rübsam (I heard this story because I exclaimed over how beautiful his jacket was). He saw a gorgeous jacket in a shop, a beautiful one that not only fit him perfectly physically, but fit him spiritually as well. It was far, far, far too expensive, so he regretfully left it behind. He went into the same shop a year later, and it was still there ... and, even on sale, far, far too expensive, still. A long while after that ... he found it waiting for him at Century 21, finally at a price he could afford, and now it is his, and he's been wearing it, and its story, ever since.

I can see why maybe some people don't want all their clothes to have stories—it'd be exhausting to be overwhelmed with associations each time you pulled on a pair of socks—but I think, in general, garments with a narrative of their own are preferable to garments without.

Prom Time (circa 1989)

It's prom time, isn't it? I am starting to see prom stories in the news, and folks on the various sewing lists I'm on are starting to post their war stories of sewing dresses for their daughters ... so I thought I'd dig up the photo of the great dress my mom made for me.

My mom has actually made me two prom dresses; the first was for the freshman prom. Not my freshman prom—a guy named David Goldman's freshman prom. I was just a very flattered eighth grader. (So thanks again, David, wherever you are!) Luckily no pictures of that dress survive; the dress was fine—but let's just say eighth grade wasn't an especially high point for me (aside from being asked to that prom).

The other dress my mom made was for my Senior Prom. See that picture up above? That's me, on the right. On the left (and isn't he dapper!) is Dave Hampton, who is now an architect right here in Chicago (and he's single, so area ladies, if you want an intro, drop me an email). We went As Friends, as my boyfriend at the time was a College Man and couldn't be bothered about a rinky-dink high-school prom. (That is, until the last minute, when he crashed our pre-prom dinner. Which was Chinese takeout in my folks' dining room, but still.)

I don't know how my mom did it, but she took my vague instructions about a square-necked full-skirted dress and made it real. (Well, she wouldn't cut the neckline any lower, or take the waist in any tighter, but moms have to hold the line where they can ... and anyway, constructing something like this was way way beyond my capabilities at the time. )

Dave and I had a great time. After the prom our whole group had a sedate and lovely moonlight picnic in Reynolda Gardens, which I think was (and is) against their posted rules, but the local police were much more interested our harder-partying classmates, so we got away with it.

The dress was dark green polished cotton, and I still have it -- it's in a box somewhere upstairs with a few other things I can't imagine ever wearing again but couldn't possibly get rid of. I wish I still had those shoes; they were even cuter in person. (Of course, with Dave, I probably could have worn four-inch heels; he's a bit on the tall side ... )

I *really* want to hear about y'all's prom dresses -- that's what the comments are for ...

Rude? Or Just Clueless? Or Something Else?

So a while back (I'm not telling you how long, but I did finally resurrect it from my inbox, so if you're still waiting for me to post something you sent me, take heart) ... where was I? Oh, yes. A while back, Dress A Day reader Carrie sent me this story. It seems she had bought an inexpensive wrap dress that was featured in a "work wardrobe" story in Glamour mag -- nothing fancy, just a $20 wrap dress from Wal-Mart. Carrie was a bit nervous about it (it being $20, and from Wal-Mart) but she tried it on and it was pretty good quality and (being a wrap dress) really flattering. And it was black with a subtle purple dotted swirl pattern, which she liked. So she bought it.

She was about two weeks into a new job (thus the acquiring a work wardrobe part) and had to go to a training session at a customer site. Great time to pack a wrap dress, right? It doesn't take up much space in a suitcase or wrinkle. (Carrie is in clinical sales; she was traveling to a hospital to represent her company and train a few people in the lab on how to use a piece of diagnostic equipment. Having worked in the field for a few years, she figured that it would be business casual, meaning no jeans, but no suits, either.)

Carrie thought (and I agree) that the dress was simple enough and could pass for business casual or slightly nicer. She wore it with pumps and hose and small silver hoop earrings. Unexceptionable, right? But her two coworkers told her that she was overdressed and would intimidate the customer! In a $20 Wal-Mart dress!

Carrie responded only by praising the comfort and convenience of the dress, and tried to let it go ... only to have dinner weeks later with two colleagues who ended up mentioning that they had heard about it!

