You all know my "thing" for vintage Ringier patterns. Probably the biggest publishing company in Switzerland, they also produced sewing patterns from at least the 1930s to the 1970s. There's no information to be found about them online, but one of the first vintage patterns I ever bought was a Ringier and I have acquired a lot of them since I've been selling vintage patterns online, so I have been trying to find out as much about them as I can. I have a nice collection of their "Journal de mode" - as I understand it, these pattern magazines were published bi-annually and sent out to subscribers of certain Ringier magazines (as a subscriber, you could buy the patterns at a discount). They have about 40 pages and show the "best" stuff - 90% women's wear, with some childrens patterns and about a page of patterns for "useful" basics like aprons or slips. But I have had patterns that I've noticed were never shown in the magazines - menswear, toys etc. Well, I have now found a better insight into what Ringier really offered! A seller from which I have bought several of the magazines some time ago had a whole Ringier catalog listed - of course I had to have that. I picked it up from the post office today and was just blown away! At first I was suprised at the weight of the parcel - turns out the full catalog, that was probably made for use in stores, is 132 pages - so more than triple of the magazine! Also made for bi-annual publication. What I got here is the spring-summer 1953 catalog. Having the magazine of the same date as well made it for a good comparison. The catalog has everything really, lots more women's wear, more bridal and evening, pages of aprons and lingerie, sportswear, anything for babies and children, a good selection of menswear, basics, accessories, toys, doll clothes... there's nothing that Ringier didn't have a pattern for! The first pages with all the day dress patterns were also in the magazine and made up about half of that. Maternity patterns - almost never to be found in the normal magazines Lots more envening and bridal patterns - these are super rare to find, so it's nice to know that they were around. Just blouses! So much sportswear! These accessories and basics patterns were nevern shown in the magazines. I have actually had the elephant and giraffe patterns. The doll and dog on the top left were sort of the mascots of the the publishing company - Ringgi and Zofi (as in Ringier was located in the town of Zofingen). Ringier published children's books with their adventures. And here's the patterns to make them as toys - a clever bit of cross-marketing!
I think that most of these catalogs and magazines probably went that way... I never have any competition for buying these when I find them in online auctions. They are such a great resource!
By looking through one of the other magazines, I saw that some patterns were of course also carried over from the previous year - some of those evening and wedding gowns are already shown in the spring/summer 1952 magazine. That gives me a much better idea of how they worked. I knew that some of the "basics" patterns were carried over, but some of the high fashion ones too.
