#anAWWyear - June 1948: Fashion

It won't take even a lot of attention to notice that I skipped April and May. I could write out a long list of excuses, but I will simply say sorry and launch straight into June with a short post on fashion. June wasn't a very inspiring month, sadly.  Lots of very high-fashion dressed which made little favourable impression on me.

As June in Australia is winter, there are quite a few coats featured, but I included so many coats in my March post that it was getting a bit repetitive. I am including this image from an advertisement, though, as I adore the colour combination and the collar.

Detail from a Cadbury's Bourn-vita advertisement,
Australian Women's Weekly, June 12 1948, p 16

The green of the coat with the pink of the hat and gloves is perfectly suiting my mood at the moment. Also I swear someone in my life has a collar similar to that, but I cannot recall who!
I'm also appreciating this image for the surrounding chorus of people with colds. Going outside at the moment is exactly like that, although I don't have her glowing aura of health to surround me. I just side-eye all the coughing people.

Looking at clothes - whether at vintage images in the AWW or modern pieces in the shops - can be a strange experience (for me at least, and I assume others have the same feelings) because my imagined body and life have some disconnect with reality.

I'm still set on making something with a plaid/check - but do you have any idea how hard I'm finding it getting one with no red or black in it? Spoilers: quite hard  - and so I was caught by this image in the Fashion Patterns service.

Detail from Fashion Patterns service advertisement
Australian Women's Weekly, June 19 1948, p 39

Lots of features I like - the contrast collar and cuffs, an open neck, etc, not to mention the cute little boy in overalls next to her.  I was in a hazy dream world where I found a lovely green/brown check and made such an outfit and the four-year-old wasn't complaining that his dapper dungarees were 'incomfortable'.  But the reality is that even if I made that outfit, it wouldn't look like that.  

With modern clothes there are an increasing number of retailers using plus size models in their images, and there is a wonderful world of plus sized fashion bloggers, sewing communities and others that means that there are images out there of women my body type in clothes I might consider wearing.  For vintage clothes it is trickier, particularly in media rather than personal photos. So the occasional pictures of styles for larger women, as in this advertisement ('larger fittings', 'mature styles', 'matrons', 'older women' - all of these can be code) are a nice if dream-bubble-bursting find. 

Detail of Grace Bros advertisement
Australian Women's Weekly, June 19 1948, p 30.

I actually like the blue - the sort-of cross over on the bodice, the way the waist line isn't a straight line, and the shoulder shirring helping with bust shaping. I don't know that I would want to make it though - shirring isn't my favourite thing to sew!