DRESSING IN THE 1930'S

Women in the 1930 had style but not a lot of clothes. Style comes from wearing a hat cocked just right and shoes that are shined, and putting yourself together before leaving the house.

The 1930s had terrific dresses, sensible yet feminine shoes, and cloches. To get the look right by starting with the right foundations. Back then, women wore girdles, and stockings hooked onto garters. The bras have to be right, and slips are worn.

For those who want to check online for the correct underpinnings, try GirdleShop . While some vintage girdles are available on other sites but remember girdle fabric doesn't hold up to the decades.

Also , you need to have the right shoes.

The dresses for the 1930s, you need to look for dresses with no back zippers. The dresses had side zippers. And while we're talking about the genuine silhouette of a dress then - no shoulder pads and from rayon print material.

All I need to know I learned from the Easter Bunny

• Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
• Everyone needs a friend who is all ears.
• There's no such thing as too much candy.
• All work and no play can make you a basket case.
• A cute tail attracts a lot of attention.
• Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day.
• Let happy thoughts multiply like rabbits.
• Some body parts should be floppy.
• Keep your paws off of other people's jelly beans.
• Good things come in small, sugar coated packages.

Laver's Law of Fashion

I stumbled upon an interesting way to measure if you are appropriate in your dress, it is Laver’s Law. James Laver (1899-1975) who was an author, art historian, and museum curator who acted as Keeper of Prints, Drawings and Paintings for the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1938 and 1959 created Laver’s Law. It was his attempt to compress the complex cycle of fashion change and the general attitude towards any certain style or period into a simple timeline. It first appeared in Taste and Fashion (1937):

Indecent 10 years before its time

Shameless 5 years before its time

Outré (Daring) 1 year before its time

Smart 'Current Fashion'

Dowdy 1 year after its time

Hideous 10 years after its time

Ridiculous 20 years after its time

Amusing 30 years after its time

Quaint 50 years after its time

Charming 70 years after its time

Romantic 100 years after its time

Beautiful 150 years after its time

He was also an important and pioneering fashion historian described as "the man in England who made the study of costume respectable. Why not check your wardrobe now and eliminate dowdy, hideous or ridiculous items. Perhaps anything older has a certain museum quality or will come in handy for those 70's revival nights. Seriously if it is older than 20 years and it has a good label and in good condition it may be valuable - ONE DAY - it is almost certainly already being collected by someone somewhere in the world and is described as vintage.

Stanley Marcus, the former president of Neiman Marcus, recounts in his memoir Minding the Store how Laver’s Law was used by Neiman Marcus clothes buyers in the late 60’s. There was a heated internal debate on whether the trend for that next year would still be the mini skirt (which was the current fashion) or the longer midi skirt. Marcus asked Laver point blank if the mini skirt was dead. Laver told him that the mini skirt had at least another 2 years to go — against expert opinion at the time. His forecast was right, the midi was a complete flop, many women continued to wear the miniskirt, and those who couldn’t or wouldn’t make up their minds went into the pants suit. Pants were bound to come, but the skirt-length controversy made pants acceptable at an accelerated rate.

Do you think it applies today in the average person dressing plan? If you walk the street in your town, you will find an array of dressing styles from the sedate (ladies with proper teas dresses) to the tough and wild (biker babes in Ed hardy and Harley Davidson covered in tats). Just look around at your local mall or shopping center. Just remember that in a few years it’ll start to look bad. In 10 years it’ll look REALLY bad. Then, after some time, it will be appreciated — or even revered — again.

vogue flapper

Hats of Bill Cunningham from the New York Times

What a surprise I had when I was reading the New York Times this morning and found out that their writer Bill Cunningham had created some marvelous hats starting in the 1950’s . His colleagues in The Times’s photo got him to  share photographs of the hats he had concocted decades ago as an aspiring — and very imaginative — young milliner.

Mr. Cunningham designed his first hat for his mother to wear to the World’s Fair of 1939 and she decided not to wear it.  He continued working as a milliner under the name William J. because he did not used his last name because his family was embarrassed until the late 1950s.

 Mr. Cunningham’s inspirations came from nature. He enjoyed working with feathers. His hats were different but stylish. In the New York Times article he said that he did not make a living off of his designs but they paid for themselves. He said that he didn't  think that many sold  because he created exotic hats.

I would love to be able to wear one of his little cocktail hats. I think his hats would be such fun to wear.

Please go to this link and see the wonderful hats that he created.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/bill-cunningham-a-rare-birds-feathers/?ref=fashion

Goodbye! Elizabeth

Things to remember

Today was not a good day so these are things that I need to remember. The next posts will be more on vintage clothing. Take care.

Love,
Vintage Diva