50 Years of Everyday Fashion

This weekend we were idly looking at the magazines in the local shop, when Paul said, “I can’t believe you haven’t picked up this!”

“This” turned out to be a magazine by Yours (the best-selling lifestyle magazine for the fifty-plus woman, apparently), called, “50 Years of Everyday Fashion: How the Women of Britain Created Glamour and Style on a Shoestring”.

It has a glorious picture of Audrey Hepburn on the cover, it costs £4.99, and I heartily recommend it! It covers the period 1948 to 1997, and also has sections on men’s clothes, Royalty, and weddings.

The thing which particularly interests me about this magazine is its “everyday fashion” approach. So many fashion magazines and books, whatever period they’re discussing, tend to only talk about the prominent designers of that time. Of course this is important, but it often bears very little relation to what was being sold on the high street, what women were making for themselves, and what kinds of clothes people were wearing to go about their everyday lives.

There’s a whole chapter on making your own clothes, and it’s full of photographs of people wearing the most beautiful outfits. Some of the clothing made during wartime and post-war rationing is particularly noteworthy, because people had to be imaginative in the ways that they used fabrics and re-used old clothes. The magazine suggests that the rise of designer labels during the 1980s was one cause of home dressmaking going into decline, but cites the recent resurgence in the popularity of knitting as a hopeful sign that people might also regain enthusiasm in making their own clothes.

I think that enthusiasm is already here – although I’m naturally somewhat biased on the subject!

The TV show Project Runway, for example, has inspired a range of Simplicity sewing patterns. Books such as Rip It and Generation T are a drop in the ocean of books telling you how to make new clothes out of old ones, and there are dozens of online communities devoted to showing off clothes that you’ve made yourself.

If I was going to recommend one book to anybody who wanted to learn how to make their own clothes, it would be the Reader’s Digest New Complete Guide to Sewing. I have the original 1978 edition, and it’s an absolute goldmine. Anything you could possibly want to know about making your own clothes, you’ll find it in there.

If you’re more interested in reading about clothes than in making them yourself, then you might enjoy The Virago Book of the Joy of Shopping. It’s little snippets from literature which give an insight into the ways that people used to shop, and it’s absolutely wonderful.

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Four vintage patterns…

Look at what my Mum found, when she was clearing out some things from my Grandma’s house!

None of the envelopes have dates on them, but the style of the illustrations and the style of the clothes suggests late 1950s/early 1960s.

Even better – they’re in a size which I can modify to actually fit me! They’re sizes 18 and 20, which translates roughly to a modern size 14 and 16.

The dress that I’m most likely to make and wear is (surprise!) the Maudella a-line shift dress. I might leave out the hanging fabric for daily wear, but I do love the contrasting circles.

In fact, I might even take that envelope with me the next time I go to the hairdresser. I love everything about that outfit.

Oh dear, I am now fighting a terrible urge to make this dress from camouflage fabric, with elephants peeping through the holes! I’ve almost certainly got enough fabric left over from the elephant dress to do that…

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The Way We Wore.

I’m reading the most fantastic book at the moment – The Way We Wore, by Robert Elms. It’s about one man, and the importance of his clothes as he grows up. It’s a social history, and a sartorial autobiography.

Robert Elms is half a generation older than me, so some of the earlier parts of the book are quite difficult to understand, although I can still picture a lot of the clothes very precisely, thanks to seeing the few old photos of my Dad as a teenager, and having been pretty obsessed with the 1960s when I was a teenager myself. The 1970s seem to have been just as confusing for Elms as they were for me, although I was far too young to be thinking about clothes at that time.

It was the 1980s that really did it for me. I was eight years old in 1981, the year that Philip Oakey of the Human League appeared on Top of the Pops with eyeliner, earrings and a pierced nipple. I’m absolutely certain that I noticed none of these things at the time, and was quite shocked when I saw that footage again recently and worked out how young I must have been when I saw it first. The 1980s were for New Romantics and Soft Cell and Nick Rhodes – always Nick Rhodes – never Simon Le Bon or Roger Taylor. Nick Rhodes, always Nick Rhodes, because he was the one with the feathered hair and the eyeliner. No wonder I ended up as a goth. I’d been looking for men in make-up since I was eight years old.

Of course I was far too young to be a goth or a New Romantic at the age of eight, or even really to know what those things meant. I do remember having a Madonna phase, all leggings and hair bows, although it was never as pronounced as my sister’s, who had the lacy gloves and everything. I had braces and a too-big trilby with a turquoise band, purchased from Top Man. I can’t remember now what I attached the braces to. It can’t have been leggings, although my wardrobe was full of those, and I never had a pair of jeans so tight that they had to have a zip at the ankle or you couldn’t get your feet through. My friend Kerry broke her wrist getting into a pair.

I remember the braces and the trilby, and the elasticated belts like a nurse, with a butterfly for the buckle. I remember a neon yellow skirt, worn with the most atrocious haircut on my fourteenth birthday. I remember going all the way to Tammy Girl in Hanley, and longing for the day when my skinny frame would be old enough to fit into grown-up Etam clothes instead. I remember my beloved Falmer Kittens. Jeans with a brand name, instead of from the catalogue! Jeans in a size nine! Jeans with tiny little dots woven directly into the fabric. I loved those jeans, and I wore them until they fell apart, and because ripped denim had become fashionable by then I wore them for a bit longer. I wore them with my favourite shirt, which did come from the catalogue, and it was plain white stiff heavy cotton, with black embroidery down the placket front. Perhaps I also wore the braces, and probably an old waistcoat from a charity shop, covered in badges. I’ve never owned a shirt of such good quality since. I wore it to parties and when it got older I wore it to college. I wore it with skirts and braces and hats. (Probably not all at once, but then it was the 1980s. It’s hard to be sure.)

And shoes. Let’s not even get started on the subject of shoes. Confined to orthopaedic lace-ups during the early years, I remember very clearly being allowed my first pair of tan sandals for the summer, aged about nine. I went outside to play in them, and promptly ruined them by getting covered in tar. That summer was so hot that the road had melted, and my brand new sandals were spoiled.

This was written as a stream of consciousness this morning. (Hence the over-long sentences and too many commas.) I’m sure it’s hugely out of order chronologically, but I was just writing down odd things as they occurred to me. I didn’t even mention the giant black and blue stripy jumper, or the lace-up tan stiletto heels, or the grey pixie boots, or the haircut that made me look like a boy, or my first pair of Doc Martens, which made my Mum laugh because they looked so much like the orthopaedic shoes I’d spent so long rebelling against. I’m sure you’ll get to hear about that some other time…

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Rest In Peace, Isabella Blow.

Isabella Blow died on May 8th 2007, from ovarian cancer. She was only 48.
It is rumoured that she took her own life.

She was Philip Treacy’s muse and mentor, and is credited with beginning and supporting the careers of Sophie Dahl and Alexander McQueen.

Blow dressed in a way which suggested that she was never afraid of what anybody might think of her, and she always looked absolutely stunning. One of the joys of reading Vogue, and flicking through magazines like OK and Hello, was looking to see what she had been wearing to the latest parties and events.

Isabella Blow was one of my role models, and I am very sad that she’s gone.

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