I think that her co-workers (or cow-orkers, in this case) were way out of line. First of all, it's a hospital, full of doctors ... doctors are not going to be intimidated by a simple wrap dress. Then, of course, it's always rude to comment on peoples' clothing, unless you are complimenting them (or telling them a slip is showing, etc.). It's doubly rude to say something deflating if the person has no chance to go and change.

(To make the story complete we have to give you Carrie's description of her critics. "The 'business specialist' [basically a technical sales person] wore navy dress 'slacks', a hawaiian button-down shirt, and an ill-fitting khaki blazer. The other co-worker, the woman doing the training [Carrie was observing her to learn the training] wore khaki dress pants and a coral sweater twinset with a ring of smallish faux crystals along the neckline.)"

I can't imagine that "intimidating the customer" was really the issue ... I'm sure it was something else. Hazing of the new girl? An international conspiracy of pants manufacturers to bulldoze dress-wearers into pants-wearing compliance? What do y'all think?

(The dress above isn't the one Carrie bought, but a similar one from Wal-Mart.)

I'm Not Sewing

Seriously. I am not sewing right now. I mean, I'm still thinking about sewing, and planning to sew, and still doing the occasional bit of mending, and Lord, am I ever still buying fabric (look here soon for something made of REAL DOTTED SWISS) but I'm not actually sewing. Too much work right now, and the weather's still too crappy for the instant gratification of make-summer-dress, wear-summer-dress.

So this, then, is not a recent creation, but a 'test garment' that I did several months ago. It went together fine, and then I realized that I didn't have enough of the 'real' fabric to make the dress now that I knew it actually fit, so the project was abandoned. This test dress is wearable, though! I need to hem the sleeves (or rather, tack down the facings), shorten the skirt (and eventually hem it), and I have to take the front of the skirt apart and add big flappy patch pockets, but that's not a big deal.

I'm calling this the jelly bean dress, because it reminds me of nothing so much as it does Yarnstorm's lovely jelly bean cushions. I think if I ever were lucky enough to meet Yarnstorm I'd have to wear this dress ... and then we'd eat candy-covered cupcakes that matched it. I'd better get cracking, right? Always better to be prepared.

The fabric is from the remnant table at Vogue, from the depressingly tiny "60 inch wide cotton prints" section; I'm there so much I should really send the nice remnant-watcher lady a Christmas card. And this is a vintage pattern, but I don't remember the number and if I go upstairs I'm going to wake my little boy, and if I wake him he'll wake my husband. The boy doesn't have school today, so might as well let 'em sleep ...

Girls Rule!

If you aren't saying 'awwwwww' right now, your awww-er is broken, and you should seek medical attention. Seriously, isn't this cute as a whole button-factory's worth of buttons? Missy (who sells on eBay as Spring*Bean) made this ... that's her youngest (I think) modeling.

You know who else makes incredibly adorable girls' dresses? With the smocking, and the bows, and everything? Retro Grace. I've become addicted to her blog ... but who can blame me when she features things like this?




or this?




I think it's probably lucky that I have a little boy, because if I had a little girl I would be doing nothing but making her dresses like these, and (knowing the way the universe likes to have its little joke) she would probably hate them, and want to dress like a Bratz doll. And besides, it's a lot faster to make the kind of thing my son likes (namely, silly CafePress t-shirts).

Does This Make Me Look Crazy?

I was recently packing for yet another trip, this one complicated by trying to decide what, from my limited collection of camera-ready clothes ("camera-ready," in this case, meaning 'having a pattern that doesn't induce seizures in any eventual watchers and is not white or black') would be suitable for both a taped interviewy thing and a taped rock concert, and as I was trying stuff on, I found myself asking the eternal question:

"Does this make me look fat?"

Luckily, I was only asking myself, not pestering my long-suffering husband. (He likes to make himself scarce while I'm packing; he doesn't need to increase his store of profanity.) We have a deal: I don't ask him if I'm fat, and he doesn't ask me where his wallet and keys are. (We break this deal, like glass, in cases of emergency.)

