pattern junkie

Which Dress for the New Year?

So, Mr. Pattern Junkie and I are throwing a brunch on New Year's Day, and I've got this crazy notion that I've going to sew up a vintage pattern to wear by then.  (Insert maniacal laughter here.)  Being the kind of person who can't make any decision easily, though, I'm still debating between two patterns.  Do I want to make Simplicity 9030 and greet 2010 with late 60s mod coolness, showing off my strange obsession with gigantic collars?  (And yes, I blogged about this very project over a year ago and have yet to make it...)

I'd make version 2 there and be like Ms. Pixie Cut Hopeful, even though my hair is long.  (No snide hair in face shenanigans like little Miss Double-Belt there, though I do like her shoes, and snooty Miss Pink can keep her fringe purse.)  The fabric I've earmarked is green and brown, too, and could be very retro cute:

Or it could make me look like a pair of curtains.  Those heart-shaped bits are roughly an inch wide.

Option two?  McCall's 4576 from 1973.  I just bought this on Ebay and would make version A in a gauzy powder blue crepe.  I love it because it's so very 1970s junior high social studies teacher -- you know, Ms. Wilson, who wore dangly earrings, perfume and heels, and was rumored to be dating Mr. Johnson, the math teacher.  All the other female teachers went by "Miss" or "Mrs." but that "Ms." gave Ms. Wilson a little bit of glamor, and everyone was fascinated/horrified at the thought of her on a date.

 

The main risk with this pattern?  Even though it's a size smaller than my measurements, apparently McCall's had already started implementing the "add ten inches of ease to everything and call it a day" approach to patternmaking that they employ today.  So I might look less like "I'm hitting the disco with Coach Zimmer after choir practice" and more like "I'm wearing a belted blue potato sack with a Cleopatra-style collar."

Any thoughts besides "get sewing, you indecisive fool"?

Surrealist Pattern Art

Here's a 1964 painting called "The Son of Man" by surrealist Rene Magritte:

In a 1965 interview, Magritte said of the painting:

...so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person...we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.

And now here's Simplicity 4886, copyright 1966:

Wikipedia claims that Magritte's popularity began to rise in the 1960s, which really makes me wonder if Simplicity's pattern illustrator was directly influenced by the artist's work.  (If so, I like to imagine the illustrator snickering at his or her subversiveness, mocking the bourgeiosie as she/he snuck Surrealist art into something as middlebrow and mainstream as a sewing pattern for capris.)

Take a closer look at the pattern illustration and it gets more bizarre.  At first it seems the models are holding the line drawings to cover their faces, but that's not the case.  They're holding the drawings at chest level, meaning that THEY HAVE NO HEADS!  These are three headless bodies modeling capris for the women of 1960s America!  As much as you may want to "see what is hidden by what [you] see," you can't.  There's nothing behind the apple. 

Three headless women modeling clothing while holding pictures of clothing...if that's not a comment on fashion and consumption, I don't know what it.

Of course, it could all be an interesting coincidence...but wouldn't you love to pick that pattern illustrator's brain?  I know I would...