More cute women’s and children’s fashions from my early ’50s Japanese pattern book. This series of pages is all in boring black and white , but I hope you will still find them interesting. These next few pages are the only adults in the whole book who look remotely Japanese: And there aren’t just dress patterns! There are hat patterns!
While a la mode may mean ‘in the fashion’ it was also once the name for a fabric. In the 17th, 18th & 19th century alamode was a thin plain tabby weave lustred silk, usually black. It was used mainly for mourning, and for the linings of expensive garments, as well as as the outer fabric, especially for outerwear such as hoods and mantuas. A 1691 theft included “”two blacke allamode hoods worth 5s”. Eighty years later, in 1770 Mary Berridge’s London house was broken into, and one of the items stolen was “One Black Allamode Clock Lined in the Blue Latestring” In early histories of 18th century fabrics it is described as being like lustring or surah silk, but more loosely woven (which may be a very non-technical way of saying that it is a plain tabby weave, rather than a twill like surah), and some references even describe it as the same fabric as lustring, but period advertisements make that very unlikely. While usually spelled allamode or alamode, the vagaries of 17th …
I’m coming to the end of the fantastic textiles that Elise sent. I have just today’s dress, and then one more dress (and it’s a doozy – I’ve saved one of the best for last) to show you. Today’s dress is another velvet item, this one in the same glorious midnight blue of the leaf-patterned devore dress. Midnight blue velvet was an incredibly fashionable colour & fabric in the mid-late ’30s. The velvet is accessorized by a posy of flowers in lavender, peach & pastel-magenta – such a lovely, quirky, completely 1930s touch. In addition to being made of a similar fabric, this dress shares an almost identical cut to the devore gown – with an inverted V waist, a gathered bust, full sleeves, and a bias skirt. It even shares the clever tucked pleat collar construction, as you can see in the photo above. Alas, not only does the dark clolour mean the dress is tricky to photograph well, it isn’t looking its best because it doesn’t remotely fit Isabelle. It is unusually large …
