Jackie Kennedy Style

Wouldn't we all just want to copy Jackie O's style just once? Sometimes I find a pattern that is so Jackie, I want to swoon.

I have a lot of back stock and have no idea how this one didn't get put in my shop before now.  You can find it here.The cape with the front button and notched collar just send me. And anytime I see a pillbox hat, I think of Jackie Kennedy's style in the White House. I was a very impressionable preteen and teen while she was the First Lady. Her grace and fashion sense will always be unequaled for me regardless of who wins presidential elections from now on.

What were some of the elements of her style? Silhouette for one thing. Slim, column dresses always make me think of her. Accessories like short gloves and those glorious pillbox hats, and a string of pearls on a black dress always bring her back to me.

And since we're talking about patterns, it is amusing to me how one person can define an era. When you look at pattern envelopes, you often find one person's look copied. There are a ton of patterns from the early sixties that remind me either of Jackie or Audrey Hepburn. There's also a time when a lot of women on pattern envelopes looked like Marlo Thomas. She even had her own line of clothing. Pattern companies weren't stupid. They knew that they could sell patterns if they sold you the dream of looking like a fashion icon.

Christmas Dresses

I was bopping along the highway on my way to a newspaper assignment when "Jingle Bell Rock" came on the radio. Not any newer cheesy version but the original with Bobby Helms. And what came back rushing to my mind was the dress my mother made me for the Christmas party with my social club called "Belle Jeunesse" in junior high. It looked something like this pattern in my Etsy shop.

The whole idea of a social club for middle schoolers is pretty ludicrous. Not many boys that age want to dance. But all us girls went to the dances with high hopes of romance. The dress was red chiffon layered over red taffeta and it had a full skirt and a long drape over one shoulder. I felt like about a million and a half bucks. And I remember my mom having fits cording the waistline. It was beautiful.

I remember another Christmas dress which I had mom copy from a Seventeen magazine. It was fuchsia with a green band around the hem and wide sleeves. Very, very mod!

I guess it's no surprise I ended up being a seamstress and pattern lover if some of my most vivid memories of events are tied up with the clothes that I wore!

Ah, The Sixties and Seventies

If you want to date a 1960s pattern, just look at the hem length. Look at this gorgeous Advance pattern from the early 1960s. The model's knees are covered! As the sixties progressed upward into the 1970s, so did the hemlines. First short skirts, then miniskirts, then microminis. At the very end of this trend, patterns had dresses with a shorts pattern added in since the dresses barely covered the panty line.

When I got married, skirts had already reached their highest and were on their way down in a dramatic way. Suddenly maxi coats and skirts were all the rage. I made a double-breasted plaid maxi coat with flannel lining. It was quite a project but I was really too tiny to find a coat that fit in the stores. And I was determined to have something in the new more fashionable length.

And really that was the beginning of a new era when women could choose the length of their skirts. My mother remembers how suddenly the skirt length dropped after World War II and how her mother added contrast hems to her pink suit that went in her trousseau. And in the sixties it was painful to watch older ladies having to choose between being stylish and showing off sometimes chubby knees and thighs or to go longer and look dowdy.

Today it's all good. If you want to wear a micromini, you can. And if you choose to put your skirts at a more modest length as in this Advance pattern, you can do that too. And if you want to wear skirts that brush the ankle, you can do that too. I hope that we never go back to the day when hem lengths were strictly dictated by fashion.

Mikey Likes It

I went to Lenox, PA yesterday. It's in the Endless Mountains, about fifteen miles north of Scranton. Absolutely beautiful. Stunning mountain views, cool air, and a ride with the top down in the convertible. What could be better?

Picking up more than 100 old patterns, that's what. I went up there to pick up a bunch of older patterns from the 60s and 70s. This was one of the real prizes in the lot. A mail order pattern from the mid-sixties, I'm guessing. The sizing dates it to before 1967 because that's when pattern sizes changed for the last time. This could be Anne Adams or a Marian Martin. It could also be Pattern Service. But without the mailing envelope, I can't tell.

Isn't this gorgeous? There's a fabric stay underneath the front part of the dress to give it more shape. It has a side zipper so that that gorgeous collar doesn't get messed up.

I showed some of the patterns to Michael last night. He liked this one. As always, if he likes it, it sells right away. This one sold in minutes. I might ask him tonight if he'd go through the lot tonight and pick out his faves. Maybe after a really good dinner...