At the moment of asking, though, I stopped for a minute. Why is "fat" automatically the one thing that must be avoided? I'm not talking "need to be airlifted from house for medical attention," fat, I'm talking "fifteen extra pounds from a crappy winter" fat. (Not that the degree really matters.) Why, of all the aesthetic choices that can be made, is "slim" the one that has to be prioritized? Why am I not asking myself, first and foremost, "Does this make me look unhappy?" or "Does this make me look boring?" or "Does this make me look fashion-victimy?" or "Does this make me look like a visiting space alien, and not in the sexy lamé-bikini-and-boots way?"

So I stopped asking the "fat" question, and started asking the "unhappy" one, and this is one of the things where the answer was "No, it doesn't make you look unhappy. Quite the reverse!" But: does it make me look TOO HAPPY, aka crazy? (I already know that it doesn't make me look slimmer, and that's okay.)

Here's a close-up:


It's a skirt that used to be a plain circle, without a waistband, and recently I got tired of skirts without waistbands, so I took it apart and added one. (With quite a bit of cursing and muttering, I might add.) The fabric is from Ikea; someday I'm going to walk into someone's house wearing this and match all their couch cushions. Then it WILL make me look crazy, but I'll be happy, so I don't care.

I'm NOT quite sure this is actually camera-ready (stripes might be bad, right?) but if it does end up airing (and yes yes I will give you all details when I know them) I'm sure they'll post some kind of warning.

In Soviet Russia, Bow Wears YOU!

(Does anyone even remember those jokes?)

Nancy sent me the link to this when it was still gloriously for sale on eBay (from seller The Olive Shoppe). Whoever grabbed this is going to wang chung tonight, that's for sure.

I kid, I kid, but only because I love. Or rather, I used to love. I'm sure I would have been all over this (or it would have been all over me) when it originally came out. Although I'm sure I would have preferred the bow to be fluorescent yellow, and I would have accessorized with an armful of rubber bracelets, no doubt. Not to mention playing Sade's "Diamond Life" or The Fixx at full blast while getting dressed. I'm not sure I could wear something like this with a straight face now. (Of course, when do I wear ANYTHING with a straight face?)

But this dress, more than all the hot pink & black electroclash fashions of the past few years, has let me know that I'm finally at the point where I can be the person who ruefully says that she can't see wearing the retread of anything she actually wore the first time it was popular! It's a milestone I'm happy to reach, in fact. Now if only my hair would hurry up and go all the way gray. Gravitas, it's all about the gravitas ...

Gorgeous Ugly Fabric

Isn't this great ugly fabric? I mean, I think it's very attractive, in a charmingly grotesque way. I have no idea why the pattern designer thought only the letters a-e-g-i-s-v were needed (is it supposed to spell 'visage' and if so, why?) and I don't know why there's some kind of craquelure behind those letters, but I don't care. I like it. Which is why I now have four yards of it. (And it wasn't even on sale--I liked it that much!)

As you all know by now, I'm a huge fan of the unconventionally pretty, which is not to say, in so many words, the downright ugly. I like things to have a hard edge, sometimes, and to make you work to see how beautiful they are. The easy beauty of pink roses and sunsets is one thing; the difficult, ornery, belligerent beauty of rough concrete and sheets of rain is another.

This fabric wants to be a narrow 'secretary' dress with a round collar, midriff band, and contrast piping (and, thanks to Lydia, I actually HAVE this pattern right now) but I don't know when I'll get a chance to make it. I'm pretty overwhelmed with Actual Work at the moment. Making a new dress is starting to feel as far away as some of my other nebulous goals, like "lose fifteen pounds" and "answer all my email" and "live on Moon colony before I die," and having "make new dress" slip into that category is a bit depressing.

But, I'm sure things will lighten up around here eventually, says the woman who is traveling three out of the next four weeks ...

That was fast!

So, I posted something about the westernization of clothing in Japan at what, sixish last night? And already, Karen (of Periodic Elements of Style) has sent me this image (“Illustration of Singing by the Plum Garden” by Toyohara Chikanobu, 1887), with this commentary:

I've attached an 1887 print of Japanese women wearing
Western-style dresses, but you can see (particularly on the women in
green and in black) how they used Japanese fabrics and traditional
Heian-era color pairings to suit their tastes. In the Heian era,
women of the imperial court would layer on up to twelve kimonos at a
time, choosing colors to evoke nature...particular favorites were the
plum blossom (pinks, purples, whites, and yellows), cherry blossom,
and morning glories.

