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| Simplicity Sewing Book, 1947 |
I must admit that this had caught my eye because of the illustration. It's very rare in my experience to see any publication about home sewing actually feature someone in the act of stitching on the cover. All my issues of Vogue Pattern Book have a cover of someone wearing a garment made from a Vogue pattern, but no indication of how it came into being. It's as if the clothes were made by mice in the night.
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| From The Tailor of Gloucester - this is not how the magic happens! |
My next Simplicity Sewing Book is about a decade later.
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| From 1958 |
The only hint in the illustration that this might relate to sewing is the dress pattern the model holds. Upside down, and with part of the number obscured.
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| Close-up of the pattern |
Thanks to the wonder that is CoPA, I was able to identify it as pattern number 1951, from 1957. It's not the dress that the model is wearing, and nowhere is there any indication of which (if any) Simplicity pattern was used for the red dress. I drew a complete blank however, trying to identify the pattern on the cover of the 1947 issue.
Whereas that issue was purely instructional, this one includes a few advertisements.
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| Back cover advertisement |
Jump forward two decades, and things are more whimsical. There's sewing equipment, but it's used as jewellery and hat trimming only.
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| From 1975 |
The back cover ad is one of a series which also appeared in Vogue Pattern Book. It's for Trylko, the new synthetic sister thread to Sylko.
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| Because heaven forbid you should have skills |
The implication is that making your own clothes is something you want to keep quiet about. In fact, the copy even goes so far as to say, "So no one will ever know you can make a suit like this" (my emphasis), as though even possessing the ability to do this was questionable, let alone using it. It's true that there was a certain negativity about hand-made clothes by this time (even though dressmaking was still taught as a useful skill in schools), but it seems odd to see it reinforced in a publication aimed at sewists. It's hard to imagine publications for any other hobby (especially male ones?) being so furtive about the very thing they are trying to sell.
