A Forgotten History of Fashion

Blogs such as this one could easily give the reader an impression that the world of knitting is and was always terminally unfashionable. This is actually quite unfair and ignores a history now becoming forgotten of how people outside the wealthy few in metropolitan centres managed to follow fashionable trends. If you lived in a mining town in North Yorkshire, say, you didn't have a branch of Biba or Mary Quant nearby, even if you had enough money to shop there.  A lot of people either worked, or had families who worked, in the textile industries. One lady I was discussing this blog with says that she could show a picture of a dress to her mum, who could then make it. Her uncle was a pattern cutter who could see an item of clothing worn in a film and recreate it from memory. For those without that level of professional skill, there was the knitting magazine.

There were three main fashionable knitting magazines in the UK in the 1960s and 70s. Knitting Pattern company Paton and Baldwin published Fashion Knits, which offered readers the chance to emulate the more fashionable end of the high street stores at a fraction of the price.



Major fashion publisher Conde Nast had been publishing Vogue Knitting since 1932, and the copy above from 1965 shows that the magazine really was at the forefront of fashion. Alas, Vogue Knitting closed down in 1969, though it was revived by a new publisher 13 years later and survives to this day.


Stitchcraft was another Paton and Baldwins magazine, but had been running since 1932 and by the time the issue above was published in August 1967 was actually published by Conde Nast. The magazine had successfully reinvented itself over the years and by this time was offering bang-up-to-date styles and vintage editions of Stitchcraft were what first got me into collecting knitting publications. Sadly the magazine ceased publication in 1982.

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