Hello everyone! I am a new member, and have spent the better part of the last two days devouring all the useful and beautiful content on this site - thank you for sharing your expertise so generously! I recently bought a dress with pointy collars that looked very 1940s to my untrained eye, but the condition and the make of it tell me it may be younger - a late take on 40s to 50s. The label says Pariser Chic Wien, and I wasn't able to find anything about it online, aside from an old eBay listing of a skirt with a metal zipper. There is no care label, only the size 38. The dress is fully lined in a viscose-type slip, has very nice violet embroidery that looks like it was done by a machine. It has a long back zipper down the back, which is plastic and made by YKK, but it is the only part of the dress done with a topstitch (also slightly misaligned at the waist). Regarding the stitches, the hemline is done with something that looks like sloppy basting, which tells me it might have been shortened. The sleeve edges are done with a more careful invisible stitch. The underdress looks like it was done with pinking shears, but also like there is a zigzaggy seam on top of it. It is obvious that the dress is from Austria, and as I am based in Serbia, it makes sense for it to have ended up here. I really hope you will be able to tell me what this looks like to you, is it a more recent item or did I guess correctly, what does the material look like to you, and help me solve this mystery! Thank you so much! I tried to post the photos several times but there was an error, so I put them in the next comment!
and here is the only other item from the same brand I managed to find: https://www.ebay.de/itm/Teenage-Gir...524&brand=CHIC&_trksid=p2334524.c100667.m2042
Very pretty! I go to Vienna a lot and do a lot of second hand shopping there, but I've never seen that label before. I think the dress is 1970s, doing 1940s style. What are the bust and waist measurements? This may also give an indication of dating together with the size 38.
Thank you for your thorough description and images. It really helps us to help you. I read size 36 on the size label. I also think it is 1970's. The fabric may be polyester; a burn test would tell you. I agree, it may have been shortened; the proportions seem a little off. Becoming dress. Marian
Thank you! Yes, that makes sense to me, too. The dress is tiny, feels smaller than modern-day European 38, but the label actually says 36, so that should be about right. The waist measures 66cm / 26 inches and the bust is 80 cm / 31 inches, but it was a bit harder to measure the bust by myself, so there might be an extra centimeter or two there.
Ooops - that was a typo on my side, I meant 36. The measurements you gave make sense for the 1970s for a size 36 from Austria or Germany when I think of the vintage sewing patterns I sell. I don't think they even had size 36 in the 1940s... I had a 1940s dress with a label from Vienna that was marked size 40 and fit me, that would have been not much bigger than your dress, and that's the earliest that I've found something with the sizing system we now think as common in Europe (for the 1930s I've so far only seen sizing with Roman Numerals, if a size number was given). As the decades went by, they got smaller - what was a 38 would now be a 34 and so on.
