origin of 'Electric Fittings' label? from 70's striped maxi dress

origin of \'Electric Fittings\' label? from 70\'s striped maxi dress

Hello,

I'm in England and I am aware that this is an american site but I am hoping you can help as I've not found such a good resource anywhere else! (if anyone knows of a british site please do let me know!)

In my growing collection of vintage garments I have this fabulous maxi dress with the following label, which as you can imagine is a nightmare to search for! Does anyone know of the company? at the moment I don't even know if it is british or other... there are no other labels on the dress, no zip either, no care symbols, it had a piece of elastic in the back... From the style I believe it is 70's, but what is amazing to me is the size! The 'vintage' size label stating 10 but the bust measures at 28"!!!

I bought it with the intention of putting a zip in the back - to both make it slightly larger and allow entry!

 

Picture of the full dress, the buttons are grey mother of pearl and the material is a thin and stiff man made fabric which doesn't appear to crease easily, it makes a scratchy noise against my nail. The folded label above said to be Dry Cleaned only.

 

yes, trying to rectify this but nothing appears after I have attached it, just as I did the first ?

 

you might need to resize your photo - try a width of 500 and see if that works

 

Firstly, the VFG is an international group, with many members in the UK, Canada, Australia and other countries than the US. Secondly, the labels do look '70s. Thirdly, sizes have changed over the years so it would be expected that a '70s dress with a size 10 label will be smaller than a modern size 10.

The bust size is much smaller than women's sizes of any era though - the smallest I've found has been 32 inches - so I wonder if your dress is a size 10 for a 10 year old child.

I look forward to photos!

Nicole

 

Thankyou I am finding the more international members as I work my way through the threads!

I have also found my one and only reference to Electric Fittings as a vintage clothing brand on a commercial website's blog, I shan't post it here but they had a vintage ad of two coats dated 1971, one of which was Electric fittings.

Yes my mother thought it might be a child's but I put it down because it didn't say 'age' 10 though maybe they didn't then...?

Struggling to resize photos as I only have paint :(. Will try to resurrect the photobucket account instead.

 

Success with the photo! Also managed to resize my avatar.

 

My avatar didn't work the first time but now I think it has...can you see it yet?

Yes I think I've found the smallest size 10 dress ever made...just my luck :P

 

Thankyou! I'm on the right

 

From a 1971 article on London boutiques:

"Just a few of the boutiques you hear most about are Esplanade, project of American Paul Young, and a little like the Drugstore; Ibbetson, famous for all kinds of leather and suedes; Electric Fittings, run by Serena Shaffer..."

 

If you Google:

London "Serena Shaffer"

the first hit should be pages from the book Front Row: Anna Wintour. If you click on that link and read that page and at least the next page, too, you will find information about the designer.

 

Now that I can see the dress, I agree that it's not a design for a child. I wonder if it was altered? Can you tell by the stitching inside if it's original or not? I'm still unconvinced that a 28" bust would be commercially made.

Due to time differences, you get members from different parts of the world posting at different times - eg, Linn (Hawaii) and I (Melbourne) aren't too far off and so we're frequently here at the same time, whilst many members I never get to share the forums with because I'm asleep when they're online! I wonder if that's why the VFG boards looked "American". Of course, we probably do have more US members than from any way else...

Nicole

 

Lynne thankyou ever so much for the information; I couldn't get the same page on Google, could you post the link? but that date links up perfectly with the ad I found. I was going to submit my label for the archive as its not an entry in there at the moment, can I put this info with it?

Hi Nicole, I'm ashamed to say I just assumed it was an american site because of the domain name and abundance of american labels in the archive! I'm glad it's an international group :D

I noticed the time differences last night, I got so absorbed I stayed up till 2am here!

Meanwhile I've had a closer look and the dress has indeed been altered- but not at the bust line! The length has been shortened by a few inches I think - the new seam is cut with pinking shears and bound with a zig zag stitch,

and the width of the skirt has been gradually taken in along the length of each side seam, however the original seam is intact until approx 5 inches below the bust.




Melanie (Mel)

 

Here is the link that should take you to the relevant page(s).

 

Thanks for the link (I wasn't on google 'books' before) but the pages you had don't seem to be up anymore, I get a page of reviews on the book but there's no preview pages available and everytime I do the search it doesn't find anything. Is this a service you sign up for?