When autumn arrives I feel like crochetting and taking the patchwork again. I bought in June some copies of old knit magazines which patiently wait for a cooler weather. It’s going to be my first serious contact with knit and vintage tailoring.
As every summer, last august I spent a few days at my parents’ and I found my mother crochetting a cap of wool. As she is a very practical and laborious woman, I quickly dropped the fact that it was to hot for crochetting, confident that there was a good reason to do it. What really called my attention was the magazine she took the pattern from. I have it right now in my hands and I am not able to find the year it was edited (something that really irritates me is the fact that it does not appear in a magazine). But I remember my grandmother made my sister and me a jacket using the design on the cover, which I wore from four to six years approximately. In other words, I was published in the early 1970s.
A while ago I tried to buy fashion magazines from the 1920s to 1960s in second-hand bookstores but it was imposible. They were and they are very demanded. Actually vintage is again in faxhion, so they are even more useful, because we can sew the designs that we like, with or without changes, and wear them regularly. This has led the editorials to publish books in which they recover original patterns from different times.
Surfing the Web you can have good time watching many interesting stuff, buying or simply laughing when you wonder what will future generations think about your current appearance. There are several web pages where buying patterns I particularly like: Past Patterns, Marquise, Old Patterns, costumes.org and crack of dawn Creations.
But what has really changed in recent years is the fact that we can buy copies of old magazines at very good price, thanks to technology in general and Internet in particular. You can purchase on-line and the seller sends you a PDF file. It is fast and cheap.
I bought these and other magazines from Tinpotlil. It costed $2.50 each.
This year, 1950s and 1970s fashion is in again by the hand of great designers such as Prada, who presented a gorgeous autumn/winter collection. I hope you dare to make a vintage dress or just a hat. Don’t let them stay only at the catwalks!