Confused~is this 30s/40s or a more recent repro??

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Noir*Boudoir

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Hi there,

I got such great help last time on a 'cusper', I hope you can all help out my weak and faltering synapses on this puzzling exhibit...

When I bought this elaborately home-tailored dress today, the feel and brightness of the fabric made me think it might be a recent (70s or 80s) reproduction of a 40s(?) dress using a vintage pattern.

Since looking at it in detail, however, I'm not so sure now...
So difficult to tell with these expertly-made non-commercial frocks!

featherprintfull.jpg

Here you get a close up of the bright, birdy fabric; like a light silk (but not, I think). Its not a weight and texture of rayon that I'm used to, but it does feel closest to more recent silk-imitating viscose dresses I've had. Somebody help me out on the fabric, it's the main thing that's confusing me!

This picture should show you the lovely gathering on the front and back (nothing is elasticated):
featherhalfdisplay.jpg


35, that's 35!, (less one missing) self-fabric buttons on a metallic base down the back, no zip at all. A flattering, radiating blousey shape from the inverted-V empire waist and a slightly less forgiving gathering in at the centre of the hips at the front, both decorated with self-fabric soutache (or is it only soutache if the decoration is in ribbon? help!)

Here is a montage of details. If some aren't very visible, I have individual pictures:

featherdetaildisplay.jpg


Some of the inside hems are pinked; most are very carefully hemmed with plenty of fabric to spare. No tape-finishing on anything that I can see though.

I'm just so undecided. No blatant features of the cut (say, underarm inserts, little shoulder pads etc.) date this hands-down. But on the other hand, it's so compellingly old-style even though the fabric is very fresh.

Now, finally, I bought this to sell. But, it fits me. And that central gathered seam makes for a nice long torso (rare but welcome). So if you supply some keywords too, it might help me from being ruined by keeping everything I find...

Very grateful for all help offered to a dunce!
 
Hi Lin,

I'm positive that is genuine vintage! Early 40s? I love it!
(I have a thing for these little novelty prints though).

The styling on this is super, and if it fits, you should
keep it - pick something from your closet that you are
tired of to sell! :D

Sue
 
Oh, thanks Sue!

Thank goodness, some authoritative certainty instead of my indecision. Somebody must have got hold of some decent fabric before rationing took hold?

About keeping/selling... I know you're right. I know I love the colour combination. I know I'd pay at least three times what I paid for this for something similar. But there was me trying to be business-like about my buys. :D

Hmm, let's see. Something - anything - else from my closet...
 
I agree with Sue on this one - as a very rough guide, I always think that retro never really went into the finer detailing you get with original vintage as it is made to suit the modern woman....................so to me the give away is the long buttoned opening and the piped trimming amongst other things.
 
Margaret, that is what I thought too - the scrolled piping
trim and the front detailing was definitely not 80s retro.

The fabric also has an 'older' look to it, but I can't really
articulate why I think this.

Lin, this may be a cusper, late 30s, early 40s. I would like to see what some of the others say, because I am NO way
an authorative voice! :D

Sue
 
Definitely a vinatge dress. The dressmaker details are the giveaway. Whoever made this was good and this was a special dress. The smocking, covered buttons and loops all took a lot of time. The trim and loops are called rouleau - that just refers to cording with a finished fabric cover, as opposed to cording that is covered so it has a seam allowance and can be set in a seam - which is piping. Now hold on - rouleau may be where the cord is removed after the fabric is sewn, and the fabric is just an empty tube.

Gotta check on that when the books come back.
Hollis
 
Another vote for real, and I am saying mid 40s because of the extra fabric in the centre of the front of the skirt. That is a feature you see on dress patterns of 1945/46. It's a clever way to create a narrow silhouette in the skirt, but still allowing free movement. All those piping details and button loops are typical of anything from the very late 30s to mid 40s but that novelty print is really typical of mid 40s as well. especially with the surrealistic influence of dismembered gloved hands and floating feathers. Not all dresses had shoulder pads, if you were broad shouldered you often took the pads out, and dresses often didn't have pads as they were worn with jackets and coats which did have pads. I have a crepe dress that I used in fashion shows all the time and I added pads to overstate the 40s silhouette and it worked great until in later shows when I matched it up with a jacket that worked nicely with it, but did have pads. When I first put the two together however, the pads were so much that the shoulders actually declined towards the neck! Once I took the pads out of the dress the whole outfit worked really well.
 
