Navajo sterling jewelery, a 1970s Miss Dior Pants with wide legs, a 1920s plaid silk tunic top, and a 1970s Yves Saint Laurent printed cotton skirt skirt are among the many vintage items recently listed by members of the Vintage Fashion Guild. What follows are examples from each contributing seller from this week’s “Fresh Vintage” thread on the forums. If you click on the image you can see more details about that item, or click HERE to see many more recent vintage offerings.
Diaphanous, gauzy, translucent, gossamer! Anyway you describe it, sheer fashion is hot! And let’s face it, after a long winter we all could use a respite from the chilly temps and heavy layers. Let’s shed our metaphorical winter skin in barely there sheer textiles.
This week it’s not all sheer nonsense! Be transparent in nearly nude clothing and accessories.
She always wanted a career in fashion, so as a young woman in China, where she was born, Joanie Char studied pattern making. In 1962, at the age of 17 Char came to the US, where she met her future husband, Frank Char, in an English language class. The two of them opened a fabric import shop that specialized in outstanding silks.
A couple of years later the Chars opened a boutique in San Francisco, from which they could sell dresses designed by Joanie, made with the luxurious natural-fiber fabrics they imported from China. Her dress designs of simple shapes with subtle details, good fit, and made of luxurious natural materials of bright colors were sometimes called wearable works of art.
The Official Gazette of the US Patent and Trademark Office noted the Joanie Char trademark was first used in commerce in 1975. The trademark application was filed in 1988 and the products under the umbrella of that trademark were blazers, blouses, blousons, capes, cardigans, culottes, dresses, gowns, halters, jackets, jerseys, pants, pantsuits, pullovers, scarves, shifts, skirts, slacks, sport coats, suits, sweaters, and tunics.
In 1977 the Chars sold their retail store and opened a manufacturing firm. Almost immediately her line was embraced by the large specialty stores in San Francisco and sales increased dramatically. A 1982 article about Char’s designs commented “She works with a limited repertory of forms and colors, but produces an amazing number of variations.” They added “There are three basic types of dresses in her line—a two-piece with a gently gathered skirt, a bloused dress with an elastic waist and a tie belt, and a loose-fitting chemise, which she calls a ‘float.’”
Major stores that carried the Joanie Char line included Neiman-Marcus, Lord & Taylor, and Nordstrom. In 1984 she opened a Joanie Char boutique in Los Angeles and in 1985 she opened a New York store.
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It’s been 43 years since Diane Keaton played more or less herself in Annie Hall, winning an Oscar for her performance and launching a sartorial trend that resonates right down to today’s runways, street styles, and fashion shoots.
Ruth Morley is credited for the costumes in Annie Hall, and she dressed the cast for their quirky-preppy-intellectual Manhattanite roles in Ralph Lauren. But the naive Annie, recently arrived from Chippewa Falls, was costumed by Diane herself. Morley has acknowledged that she initially objected to the clothes Keaton wore, but Woody Allen said, “She’s a genius…Let her wear what she wants.”
Keaton herself deflects her iconic status, calling her look a combined effort. She credits Lauren’s sensibilities (he contributed the patterned tie, black vest, tuxedo, and other pieces in her wardrobe for the movie), Morley, who purchased with and for her including trips to thrift shops and men’s stores, and Allen, for giving her carte blanche.
You must know Annie Hall’s style, but if you don’t, google “Annie Hall style”—there are 58,500,000 hits.
Dissecting the Annie Hall look, one has to start with the outfit—you know the one—consisting of baggy taupe trousers, a white button down shirt, a man’s tie, black waistcoat and oversized hat, with a large natural woven bag casually slung over one shoulder. Other components to consider: Big rounded glasses, men’s hats (boleros, bowlers), man-tailored suits, plaid shirts, long scarves (including men’s fringed rayon scarves and cravats), tuxedos, calf-grazing skirts and dresses, natural cottons and wool tweeds, khakis, jeans, army surplus pants, brogues, cowboy boots and layers, layers, layers.
