Time for Bed...


Apparently bed capes were once a thing. This young lady is either about to go to bed with her Horlicks or head out to fight crime in a knitted superhero costume.

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Taking the New Look from the Catwalk to the High Street

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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...
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The Mighty Maxi

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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.   
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A Forgotten History of Fashion

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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 B...
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