Karen (who knows about all this because she studied Japanese fashion
history at Japan Women's University) also declared her love for the Tenth Doctor. (Like that's not the *default*, right? I mean, Chris Eccleston was absolutely great, but Tennant ... )

Click on the image to visit a larger version at the website of Professor John Dower of MIT, who also has more about the Japan of this era.

Guaranteed Satisfaction

I've been a bit under the weather the last few days -- fighting off a cold, nothing that Dayquil wasn't specially engineered by NASA to handle (wait, am I thinking of TANG? Oh, well, they're both orange) -- and have been casting about a bit to make sure that I meet or exceed my recommended daily allowance of happiness. (Happiness is even MORE effective than Dayquil in fighting cold symptoms. Have not yet done the head-to-head of happiness vs. TANG.)

Anyway, some things just WORK, happiness-wise. Like, David Tennant as Dr Who. Like, gratuitous, yet sensitive, use of the synthesizer. Like, imagining, even for ONE MINUTE, that at some point, your email inbox will be empty.

But, more than any of those things (although, depending on the episode, David Tennant as Dr Who is hard to beat) happiness is browsing random keywords on Google Book Search.

Look at this gem, found by looking for "famous" and "dresses":

From 1873 to 1887, especially in the last three years of that period, the adoption of European dress progressed rapidly amongst the upper classes. It had been made compulsory for officials when on duty in 1873, and had steadily gained ground amongst students, bankers, merchants, and others coming, more or less directly, under foreign influence.
The wave of German influence that swept over Japan from 1885 to 1887 carried the innovation to a still more dangerous point. The beautiful costume of the women of Japan so absolutely becoming to its wears that one can hardly imagine them clad in any other way, was threatened, and sad to relate, the ladies of the Court began to order dresses from—Paris? No—the pen almost refuses to chronicle the appalling fact—from Berlin! In the nick of time, the reaction against a Slavish imitation of Occidental customs unsuited to the country came to the rescue.

[from Japan as Seen and Described by Famous Writers, by Esther Singleton (1904).]

Did you get that "Slavish" imitation bit? I wish my pen would almost refuse to write when I try to make bad puns like that.

Anyway, if you're feeling a bit low, start playing with Google Book Search (for maximum enjoyment, I suggest limiting your search to "full text" books only -- under "Advanced Search").

The picture here, by the way, comes from Fenwick's Career. If it makes you want to read the rest of the book, click on the image ...

Oh, and a hearty Dress a Day welcome to our newest advertiser, over there on the right: Michelle Lee's Patterns from the Past! Go check out her site, if you will.

Documentary Proof

I didn't think I had a picture of the first dress I ever made, but I do. The only thing is, I'm not wearing it.

That's me, on the right, in full nerd ectasy, clutching the ribbons I won at the NJCL Forum in 1986. I don't know if that was the year I got a first in Phrases and Mottoes, or if that was the year I got eighth in Latin Grammar by christmas-treeing the ScanTron bubbles, or if that was the year I got eighth in girls' shotput by the simple expedient of there being only eight competitors in the girls' shotput, but it really doesn't matter: I was very happy to be there. Can't you tell?

I'm wearing the dress my mom made for me (while I watched her do it, so I could learn how to sew). It was very long, almost ankle-length, and made of baby cotton with pink rosebuds on it, and I had never loved a dress in my life the way I loved that dress. Even Keith Morgan (who made homeroom "interesting") announcing that it made me look pregnant (and asking me, repeatedly, who the father was) couldn't kill my love for that dress.

My friend N. is wearing the dress I made. She hadn't packed a dress for the dance, so I lent her mine. It was almost the same pattern as the rosebud dress, but with more scooped neckline, and shorter. Why I didn't lend her the longer one, as she was so much taller than I was, I don't know. I'm sure I had a good reason at the time.

