Hats from the Ladies’ Home Journal, 1936

Cover of the Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1936.

The Ladies Home Journal offered advice on chic hats and wardrobe coordination in its October issue, but it also offered a hat pattern — for three cents — for ladies who might want to make their own summer sun hat out of a bandana.

Calico Madcaps, 1936

” Calico Madcaps” from Ladies’ Home Journal pattern No. 1282, August 1936.

“Calico Madcaps” to make from bandanas; LHJ pattern No. 1282, Aug. 1936.

“Madcaps” designed by Marian Hagen Scherff, LHJ, Aug. 1936. “The theme for this year’s play clothes is American, so into your sunbonnet and slacks and off to the shore!”

My dermatologist would approve of those wide brims. [A lesson learned the hard way:  don’t forget to put sunscreen on the tops of your ears. Or wear a hat, not just a visor.] The squarish bonnet that shades the sides of the face would cut down on glare (and peripheral vision.) The cloche-like hat with turned-back brim looks more twenties than thirties, but it echoes this hat being worn the same year:

Two off-the-face hats, 1936.

The hat on the right is from an ad in Woman’s Home Companion, November, 1936.

Hats with Coats, October 1936

“Watch Your Headline over the Collar of Your Coat.” Fashion advice from Ladies’ Home Journal, Oct. 1936.

In order to show the hats in detail, I’ve divided these two illustrations into four.

Top Left:

“Red-brown felt hat, brown velvet applied bow . . . . The new high crown with curling feather.” LHJ, Oct. 1936.

The red-brown felt is worn with a “red-fox-collared green cape.”The red high-crowned felt hat is worn with a gray Persian lamb coat.

Top Right:

Left, a “Brown brimmed hat with blue ribbon,” Right, “Bright quills on a green felt hat with swooping brim.” LHJ, Oct. 1936.

“Upstanding collar on a leopard coat suggests a brown brimmed hat with blue ribbon. . . . Bright green quills on a green felt with swooping brim — above a coat of beaver-like fur.” [At least “beaver-like” fur acknowledges that not many women would be buying leopard in the depths of the Great Depression. But fashion is always about fantasy.] 

Bottom left:

Left, a “black corded-felt deep turban;” center, a “raspberry velours toque with flying birds;” right, a “black velvet deep toque with feathers.” LHJ, Oct. 1936.

“A bright tweed coat with Persian-lamb collar takes a black corded-felt deep turban. . . . Raspberry velours toque with flying birds tops a silver kidskin tuxedo collar coat. . . . Black velvet deep toque with feathers — with black kidskin coat, almost collarless.”

The words “toque” and “turban” seem to be used loosely; the “black corded-felt turban” above does not have the wrapped or draped look of the green ” velvet turban” below.

Bottom right:

Left, “black velvet deep toque with feathers;” center, a “velvet turban with quill and veil;” right, “a rust felt with high crown and tricorn brim.”LHJ, Oct. 1936.

Center: “Black Persian coat with turnover collar takes a velvet turban with quill and veil. . . . ” Right, “A rust felt with high crown and tricorn brim tops a black Alaska-seal swagger coat.”

You’ve probably noticed that some of these hats give a nod to Elsa Schiaparelli.

I can’t resist showing a couple of hats from an ad for Dodge cars:

Fashion reporter endorsing a car. Dodge ad, Woman’s Home Companion, January 1936.

Lilly Dache hat from an advertisement for Dodge cars. WHC, January 1936.

“Big Money,” indeed. As Elsa Lanchester once said of a fellow actress, “She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, or anywhere else, either.”

 

Fashion Illustration vs Fashion Reality, 1934

In the 1930s, some magazines that sold patterns, like Butterick’s Delineator, tried to modernize by running more photographs and fewer drawings of their products. Sometimes the collision between the unrealistic “fashion figure” of the early thirties — impossibly long, impossibly hipless — and the way the clothes would look on a real woman was pretty jarring.

Tailored Daytime Dresses, Butterick patterns 5914 & 5907. Oct. 1934. From The Delineator. Illustrator is Myrtle Lages or Lageo.

Butterick evening dress, No. 5913, on left, is “after Mainbocher.” Sizes 12 to 20, 30″ to 44″. The Delineator, Oct. 1934. These floor length dresses make the models look taller and thinner, but not much like the illustrations.

The evening gown models in the photograph do not have the narrow waists or exceptionally long thighs of those in the drawing, although they do have the sense not to stand “flat on” to the camera.  (Fashion tip: a slenderizing vertical belt buckle, like the rhinestone one on the left, draws our eyes to the center of the body rather than its width. Even so, her waist still looks thick.) Pattern companies were well aware that a woman’s hips are usually larger than her bust or shoulders; they just didn’t draw them that way.