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Every Thursday a new thread named “Fresh Vintage” starts in the public forums of the Vintage Fashion Guild website. Here are highlights from each contributing member. If you click on the image you can see more details about that item, or click HERE to see many more recent vintage offerings.
Tachi (Luz Maria) Castillo was born in Mexico City in 1918. In 1930 her family settled in Taxco, because her father, a military engineer, was overseeing the installation of a telegraph system in that part of Mexico. She enjoyed the companionship of four brothers and one sister, all of whom soon established impressive, and often international, reputations for their accomplishments.
Tachi Castillo’s brothers were soon renowned for their distinctive silver jewelry designs and Tachi was the first to introduce hand-embroidered dresses in Taxco, despite having been advised not to pursue any career other than designing or working with silver. The first two dresses she designed and created were sold from the silver shop the same morning she put them there.
Around 1937 Tachi Castillo opened her eponymous store in Casa Borda and sometime before the end of the 1940s she married Alphonso Ramirez-Mendoza, a textile designer who later managed her business. In 1944 Tachi Castillo and her husband opened a store in Taxco and named it Gracias a Dios (thanks be to God), across the street from her family home. Her fashion designs caught the eye of a vacationing Hollywood actress, Joan Fontaine, who brought many of Tachi’s dresses back with her. Soon Tachi Castillo was dressing other Hollywood stars, such as Brigitte Bardot and Lana Turner. Non-Hollywood celebrities could be seen in Castillo designs, too, such as Princess Anne and Frida Kahlo. Her feminine and romantic designs of cotton pintuck peasant blouses and wide swirly skirts skillfully paired the wonderful designs of her native Mexico with modern, hand-painted, and hand-embroidered designs. She is credited with having created the popular “Mexican wedding dress” while she also specialized in colorful evening apparel.
Tachi Castillo never retired and worked until she died in 1999. Her family home is now a popular, charming , and historic hotel named Hotel Mi Casita (Hotel My House), owned and operated by her family.
Written by LKRanieri
Lemon yellow, raspberry pink, melon green and orange… well, as in orange. This week, our VFG members are serving up a fruit salad of bright, yummy colors in clothes and accessories for a fruity summer!
Georgia Bullock was born in East Whittier, California ca. 1918 and credited her early interest in fashion design to the glamorous paper dolls with which she played as a young girl. At the age of about 22, Bullock started a career in modeling, then in sales in a downtown Los Angeles store. When she left the University of Southern California she worked for a milliner and an allegedly famous, but unidentified, fashion designer in an LA department store. In addition, she spent her evenings in a design course.
With the confidence this design history gave her, and at the very young age of 28, in 1946 Georgia Bullock opened her own Hollywood studio as one of California’s youngest designers, producing her fashions under the labels Miss Georgia and Barefoot Fashions. Her Barefoot Dress line was trademarked in 1958 and her comfortable, feminine, “busy women” clothes, as she called them, were quickly embraced by consumers. Easy-fitting shirtwaist dresses, to which she added slenderizing effects, were a popular item in her line. In this same year of bright changes in her life, Bullock also married John Dunbar, with whom she eventually had two children and who had been working as her business advisor and investment specialist.
By 1950 the young designer won praise from the industry for her designs that combined high style with straightforward elegance. Also in 1950 Bullock was appointed head of the Donnelly Garment design department. At the same time it was announced that the Donnelly Garment company acquired controlling interest in her new company, Georgia Bullock, Inc.
By 1954 Georgia Bullock broke new ground not just with her designs, but with the design of her company, which was by then led by the first all-female executive team with, as one article noted, “a minimum turnover and a maximum of satisfaction.” The company had revenue of close to $2,000,000 by that time and 12 years later Business Week reported $5,000,000 in revenue for Georgia Bullock, Inc.
In 1962 Bullock married Weston J. Lloyd, with whom she had one child. Lloyd was an executive of California’s Bullock’s stores, which were unrelated to the designer. In the 1960s accolades continued to pour in for Ms. Bullock, who was then referred to as “one of the outstanding young designers on the west coast” (1962), when she became a member of the Los Angeles Fashion Guild, when she launched her new Claudia Christine line of dresses (1965), when she was awarded a garment industry fashion citation as designer of the year (1966), and more. In that same period Bullock was hosting parties on the tennis courts at her house, where she showed her popular designs to favored clients.
