May 4, 2016

Summer in the 70's

Last week, it felt like winter had come back but this week is different. Very different. Now, it actually feels like late spring. The sky is often blue, it is sunny, the local supermarkets are already offering everything for the barbecue and sometimes you can actually walk outside without a coat!
Of course, the good weather should make me think about summer sewing... I haven't really decided on anything yet.
But, to get into the spirit of approaching summer, I thought I would write another post about a vintage magazine. Most of my collection is from the 1950's but not all of it. Today's offering is the May issue of Marion magazine from 1971:



It is funny, we've seen such a mixture of retro styles over the past years. Some of those bug-eye sunglasses might actually be fashionable again...


This being Marion, there are only patterns for a few of the designs. This peculiar jumpsuit with over-dress is one of them (in about my size)




The style of the illustrations in 1970's Marion is pretty goofy and then there are the prints in the photographs! However, if you look past all that, there are a lot of clean, simple designs which would probably still work today. 




For some reason, the editors of Marion are much more positive about the prospect of summer in the 1970's than they were back in the 1950's. This issue contains a lot of all-out summer clothes and several design especially intended for the summer holidays. Twenty years before, you would get headlines like "It is not summer yet" and "Wool, also for those chilly days in summer". I don't really think the climate changed that much in the third quarter of the twentieth century but of course the insulation of buildings did...



I don't think I will sew anything from this particular magazine any time soon. However, 1970's is a decade I still haven't visited in nearly two-and-a-half years of participating in the Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge, so I will be looking at more of it. 

2 comments:

  1. Oh, I love this magazine! thanks so much for sharing it. You can see a bit of the 60s trends in those designs too. And as you say some designs can easily be worn today. Thank you!

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  2. These prints and styles are exactly what I want my summer wardrobe to be. Fantastic. And the idea of a shirt dress, designed with open skirt panels, with close-fitting cropped pants under, has a lot of potential today. Great inspiration; thanks for sharing.

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