Knitters of Yore

This knitting pattern for a buttoned top by Lee Target has managed to attract a lot of comment from the moment I bought it from a charity shop in Horsforth, near Leeds. The lady on the till gasped at the model’s tiny waist. I then showed it on a couple of vintage fashion Facebook groups, partly because I had to do quite a lot of digital retouching of the original patters, which was quite badly damaged. An absurd argument broke out in the comments when I mentioned that the poor woman could probably hardly breathe due to the undergarments needed to squeeze her into such an unnatural shape. Dior foundation garments to fit into the New Look Self appointed experts came out of the digital woodwork to tell me that women were just thinner in the 1950s and 60s, thankfully countered by others sharing memories from relatives who were around at the time, and actually wore these type of clothes. One comment was especially insightful: “Looks like the Dior New Look inspiration that came after the Sec...

Trust Woman's Mirror to be on top of the burning issues of the day - that day being some point in the mid-1960s. From this fascinating artifact we can discover the knitwear preferences of a host of household names. Some of these are now forgotten, but a select few have become showbusiness legends. Definitely in the latter category is Peter Finch, the Australian actor who would become the first performer ever to win a posthumous Oscar for his barnstorming turn in the 1976 film Network . Of more importance than this from the point of view of Kntters of Yore is that Finch can't resist a pink jumper. Although he never attracted the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, dancer and general purpose celebrity Lionel Blair remained a firm favourite of the British public over a long career until his death in 2001 at the age of 92. One riddle remained throughout Lionel's life - what would a girl have to do to attract Blair's roving eye? If only they had loo...

  Our chap here is displaying style cues of the post-war Beatniks at that point when the style had been so thoroughly integrated into the mainstream that elements of it morphed into Mod style and the menswear revolution that we now know as ‘smart casual’. This opens up the chance for me to discuss one of the favourite subjects of Knitters of Yore: how fashion spreads from the streets and is assimilated into the mainstream. This process was memorably termed by George Melly ‘Revolt into Style’, with the opposite process, from the drawing boards of elite designers to everyday life, probably best termed by Tom Wolfe as ‘From Bauhaus to Our House’ (the latter was about architecture, but seems appropriate in this context). Anyway, I digress. The Beakniks might seem a mild and harmless development now, but they were look upon with a mixture of scorn and horror by large elements of Britain's ever-conservative press when their influence began to be felt in the UK. Check out this review of J...

  Sometimes you see an image which looks quite ordinary, but with a little background knowledge a fascinating story emerges. Take the chap on the cover of the knitting pattern below. He's clearly very pleased with his new knitted waistcoat, but check the other details: the small collar, the thin tie with bang up to date pattern and the neat, but stylish haircut. Our hero aspires to Mod style. Similarly, check out the young man on the right. Banished are the chunky cable-knits, pipe and the general impatience for the arrival of middle age which were so often the hallmarks of the knitting pattern aimed at young men. Instead we see a close fit, a stylish  houndstooth check pattern and an air of youthful confidence and style.  If you grew up in the seventies, as I did, there was always the feeling that the sixties was a huge party to which you weren’t invited. The music was better (sixties Soul and Jazz versus seventies Disco – no contest!), typography and graphics were crisp...

Fashion Knits 72, published by Patons, demonstrates how far the Art Deco revival had pervaded the general fashion consciousness in the early 1970s. Not only are several of the outfits featured specifically 1920s and 30s themed, but the influence even extended to the choice of typefaces. There was a major trend in this period for Art Nouveau fonts, an offshoot of the British vogue for Victoriana which emerged in the sixties.     The revival of interest in the fashions of the twenties and thirties can be traced back to Arthur Penn's 1967 film, and more specifically the costume design of Theadora Van Runkle, who made Faye Dunaway look sensationally good. Key to the look was Dunaway's beret, as Van Runkle, who won an Oscar for her first frilm as Costume Designer, explained: "The beter was the culmination of the silhoette. In it, she combined all the elements of elegance and chic. Without the beret, it would have been charming, but not the same."  The beret brought an air ...

The mini skirt seemed so cutting-edge and rebellious when they first started to emerge in the early 1960s - it is often credited by British designer Mary Quant, but it seems she was reacting to a trend that was in the ether at the time. By the end of the decade, as often happens in these matters, the trend began to swing in the opposite direction. The use of decimal coinage on this example indicates that it is from 1971 or later. The same hippyish fashion imperative that introduced Oxford Bags into the male wardrobe (as seen above worn by David Bowie on the rear cover to his 1971 album  Hunky Dory ) also brought the Maxi Skirt into existence. Skinny ties and the Italian-inspired lean silhouette which informed the Mod look for both men and women was supplanted by a more flowing, bohemian style. Yves Saint Laurent brought the look to the Paris catwalks in 1969 as part of a peasant look and pretty soon the knitting pattern manufacturers were on the case.