Dress A Day Says: Two Thumbs Up!

So. Yes. I'm not sure where yesterday went, either -- if anyone sees a missing Wednesday (with or without a note pinned to it that says "return to Erin: reward"), would you send it along to me? I'm afraid it's out there somewhere lost and lonely.

But, Lost Wednesday (so much less desperate, thankfully, than a Lost Weekend) aside -- I did manage to see this wonderful movie, Vogues of 1938, on the kind recommendation of friend-of-the-blog Deborah.

Vogues of 1938 -- and don't let the title fool you, it was made in 1937 -- is, as far as I can tell, a movie made solely to put on a fashion show (or two, or three). The plot is as slim as the lead, Joan Bennett (and that's saying something) but there's wonderful repartee -- as when Joan, thwarted in her desire for The Guy, hands off her fashion show trophy (fashion show trophy!) to a maid, saying "My hands are full carrying a torch!" Sigh. Why can't you get away with lines like that in real life?

The clothes are sumptuous in that movie-glamour way, and the title card of the designers involved takes up a whole screen, not that I recognized any of their names. The movie also includes significant close-up shots of a lucky thimble, a Russian prince and a petulant titan of industry, truly shocking quantities (to modern eyes) of furs and cigarettes, as well as unintentional humor (at least, I think it was unintentional), when a crooner dedicates a whole song to "Lady of the evening ... lady of the night" which is not, in fact, about a prostitute. (Or, if it was, she was way beyond even Spitzer's budget.) And a horse-drawn milk wagon. And a fairly random Cotton Club interlude. And a kind of cut-rate Marx Brothers-ish trio. This movie is PACKED.

Oh -- and did I mention? -- there's a several-minute interlude of TRICK ROLLER-SKATING. On a raised platform, in evening dress, if you please. (In the movie, the impresario of the failed musical for which the skaters are auditioning tells his would-be ingénue that, in the show, "they'll be dressed as bunnies.")

I recommend watching this movie while doing something else undemanding and just coming to full attention when either Joan Bennett or the roller-skating couple is on the screen, or when you hear the fashion-show music.

So: in short: Dress A Day says "Two Thumbs Up!" Add it to your Netflix queue today!

(The picture of Joan Bennett above is from a total eye-candy wonderland, Evening Gowns Vintage and New, uploaded to some site I've never heard of -- does "Webshots" ring a bell for anyone? -- but well worth checking out.)

What do you get if you don't use a thimble? A "D". And this dress.

Jody (from Couture Allure Vintage) sent me this link to one of her auctions, and it's adorable. Even better is the backstory -- check it out!




That's right. Some horrible sewing instructor gave poor Dorrice a "D" on this gorgeous dress, all because she didn't use a thimble. Come on! This is an "A" dress, no question.

This kind of thing (nonsensical rules-for-rules'-sake thinking) really gets on my nerves. Sure, you can, as a teacher, make students prove they know how to use a thimble. But that should be a ten-minute observation, at best, not a whole dress! (I have never used a thimble for dressmaking -- quilting, sure, but not dressmaking. If I want to stab my finger repeatedly with a needle, that's my right as an American.)

When you demand that everyone do something one way and one way only, you completely stifle innovation, AND you instill a knee-jerk distaste for the methods you're teaching. If your way is really the right way (or, more rarely, the ONLY way) then people will naturally gravitate to it, but you have to give them the chance to do things their own half-assed way. What is obligatory is usually disdained.

You can certainly say "I've always done X this way, and it works for me," but unless you're teaching your clone army to sew, other people are going to have different techniques: some from random chance, some from sheer pigheadedness, and some from outright brilliance. People who gave out "D"s for lack of a thimble probably never got to see the outright brilliance. Good thing the dress survived, so we could!