Knitters of Yore

The Empire Line was everywhere in the sixties. It was a style which was inspired by the fashions of the First French Empire, which lasted from 1804 to 1815, which featured a very high waistline, just under the bust, with a long, loose-fitting skirt underneath. This could be very flattering, which is possibly why designers come back to it perennially.    The popularity of Jane Austen movie and TV adaptations over the last few decades have helped the process enormously. Right is a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow in the 1996 movie adaptation of Emma , wearing a good example of an Empire Line dress (which is not a term which would have been used in the 19th Century). Here is the ultimate fashion influencer of the First Empire, the Empress Josephine, in a 1805 portrait by Pierre- Paul Prud’hon, wearing what we now call an Empire Line dress. In the sixties designers used the high waistline but with a more fitted skirt, such as in this 1960s knitting pattern from Robin which I picked up...

  Knowing I have an interest in such things, people sometimes offer me their old knitting patterns before they end up at the charity shop, or the local recycling centre. Occasionally a gen turns up, and such was the case with this Woman's Weekly Chunky Wool Designs For All booklet from what looks like the late 1940s or early 1950s. The fabulous skinny-rib sweater designs were the first things to catch me eye, but then I noticed the strikingly attractive model on page 5 wearing a V-neck cardigan. This was none other than Hazel Court, the Birmingham-born actress who gained lasting cult fame in horror films such as Hammers The Curse of Frankenstein and Quatermass and the Pit , and Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe adaptation The Masque of the Red Death. Court moved to Hollywood in the mid-1960s and turned up in various TV shows before returning from acting in the mid-1970s. But before her years as a horror-movie star, Miss Court, rather in the manner of a female Roger Moore, suppleme...