It's weird to see the embryonic Erin-style in this photo, to see what's the same and what's different. I always wear my glasses now (I always wore contacts then). I no longer have braces, thankfully, and I haven't been that tan since I stopped living in Florida. I still wear hoop earrings (smaller ones). I'm still obsessed with Swatch watches, and I still have that paisley one. I think if I could find that fine baby rosebud-print cotton again, I'd probably make another dress out of it.

And, in case you're wondering, we had a great time at the dance.

Saturday Night Hat

Caroline was nice enough to send me a copy of Saturday Night Hat by Eugenia Kim, and I *really* like it.

First of all, and I know this is the kind of thing only an editor would notice or appreciate, but one Joanne Paek is given credit, right on the cover, for technical writing. That's awesome, because, well, technical pattern writing is HARD. And no matter how good you are at the doing, the writing of the doing is a completely different skill. I really admire Kim (and her publisher, Potter Craft) for not only hiring a technical writer, but giving her prominent credit. That's a sign of a generous spirit and consideration for the readers.

And that generous spirit continues through the book. Kim outlines half-a-dozen classic hats with as many variations each. I'm not especially a hat person (okay, I love hats, but that thing you do when you look in the mirror and take one thing off before you leave the house? What usually comes off, in my case, is the hat) but I'm definitely going to make her beret, and probably the cloche and the fedora as well, if I can figure out a way to keep the latter two from fighting with my glasses. Some of her hats are worth wearing contact lenses for, and that's saying something.

One last thing: isn't that bib dress on the cover adorable! I love it with the fedora (although I also believe that cowboy boots are fashion-victimy nine times out of ten. Of course, every time I see that tenth woman on whom cowboy boots are *perfect*, I change my mind ...)

Thank you, Caroline! What a great book!

A Day Late, More Than A Few Dollars Short

Carol (of Dandelion Vintage) sent me the link to this auction, which I missed. Completely whiffed. Got behind on my email from being away (>800 real, that is, non-spam, messages) and flat-out didn't get to it in time.

Which is a shame, because LOOK!




Yep, those are little blackbirds spelling out letters of the alphabet. Why? I don't know, but I don't much care, either. I just love it.

Of course, it's probably a good thing that I didn't bid, because I don't know if I would have gone up to $141, which is where the auction ended. And of course I haven't really been wearing my vintage stuff all that much lately, so perhaps I would have spent the $$ and then let it languish in my closet. Better for it to have a good home, with someone who will wear it in the sunshine. Or, you know, a smoky bar. Wherever. As long as it's worn.

However, I have absolutely put these pics in my file labeled "For the Glorious Day When I Have My Own Fabric Mill," because I really want blackbird-alphabet fabric. I also want hedgehog alphabet fabric, too ... just in case you see any of that around.

That's Better. I Think.

I'm a bit cranky today, so I'm glad to be able to show this dress, which is listed by Chez Cemetarian.

You know that cranky feeling you get when you've tried to talk someone out of doing something stupid, something that might well backfire on them, and they go and do it anyway? That's the cranky I have today, matched up with a little bit of a head cold. Somehow looking at this dress makes it slightly better.

I really like the completely superfluous straps. I think this would be a great dress for a gangster moll in a movie, because you KNOW, at some point, the Bad Man She Loves In A Hopeless Way will grab her by those straps. And you will have known that the Bad Man will do that from the first moment of seeing her in this dress, but no matter HOW MUCH you yell at the screen, she will never stop loving the Bad Man.

The two-tone version is pretty great, too, and of course, the jacket. But it's the moll in red who first caught my attention. Why won't she realize that the Bad Man is wrong for her, and that she should rat him out to the handsome G-Man instead? Because you can't talk people out of doing stupid things, that's why.

The pattern's B34 and has an opening bid of $5.99, with no bids right now. It ends in three days, so get cracking ...

Why there are 20 different size 12s but nothing fits

First of all, I have been looking for an excuse to link to Elisa's Bodacious House of Style for a while. I missed my chance during her 'pose-off' with Fred, and I keep checking her store waiting for something to demand to be a post, but have had no luck so far. But now she's scanned the newspaper article above, and so I can post it and credit her. Yay!

