Help dating handmade dress and how to list it

VintageFray

VintageFray

Alumni
This dress is confusing me :puzzled: The bodice looks 50's to me, but the skirt fabric looks rather 70's to my eye. What does everyone think? The bodice is made from a black crepe type fabric, and the skirt from a chiffon with a very biba-esque type pattern. The dress has a metal back zip and looks to be completely handmade.







(Click on the photos to enlarge them)
 
The gold in the skirt looks like lurex which I think was introduced in the mid 1950s. I know what you mean about it looking like its from two periods. It could be late 1960s as there were bodices that were still constructed like that then, possibly even c. 1970 but I wouldn't think much after that. Just a hunch.
 
I can see why you're confused! At first glance, I would've thought late 60s to early 70s, as Jonathan points out. But when I looked at the close ups, I thought 50s due to the look of the crepe fabric of the bodice & the waist. The surplice wrap was popular in the late 60s up to around the mid 70s in sewing patterns (I made a few & I have a handmade dress in stock with one), but the waist treatment looks more 50s to me. Much of the lurex I've had has been 50s. Also, the surplice bodices were done often in knitted rather than wovens in the 70s for the drape and lack of ironing needed!

So, that probably doesn't help in the least, but you're not alone in questioning this! Could it be that someone made this in the later era from a pattern of the earlier? Just a thought, as that trend seems to be popular these days....
 
When I list it, I don’t want to mislead anyone, so do you think it will be safe to date it as sixties in the title and then explain in the description about it probably being late sixties in a fifties style? I think the idea that it was made from a fifties pattern in the late sixties/early seventies is a very logical and good one; I definitely never thought of it.
 
This looks like a hostess dress from the 1950's to me. The wrap bodice and metal zipper - yes, even the skirt fabric look's 50's. What is the seam construction like?

carol
 
If it's any help, I have a Geoffrey Beene mid to late 60s dress with a very, very similar lurex chiffon fabric.


Hollis
 
The metal zipper is no guarantee of date, because it's handmade. And the skirt fabric just doesn’t feel fifties to me if that makes sense. And I definitely do not think a bodice has been cut off a fifties dress and a different skirt been sewn on, because the dress fits together to well for that.
 
So... I think I’ll go with sixties in the title, although if it's in a fifties style, should I put fifties in the title and then put in the description about it being late sixties/early seventies? Ah, I don’t know! What does everyone think?
 
Oh gee...I don't know! Hopefully someone else will come by to help!

I usually err on the side of a later date, and explain that it could be earlier, rather than putting it earlier and then someone getting it and being disappointed that their sources, and being able to hold it in their hands, tell them that it is later.

But don't go by me!
 
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