This juxtaposition of a fashion drawing and a pretty, live model shows how impossible the ideal was:

Butterick coat pattern No. 5899 and Butterick tunic dress pattern 5882. Oct. 1934, The Delineator magazine.

In this particular layout, the photographic model is wearing the same hat as the drawn one — as if to suggest that the coat illustration was true to life.

Three views of the black felt feathered hat by Lilly Dache. Oct 1934.

The dress and coat below appeared in the same article, and showed another feathered hat in a photograph and in two drawings beside it. The Lilly Daché hat fares better than the live model.

“The famous butcher boy dress” (Butterick pattern No. 5609) and coat pattern 5901. October 1934, The Delineator.

“A belted and buttoned coat of black tweed flecked with rose, with scarf collar and cuffs of Hudson seal and the famous butcher boy dress of Howlett and Hackmeyer ashes-of-roses velveteen — worn with black fabric beret, kid bag, kid and suede oxfords, and beige suede gloves. Coat and dress are designed for Junior Miss sizes 12 to 20, 30 to 38 [inches bust.]”

Butterick pattern #5854, “after Lyolene.” September 1934, The Delineator. Photo by Arthur O’Neill.

The model in this brown tweed plaid dress is wearing low-heeled shoes, which make it even more necessary for her to turn her hips to one side and conceal their width with her hands and purse. Those gigantic cuffs are a distraction, but the large collars of the 1930s are very useful in balancing a woman’s hips with a mass of lighter color to draw our eyes up toward the face and to widen the shoulders.

Three Butterick dress patterns from September 1934. From left, Nos. 5854, 5852, and 5874. The Delineator. The pose of the figure in green is very similar to the live model’s, who looks thick-waisted by comparison. The vertical line of buttons running all the way down the back of the black dress is very slenderizing. (But probably not nice to sit on!)

Of course, by 1934 shoulder pads were also in use to ensure that women’s shoulders looked wider than their hips, and shoulder pads got progressively bigger throughout the 1930s.

The Rule of Thumb

In case you haven’t studied both fashion illustration and life drawing (drawing from a live, nude model) — artists, as distinct from fashion illustrators, start with the fact that a normal human being is usually about seven or seven and a half “heads” high.   That is, if you hold out your arm with a pencil or brush in it and use your thumb to measure off the height of the model’s head, that “head” becomes the unit of measurement for the rest of the body. To make the three dimensional body look graceful when reduced to two dimensions, artists usually elongate the legs a little, so ‘realistic’ figure drawings are based on an eight head figure:

An eight head figure from Walt Reed’s figure drawing book, The Figure.

On a standing model, the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the torso is about four heads, and so is the distance from there to the heel. The legs equal half the body. I love this memorable illustration from Jack Hamm’s book, Drawing the Head and Figure:

Jack Hamm’s version of the “eight head figure.” The figure on the right measures seven and a half heads. From Drawing the Head and Figure.

Most of the added length is in the leg.  You can see how the eight head figure (AC) on the left compares with a more truthful — but chunky looking — seven-and-a half head figure (BD) on the right.

But fashion illustrations usually start at “nine heads” and “editorial” fashion illustrations are often eleven heads tall. There is no way an average woman, (5′ 4″ to 5′ 8″) with the measurements a pattern company gives as normally proportioned (say, 36-28-38) can ever look like the drawing on the front of the pattern envelope. That is why models kept getting taller and thinner; only a very tall, thin person can come close to matching the illustrated ideal.

You can see that the lower part of the body in these fashion illustrations is much more than half of the whole. Just for fun, I played with this illustration and the photo of two women in evening gowns from the top of this post. [Correction on 2/25/15: the adjusted figure below is based on the suit on the left, above, #5914, not the evening gown.]

In the illustration above, I took the extra length out of the legs. [I eye-balled it, so it still looks like a fashion illustration. Old habits….] On the right is the photograph of the model. Her skirt is the same length in both images — I just added some legs under it so she looks taller (I also adjusted the flare, but not the length, of the skirt.) If you cover the legs with your thumb, you can see that this is the same picture.

Of the two drawing books mentioned above, Jack Hamm’s (available in paperback) is more useful to the fashion illustrator or costume designer. Originally published in 1963, the faces look dated, but there is a simplified guide to the 12 most common fashion models’ poses that can be a help when you’re doing dozens of costume sketches. He also covers feet (in high heels and men’s shoes) and the way fabrics behave. Walt Reed’s book is aimed at life drawing students (no clothing is discussed), but his lessons on head positions & features — and his emphasis on male and female models and models of various ages — is another handy reference when you don’t have a model to work from. [Costume designers rarely have a model, and we do have to draw more men than women.]