Elisa gives the date of the paper she scanned as 1953. Another helpful eBayer (the eBay vintage seller boards are really quite nice, I wish I had more time to hang out there) unknownshopper, added a link to this PDF, "Body Shape Analysis of Hispanic Women in the United States", by Elizabeth Newcomb, which looks very interesting, and includes this information:

Development of Sizing Standard “CS 215-58”

The O’Brien and Shelton study of 1941 did not result in a sizing standard until the 1950s. In 1958, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a new commercial standard known as CS 215-58 based on the 1939 study. This standard used four classifications of women (Misses, Women’s, Half-Sizes, and Juniors), three height groups (Tall, Regular, and Short), a bust measurement, and three hip types (Slender, Average, and Full) to classify sizes (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1958).

The sizes were based on bust measurement, height group, and drop value (difference between hip and bust circumference), and yielded over 20 sizes for use by the apparel industry (Chun-Yoon & Jasper, 1993). However, this standard was only voluntary, meaning that manufacturers did not have to follow it. They could either revise it to fit their needs, use it as it was created, or disregard it entirely. In addition, it was based on the 1939 study by O’Brien and Shelton, and thus suffered from the same inadequacies that the study had. Due to these problems, women of the 1950’s and 1960’s attempted to get around a growing size problem by using corsets and girdles to mold their bodies to the shapes of the clothing produced (Agins, 1994).

Development of Sizing Standard “PS 42-70”

Despite these problems, the next step in the history of sizing standards did not occur until 1971, when the U.S. Department of Commerce released a new voluntary standard, known as PS 42-70. This standard was basically a revision of the previous standard CS 215-58, but did include modifications based on a health survey performed by the National Center for Health Statistics in 1962. This survey indicated that U.S. adults were taller and heavier than they were in 1940. Thus, the bust girth was increased by one grade interval per size code for all figures. Other changes from CS 215-58 included the elimination of “Slender” and “Full” hip options for all figure types as well as the elimination of the “Tall” option in the Juniors’ and Women’ figure types (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1970).

Even with all of these changes to the CS 215-58 standard, the new PS 42-70 standard was still voluntary and based on the 1939 study by O’Brien and Shelton. At this time, still none of the problems with sizing systems had been confronted.

Thanks also to Mary Beth for the pointer to the discussion ...

Home Soon

I know this pattern is waiting for me at home; I think it came in the mail just as I was leaving (from eBay seller Simmons Books). It's oddly perfect; it has all of my fetishistic desires in a pattern: square neckline, short kimono sleeves, midriff band, full skirt -- it's so perfect I'm nearly afraid to make it, as what if all those things together somehow cancel each other out? Like the time I made tea (I was about ten, I think) thinking "I like tea with milk, and I like tea with lemon, tea with lemon and milk must be GREAT!" (It wasn't.)

Luckily this little break has not been me (as usual) trying to do all the things I like, all at the same time. I just chose ONE thing I really like (watching my son have fun) and did that. So what if it involved amusement parks (or as they're called here in Florida, "attractions")? And accompanying him on rides that made me deliberately unfocus my eyes, the better not to sag against the WHOLLY INADEQUATE "safety" restraints in gibbering terror? And eating only things that had been fried (twice-fried, if possible)? Despite the grease, and the terror, and the finding out after three hours in the sun that the SPF 40 I'd been slathering on everyone within arm's reach had expired in 2005, this little trip turned out to be surprisingly fun. So what if I ended up spending the whole (interminable) three circuits of the Ferris wheel staring fixedly at the floor of the gondola and imploring a wriggling seven-year-old to keep his little butt ON the seat? It makes a good story, right? (I didn't used to be afraid of heights, and I'm still not, at least not for me. I don't care if *I* die from an overenthusiastic application of the law of gravity. Everyone's gotta go somehow, right? But I really, really, really don't want to watch someone else go that way. Especially not anyone I spent a lot of time and effort PERSONALLY MAKING in my WOMB.)

So despite having really enjoyed myself here doing just one thing at a time, I'm ready to go home, resume my usual semicompetent multitasking, and see if this overdetermined pattern is as good as it looks. If not, I'll go find a pattern that has just ONE of my top-five fave details and concentrate on making that one the best I can.