1950's Fashion - Fully Fashioned Stockings

1950's Fashion - Fully Fashioned Stockings

There's a marvellous site called Stockings HQ
They also run a forum where folk submit their thoughts on the glamour of stockings - in particular - fully fashioned stockings.
Here's one quote :
I was always fascinated in the fifties when women would dress elegantly no matter the weather, regardless of cold and snow. I'd love to see them in their calf-length dainty heeled boots, their seamed nyloned legs protruding above. Many wore fur coats. But, there are still women who INSIST on wearing nylons, despite the snowiest, coldest conditions. Needless to say I love these women. To hell with our oh-so-practical, unfashionable, era

1930's Fashion - The invention of Nylon Stockings !

1930's Fashion - The invention of Nylon Stockings !

On October 27, 1938, Charles Stine, a vice president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Inc., announced that nylon had been invented. He unveiled the world's first synthetic fiber not to a scientific society but to three thousand women's club members gathered at the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair for the New York Herald Tribune's Eighth Annual Forum on Current Problems. He spoke in a session entitled "We Enter the World of Tomorrow" which was keyed to the theme of the forthcoming fair, the World of Tomorrow.
Images Courtesy of Hagley Museum and Library.
Wallace Hume Carothers in his Du Pont lab in
Wilmington, DE.

In the middle of Stine's talk, he proclaimed: "To this audience . . . I am making the first announcement of a brand new chemical textile fiber. This textile fiber is the first man-made organic textile fiber prepared wholly from new materials from the mineral kingdom. I refer to the fiber produced from nylon. . . . Though wholly fabricated from such common raw materials as coal, water, and air, nylon can be fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as a spider's web, yet more elastic than any of the common natural fibers."

Thinking that "strong as steel" meant indestructible stockings, the women at the forum burst into applause.
Read the full story here at The Nylon Drama - gripping stuff !

1930's Fashion - How to be Chic on a low income

1930's Fashion - How to be Chic on a low income !

A woman can dress within her income and be chic !
almost no matter how small that income may be
Get into sewing ! Though getting patterns isnt as popular as it used to be -there are some
brilliant sites for getting you started !
I adore Vintage Patterns !
It contains tons of links to shop sites and somne wonderful imagery of old patterns ranging from the 1920's to the 1960's !

Vintage 1940's Makeup Tutorial - Beauty Sleep

Continuing in our gripping series of 1940's makeup tutorials from Miss Ratherly Stern,here we have that often forgotten aid to feminine grace - the beauty sleep.

Vintage 1940's makeup tutorial - You Will Be Prettier !

Another snippet from our vintage 1940's makeup and beauty tutorial courtesy of the Prelinger archive.This one shows ugly betty transform into pretty polly.

Hilarious example of old fashioned mores.

But has anything really changed ?

1940's Fashion - Handbags

1940's Fashion and The Handbag

Found these charming images from a russian site called Vintage Story

The war saw the smooth contours of the 1930s fashion change to a more military look. Bags became larger, squarer, and more practical, reflecting a desire to appear self-sufficient. As zippers, mirrors, and leather became scarce, designers turned to wood or plastic for frames and employed new synthetics such as rayon. The drawstring bag reappeared and was often homemade. Bags in Great Britain were made both to carry gas masks and to match an outfit. In France and America, as more women entered the workforce, they turned to shoulder bags (Foster 1982). After the war, the shoulder bag was relegated to country and travel features until its revival in the 1970s (Wilcox 1999).

1930's Depression Fashion - Hemlines go down with the dollar

1930's Depression Fashion - Hemlines go down with the dollar !

At the beginning of 1930, women’s hemlines fell all the way down to the ankle,
their necklines became lowered, and their torsos were under their shoulders.
In the 1930s, skirts were also in mode.
Patterns from Vogue and McCalls became extremely popular,
encouraging home industry among young women.
Upper skirt yokes werefashionable ,which showed a v shape going
from one hip to the center of the yoke to the other hip.