 

Day Dresses for November, 1934

Butterick dress patterns for “High Noon,” November 1934. Nos. 5961, 5955, and 5857. From The Delineator magazine. Photographer not named.

High Noon

“If you sit in the lobby of any smart luncheon place at high noon, you’ll see these smart women come in. The one who wears a tailored tweed dress, 5961 [left], with careful details — small collar, pockets, buttons, pleats, stitching.  The one who wears a black wool dress, 5957 [right], with slits in the streamline skirt and a shining satin sash.  The one who wears a bright crepe dress, 5955 [center], punctuated at neckline and wrists with black. There’s a look of Jodelle about the lovely, simple lines. . . . Cheney fabric. Delman shoes. Lilly Daché hat. Furs from Jaekel.”

Butterick 5961

Butterick pattern No. 5961, Nov. 1934, The Delineator magazine.

I confess that this is my favorite. It has so many great details, including that yoke extending into sleeves; the intriguing pocket shapes, copied on the skirt; and the big button accents. On the other hand, matching the large-scale plaid was undoubtedly easier for the illustrator than it would be for the home stitcher!

“5961:  The kind of tailored clothes that came out of Paris are the kind with interesting details — stitching, slot seams, amusing pockets, slit skirts. As Agnes-Drecoll uses details, we used them in this plaid wool dress. For 36 (size 18), 3 yards, 54-inch wool.  Designed for 12 to 20; 30 to 42 [inch bust measure.]”

Not what we think of as a ‘slit skirt’ today: Butterick #5961, 1934. It wouldn’t make walking much easier….

Butterick 5955

Butterick pattern No. 5955, with Lilly Dache hat. November 1934 The Delineator magazine.

“As Jodelle grows familiar, you recognize the simplicity of her lines. Like our dress with its convertible collar, they suit everyone. . . . Designed for sizes 12 to 20; 30 to 40 [inch bust measure.] “

Butterick pattern No. 5955, The Delineator, Nov. 1934.

That’s certainly an interesting sleeve (although likely to swoop into the soup at lunch). The article gives no alternate view to explain how the collar is “convertible.” Here’s a closer look at the Lilly Daché hat, with its brim of pleated velvet:

Black velvet hat from Lilly Dache. 1934.

I had to increase the contrast to show the hat details. According to Lizzie Bramlett, writing for the Vintage Fashion Guild, Lilly Dache’s first hat under her own name was also made of velvet. Fashion trivia fact: “In 1958 Daché hired Halston as a hat designer.”

Butterick 5957

Butterick pattern 5957, The Delineator magazine, Nov. 1934.

“5957  A new French house called Robert Piguet slit the skirts of trim wool dresses and filled them in with pleats. We make a dress like that and tie shiny satin around the waist. . . . Designed for sizes 12 to 20; 30 to 40 [inch bust measure.] ”

Slit with pleats in the style of Robert Piguet, 1934. The Delineator.

Writing for the Vintage Fashion Guild, emmapeelpants says that the house of Robert Piguet, founded in 1933, was “the training ground for Dior, Bohan, Galanos, Balmain and Givenchy. ” That’s quite an alumni group! Like Butterick No. 5961, this dress has broad shoulders and a yoke, which makes the upper body look wider (and the hips narrower by comparison. Also notice how much the length of the thigh is exaggerated in this fashion illustration.) The finishing touch on this dress (described in the copy as “a black wool dress,” but illustrated in red) is an exceptionally long rhinestone dress clip at the neckline, added in the illustration to continue the vertical CF seam.

1930s rhinestone dress clip from RememberedSummers.

I thought this vintage clip was long — over 2 inches — but it’s nowhere near as long as the one illustrated. The collar of #5957 would look quite different without that big piece of jewelry.

Not Quite Designer Fashions

You’ll notice that all three patterns are described with reference to specific Paris designers, but none of them claims to be an exact copy of a Paris design. “As Agnes-Drecoll uses details, we used them in this plaid wool dress.”  “There’s a look of Jodelle about the lovely, simple lines.” “Robert Piguet slit the skirts of trim wool dresses and filled them in with pleats. We make a dress like that . . . .” The Butterick Publishing Company maintained an office in Paris, partly for the purpose of reporting on the latest fashions. Back in the 1920s, it was raided by the French police on behalf of Madeleine Vionnet; they indeed found evidence that her dresses were being copied in the workshop. Vionnet sued. (Source: Betty Kirke’s brilliant book Madeleine Vionnet.)