Florida Fashions Part 2

Hey peeps!  Thanks for leaving all of your thoughts yesterday about my Lonsdale dress fabric conundrum.  It really helped to have all of your thoughts, and (I think) I’ve  decided to make it in the aqua fabric. 

After reading everyone’s comments, it felt like the everyone was 50/50 between the aqua and the rosy chrysanthemum fabric.  I was really debating making it in that rosy print, but decided not to since I’d rather use that fabric for one of my vintage house dress patterns instead.  I think that fabric would be better suited to an actual vintage garment instead of the Lonsdale.  (I do have a secondary reason for choosing the aqua fabric, which you’ll hear about later this week.)

Getting back to vintage fashions… Here’s the second half of the Florida Fashions catalog from Spring 1952.  If you missed the first post about Florida Fashions just click here.

Picking up on page 10, here’s a good representation of the basic cotton house dress.  It comes as no surprise to you all that vintage clothes always seem to contain more details than our modern counterparts.  But what continues to surprise me is that even the most basic house dress is full of fashionable features like lace edging, fun pockets, and contrasting trims.  Isn’t the matching mother-daughter outfit adorable?! 

Adjusting for inflation since 1952, these $2.98 dresses would cost $24.65 in today’s market.  I’ll take a half-dozen, please! 

Here’s a few more house dresses for you.  Take a look at the bottom right!  Cat pockets!  Have you ever seen something so cute?  (I’m now dreaming up how to make bunny pockets….)

It’s no surprise that I love vintage knits.  My fav is the jumper on the far left with the tiny peter-pan collar.  One thing that does always surprise me is the frequency to which I see undergarments showing through on sheer blouses, knits, and the like.  Check out the lady on the lower right.  You can just make out the top of her bra.  While this may be a camisole, I’ve found in a lot of my vintage knitting magazines that the bra shows quite clearly, not just the outline above but also below.  I thought these gals were supposed to be modest….

Look at all of the lacy slips.  I especially love the details on half-slip they show at the very bottom.

Nightgowns complete with heeled shoes.  :)  Aren’t the pants on the left-most model funny how they cinch at the ankle.  These would not be attractive on me at all… 

I promised you uniforms in the last post, and here they are!  I would never have guessed these are uniforms would it not be for the labeling.

Housecoats (aka brunchies) are up next.  They look like normal dresses to me and cute as ever.

And lastly, this is the back cover of the Florida Fashions magazine, complete with sender info.  :)  These dresses look like they’d be perfect for the fall since they’re such dark colors but still light and breeze for the heat.

While I love all of the images and inspiration that come from the vintage high fashion magazines, these smaller catalogs are for the every woman; what they would have worn day to day.  It makes for recreating vintage house and day dresses a cinch with the colored pages.

??I’ve hoped you’ve liked seeing these vintage fashions as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing them.  Do you guys have any favorites (or some colorful commentary about seeing undergarments through the sheer clothing)?   :)

In: Sewing

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