Date help on german patterns

scillas

scillas

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Hi everyone - and merry christmass / happy holidays to you all :drinkingtoast:

Can you help me dating these 2 pattern sheets?
As you can probably see, they are for masquerade costumes. The photos show most of the front of them, but they are a bit large for my scanner.
They are both just one folded sheet of paper - so each have 4 pages.
The print is a rather bad quality, with just red and black, paper also.
On both of them, it says that the publisher is Verlag Otto Beyer Leipzig/Berlin – well, on the first (oldest, I guess) it says exactly that, on the second it reads: "Beyer Verlag Leipzig-Berlin".

Thanks so much!
Sille in Denmark
 
no. 2

- greetings from Denmark, where we had a white Christmass for the first time in 16 years :christmastree:
 
Hi Scillias -

My initial reaction is that these patterns are mid-late '30's. The hairstyles and the makeup and the costumes themselves remind me of that era. The male in the second pattern seems to be wearing an Apache dancer type of costume - the women in the flared trousers reminds me of Marlene Dietrich. Could be a little later but that's what I think.

Linn
 
Hi Linn

Thank you for your answer. I can see the Marlene-thing, also in some of the other customes. And hair-do's.
I had the patterens for a while, but never really took a closer look until now.
And then what caught my interest now was the description of the some of the customes – there's a male cutome that I thought "gipsy custome" off right away, but it is described as "neapolitan" ... (I'll try to upload it.)
With the mid-late thirties dating, I wonder if that could be because of the political situation/censorship in Germany at that time ... or perhaps it's just my imagination wandering a little too far, maybe because I don't know what a real neapolitan custome is supposed to look like... ;-)
Thanks again –
Sille /scillas
 
neopolitan.jpg
this gentleman...

Sille
 
This last image is definitely '30's. The gentleman in the lower right may be a character in an opera. Neopolitan refers to someone from Naples.

They are great!

Linn
 
Thanks, you got a point, I think: they all look kind of theatrical.
Perhaps the patterns were intended for amateur theater shows or something along that line.
But I couldn't help wondering about the ethnic thing as there are quite some "foreign nationality" costumes.
There is one childrens's indian costume, but otherwise there's a chinese and a japanese costume, a spanish, an italian, a kroatian, but nothing more "ethnic" than that. Africa is featured as a pattern on the skirt of a colonial costume.
Perhaps not because of specific German thing, but just as a reflection of a pre-globalized and Imperial world.

Yes, and I think they are great drawings too– really admire the skills of people who made that kind of artwork – being someone in that same line off buisness and depending very much on others tools than just pencils and pens.
(And I just can't help picking it up when I come across this kind of stuff ;-))
 
What fascinating documents, Scillas, especially given their time and provenance!

'Foreign' costumes were always a big part of fancy dress and I think you're right that its not specifically German. I used to have an English 1920s costume catalogue (which I just can't find anywhere :powwows: ) that had plenty of national costumes.

However there was a move in Germany at that time towards a 'real' Germany, drawing on traditional German dress. Items such as dirndl skirts, 'peasant' blouses and those laced bodices were considered very patriotic and became fashionable. It looks like there is something similar in your second picture.

I have a photograph taken in Freiburg in 1937 which shows women wearing something similar - and has a very interesting and heated discussion in the comments!:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevira/36214839/

Sarah
 
The German trachten (folk costume) is based on an Alp style of traditional dress, so you find similar styles of folk dress from the Italian Tyrol, Austria, Switzerland and Southern Germany (Bavaria) in and around Munich. The dress illustrated is shown with a herchief, which I think is a very Italian element of the outfit. The Bavarian trachten used hats, not kerchiefs.
 
I knew that name rang a bell!

I have four issues of "Beyers Monatsblatt für Handarbeit und Wäsche" (Beyers monthly magazine for crafts and clothing) from 1936-37, by the same publisher :spin: .

They show more "everyday" pieces though, and none of them is from a month where fancy-dress balls would have been a thing, so nothing on that.

Certain areas in Germany (think Cologne) have a strong carnival tradition, the high time for this would be February/March. As it says "Maskenblatt", I would guess these patters were aimed at people wanting to dress up for carnival. Maske simply means mask.

I was able to read a teensy bit of the text on the second picture - that outfit on the left is called "Bäuerin" - farmer's wife. As Jonathan pointed out, in Germany they mostly wear hats with their traditional outfits (and here in Switzerland it's strang head-dresses... :spin: ).
The man's costume is supposed to be some kind of seaman from Hamburg, the one on the right - can't read a thing. That white headdress looks a teensy bit like a tradtional Dutch headdress to me, but I might be wrong.

I have other German 1940s home-sewing magazines (not by Beyer), and yes, there's a lot of dirndl-style fashions there (and other things that certainly remind one of the Nazi-era), but the magazines from 1936/37 do not yet put such an emphasis on these things - to be honest, they're pretty harmless.
I guess up to a certain point in the 30s, people probably celebrated their carnival pretty normally and dressed up as all sorts of things...

Karin
 
Thanks for all your great comments and help with dating – and sorry for my late reply.

Yes, you are right: It's all pretty harmless. Saw some later (wartime) issues off Beyer fashion magazines on Ebay, though, and interestingly, the typography on he cover was changed to the nazi/gothic type of letters on the cover off those issues.

@ Midge – carnival – yes off cause !!! Thanks for pointing that out – I've lived in Holland for some years where carnival is quite a big thing too, so I perhaps should have been able to figure that one out myself – that must absolutely be the thing.

I just found some other– newer – Beyer Magazines from 1957 – now with complete recipes and print pattern – and other nice 50s art work – thought I'd just share a a scan of that with you as a nice and peacefull post-war post scriptum to this thread..

Thanks again!

Sille.
 
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