Body Blueprints
This picture was taken at a time when I fit in a size twenty vintage pattern.I am here at the shop going through my whole vintage pattern collection. This is not a collection that will win merits for it's condition. I have almost no mint patterns. They are a raggedy bunch of historical blueprints for clothing. I have laid them all out on my craft table, separated them into groups according to type of garment to see what I have. I have collected heavy on the lingerie, aprons, and trousers. I wonder what that says about me, if anything. I have paid a lot of money for this collection because there were garments I desperately wanted to investigate closely for cut and shape. Trousers like Katherine Hepburn wore do not exist anymore. I mean, not in modern patterns. There was something marvelously buttery about the way those old trousers fell from her hips in graceful fluid lines. I look best in pants with the thirties and forties fit. They are hard to come by.
Bathing suits are another garment whose modern interpretation makes me look like some kind of squat hairy beast. The only bathing suit I ever looked good in was the cotton nineteen fifties one with the flirty attached skirt that I had years ago when I was as svelte as a person of my stocky build can ever be. I have only managed to buy two bathing suit patterns, one of which I had to fight a bidding war to get and paid thirty five dollars for. A suit for a siren. I treasure it. I enjoy looking at it. I don't know if I'll ever make it, but I am weirdly relieved to know that I have it. That this blueprint is in safe hands; will not be lost to dust and careless tossing.
Most of why I collected all these patterns, only a few of which I have made, is to preserve them. To study them and breath them in like old maps to the human form. I know what hips were like then; I know how covering them has changed over the years. As an experienced pattern drafter I also know how awkward some of these patterns are, how they could have been simpler. I think I've always had it in my head that I would copy them all and then sell copies to others who want the same blueprint. A labor mostly of love since copying such delicate material is like performing paper surgery.
Having these patterns is like possessing a living link to all the old movies I like to watch. I see Myrna Loy in some beautiful negligee and here in my hands is a pattern for the same kind of negligee, printed while she was still filming Nick and Nora films with William Powell. It feels like I'm touching her indirectly.
Most of my patterns are in a size eighteen or larger. Heavy emphasis on the size twenty patterns. As I have perhaps mentioned before, a size twenty in the nineteen thirties is not the same as a current size twenty. A size twenty back then is most equivalent to a size sixteen today. Here's something to note: a size eighteen in the nineteen thirties was considered average and medium (bust 36, hip 39) and today that's a size fourteen*. A plus size. But no woman back then would have been ashamed to be a size eighteen. When magazines published patterns they always made it a size eighteen.
So if a body measuring 36-30-39 is a size fourteen today, why on earth would any woman consider herself over weight at that size? I'll tell you something else, when I was that size I did not consider myself fat. I considered myself a healthy size. (Well, I was smaller than that when I got married and gaining twenty pounds to end up at a relatively healthy-though not skinny- weight did take some adjusting to. But as soon as I got new clothes that fit, I felt fine about myself.)
If Jean Harlow was alive today she would not have fit in a size two dress. Today we would call her a plus sized gal. But back then women were desperate to have her figure. But not quite as desperate as men were.
*this is comparing standards in patterns, not necessarily in ready made clothing which can really differ a lot. What with vanity sizing being all the rage it is impossible for a woman to know her "true" size, and having gotten used to the incredible diminishing numbers representing body measurements, the average woman would probably be shocked to find that her actual size according to measurements is much larger than she has been led to believe. All of it is essentially meaningless. I mean, a 36 bust is the same now as it was a hundred years ago: 36 inches. What's changed, which I find fascinating, is what we consider an ideal size and how that drastically changes every couple of generations.
I have wanted to conduct a survey for a long time in which I take women's measurements, ask them what size they wear in different garments and then compare that to the sizes on my vintage patterns. Body measurements are the only true way to compare sizes. I know what a body looks like that is 36-30-39. I do because I've had that body. My sister has always been smaller than me and she has been known to wear a size six or four, but what does that look like in numbers? That would be truly revealing information and would answer a lot of confusion.
Bathing suits are another garment whose modern interpretation makes me look like some kind of squat hairy beast. The only bathing suit I ever looked good in was the cotton nineteen fifties one with the flirty attached skirt that I had years ago when I was as svelte as a person of my stocky build can ever be. I have only managed to buy two bathing suit patterns, one of which I had to fight a bidding war to get and paid thirty five dollars for. A suit for a siren. I treasure it. I enjoy looking at it. I don't know if I'll ever make it, but I am weirdly relieved to know that I have it. That this blueprint is in safe hands; will not be lost to dust and careless tossing.
Most of why I collected all these patterns, only a few of which I have made, is to preserve them. To study them and breath them in like old maps to the human form. I know what hips were like then; I know how covering them has changed over the years. As an experienced pattern drafter I also know how awkward some of these patterns are, how they could have been simpler. I think I've always had it in my head that I would copy them all and then sell copies to others who want the same blueprint. A labor mostly of love since copying such delicate material is like performing paper surgery.
Having these patterns is like possessing a living link to all the old movies I like to watch. I see Myrna Loy in some beautiful negligee and here in my hands is a pattern for the same kind of negligee, printed while she was still filming Nick and Nora films with William Powell. It feels like I'm touching her indirectly.
Most of my patterns are in a size eighteen or larger. Heavy emphasis on the size twenty patterns. As I have perhaps mentioned before, a size twenty in the nineteen thirties is not the same as a current size twenty. A size twenty back then is most equivalent to a size sixteen today. Here's something to note: a size eighteen in the nineteen thirties was considered average and medium (bust 36, hip 39) and today that's a size fourteen*. A plus size. But no woman back then would have been ashamed to be a size eighteen. When magazines published patterns they always made it a size eighteen.
So if a body measuring 36-30-39 is a size fourteen today, why on earth would any woman consider herself over weight at that size? I'll tell you something else, when I was that size I did not consider myself fat. I considered myself a healthy size. (Well, I was smaller than that when I got married and gaining twenty pounds to end up at a relatively healthy-though not skinny- weight did take some adjusting to. But as soon as I got new clothes that fit, I felt fine about myself.)
If Jean Harlow was alive today she would not have fit in a size two dress. Today we would call her a plus sized gal. But back then women were desperate to have her figure. But not quite as desperate as men were.
*this is comparing standards in patterns, not necessarily in ready made clothing which can really differ a lot. What with vanity sizing being all the rage it is impossible for a woman to know her "true" size, and having gotten used to the incredible diminishing numbers representing body measurements, the average woman would probably be shocked to find that her actual size according to measurements is much larger than she has been led to believe. All of it is essentially meaningless. I mean, a 36 bust is the same now as it was a hundred years ago: 36 inches. What's changed, which I find fascinating, is what we consider an ideal size and how that drastically changes every couple of generations.
I have wanted to conduct a survey for a long time in which I take women's measurements, ask them what size they wear in different garments and then compare that to the sizes on my vintage patterns. Body measurements are the only true way to compare sizes. I know what a body looks like that is 36-30-39. I do because I've had that body. My sister has always been smaller than me and she has been known to wear a size six or four, but what does that look like in numbers? That would be truly revealing information and would answer a lot of confusion.
Labels: pattern sizes, vintage patterns