Hi Lin,

Now that you have all the 'why's' of why it's vintage (not repro) let me just say that it's very beautiful and it's no wonder you're reluctant to put it on the block.

Oops - not exactly what you wanted to hear, I suppose!

:)

Carolyn
 
That's such a lovely dress. I know I wouldn't be able to part with it if it were mine. When would you find another one with such exquisite detail and yummy fabric in your size?

Carol
 
Hee I notice that not one of us has offered Lin any
Keywords yet!

:)
 
I agree that it's indeed vintage. And it's adorable --- but of course everyone knows I am a sucker for these kinds of dresses. :P
 
Wow, thanks everyone for such a wealth of information, I'm learning such a lot from this dress!

Anne & Sue - your sense of the details being the clincher is interesting & very informative. It was when I really started looking at that piping on the front gathers that I began to think, 'Waa-ait a minute'. But my experience of this era is still limited, and I didn't trust the little alerts going off in my head.

By the way, getting all those buttons done up in the right order on your own is a killer - especially with the gathering disguising them - both physically (shoulder contortion anyone?) and concentration-wise. But they're the only way of getting that close-hipped cut on without a zip (and metal zippers became scarce in wartime, right?)

Hollis - thanks for looking into the terminology; again, that kind of detail is reaching well beyond my expertise. I really should take a dress-making course...

Jonathan - that's fascinating info on the shape variations and the dating of that skirt style. You're right, it is pretty cunning - from the way this hung on the hanger I would never have thought there'd be enough room for me in it! It swings and hangs really well, while keeping a sleeker tailored profile for the back. The light fabric and simply cut sleeves would take a good short jacket. Perhaps if we see this as a kind of transitional season / day-to-evening print, it would have been made with the need to pair with sweater or jacket in mind.

>that novelty print is really typical of mid 40s as well

This is particularly interesting, the question of the fabric date. I don't know why I had such a mental block about whether it could be old at first - possibly because I don't usually see this quality fabric in this condition... Even realising it was old, the bad modern social historian in me was trying to imagine some scenario by which a skilled dressmaker had stashed a couple of nice bolts in 1939, enough to not worry about making a long-waisted dress with so many pleats and gathers, not to mention the inch-eating self-fabric features, a few years later. Now in the mid-40s, the maker must have had someone abroad sending her the raw material (if it wasn't made abroad in the first place) or a seriously magical way with the ration coupons.

Finally, heartfelt thanks for everyone's restraint in not egging me on to sell this! It's a real rarity for me to come across 40s dresses around here that aren't a) faded black and b) terribly expensive. I really should count my blessings and set aside any mercenary instincts for this one. After much thought, I'm hovering between offloading one of two peachy-cream dresses in 'exchange' for this one (I'm learning the hard way that my complexion doesn't like that shade).

So all should be right with the world, and they lived happily ever after (especially with a 40s club night event coming up...)
(trips into the sunset wearing dress)
L :D
 
THe dress would conform to wartime fabric constrictions. short hemline, short sleeves, no collar. The extra fabric in the draping and pleating are minimal in taking up fabric, and in the U.S. the fabric shortage is far less strict than Europe, or even Canada. THe U.S. had enough factories producing cotton and rayon that weren't required to take on military contracts to keep the fabric supplies up for civilian consumption. Europe didn't have the same resources (rayon's raw material being wood pulp and cotton being imported from India, Egypt or the U.S.) Those factories that did make textiles were often turned into wartime manufacturing in Europe so their civilian textile production was limited. THe lack of a zipper is not crucial in the U.S., although zippers are limited. European dresses however rarely had zippers until the very late 40s. Men's trousers in the U.S. usually have zippers by the late 40s but often Euroepan trousers don't include them until mid 50s, and sometimes not even until the 60s!
 
Ah, Jonathan, but I'm assuming it is a European dress, since I'm in the UK! (peeks at side bar, whoops, missed it off the profile, sorry). But yes, I see what you mean about it being an economical shape overall. My other non-US purchased 40s dress fastens up the side with hooks & loops, not even buttons.

When thinking about these wartime dates, I always have my parents' dire rationing stories echoing around my head, so I probably have an exaggerated tendency to discount the years 1940-45 as manufacturing possibilities.

I wonder whether these kind of wonderfully detailed pleats and drapes (also present on my other UK 40s frock) were a way of rising to the challenge of creating feminine styles with the minimum of expensive ornament?

Ever more intrigued,
L
 
ps. whoops, sorry, didn't read properly who contributed earlier on - thanks Margaret!
 
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