Knitters of Yore

  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...

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...