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Donnkenny began as Nadler Sportswear in 1934, based in New York City’s garment district – they were a blouse manufacturer. After WW2, they became Donnkenny and began making other sportswear items. By the mid 1960s, they were producing a complete line of moderately priced women’s apparel, with a special focus on casual wear, all under the Donnkenny label. They expanded over the next 10+ years, adding other lines like Dunwoodie, Donnypress, Xtrovert, R.B.K., Kenny Classics, Melray, and Durbin. In 1978, the company was taken over by a private investment firm. By 1993, when Donnkenny went public, its best selling line was Mickey & Co., with Disney-licensed clothing for men, women and children. It was also producing sleepwear and intimate apparel with cartoon characters under the Warner Brothers/Looney Tunes label for Lewis Frimel. Over the next several years, the company produced a diffusion line for designer Arnold Scaasi, and a natural fiber line under the J.G. Hook label. They acquired Beldoch, who held the license for all Pierre Cardin women’s wear in the U.S. as well as Oak Hill sportswear labels: Victoria Jones and Casey & Max. As of the mid-1990s, Donnkenny was still making about half their products in the U.S., primarily in Virginia and New York, with the remainder produced in China, India, Guatemala, Turkey, and Bangladesh. In 1996, Donnkenny’s CEO was charged with inflating the company’s earnings by more than 100% to keep up with Wall Street expectations, and ultimately pled guilty to conspiring to commit securities, Donnkenny continued to struggle, and in 2005, they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy – their assets, which by that time included Nicole Miller sportswear, were acquired by a company called Pacific Alliance.
Written by magsrags
Every Thursday a new thread named “Fresh Vintage” starts in the public forums of the Vintage Fashion Guild website. Here are highlights from each contributing member. If you click on the image you can see more details about that item, or click HERE to see many more recent vintage offerings.
Ruth McCulloch (1900-2007) opened her first dress store in Evanston, Illinois in 1937. With experience as a dress buyer, McCulloch tapped into a local market of well-heeled women over 30 seeking traditional, well-made clothes. Her success led her to open stores in the affluent suburbs of Hubbard Woods and Northbrook.
McCulloch’s exclusive shops featured a carefully curated selection of classic and well-made clothing by American designers. Customers at her well-appointed salons were treated to a genteel shopping experience. A salesperson would first seat guests to discuss what they were looking for, bringing out and displaying several choices. Any garments that were selected were then fitted for the customer and, if possible, altered on the spot, while she waited.
Her distinctive logo – an old-fashioned image a young woman in a broad-rimmed hat – was in use from the beginning of her career, and did not change through the years. It was used on virtually all advertising and products.
written by ranchqueenvintage
Tier: one of a number of successively overlapping ruffles or flounces on a garment.
Skirts, sleeves and even some pants had tiers on Spring 2020 runways. Revisit the flounces of vintage while staying on trend with this uber-feminine detail.
Every Thursday a new thread named “Fresh Vintage” starts in the public forums of the Vintage Fashion Guild website. Here are highlights from each contributing member. If you click on the image you can see more details about that item, or click HERE to see many more recent vintage offerings.
Keri Craig-Lee (nee Craig) is an Australian designer based in Brisbane. She was born in 1958 and in 1976 she obtained a Diploma in Fashion Design and Marketing from Waukesha County Technical College, Wisconsin, United States.
In 1977 Craig-Lee established the eponymous fashion label, Keri Craig, and opened boutiques in Brisbane and Sydney, with her label becoming available throughout Australia and overseas. In 1984, she designed and coordinated Sir Elton John’s Sydney wedding to Renate Blauel.
In 2017, Craig-Lee released her first book, ‘Keri Craig: the label, the lady, the lifestyle’, a pictorial biography chronicling her career spanning almost 40 years and featuring contributions from politicians, personalities and photographers. This book is a great resource for learning more about her designs.
There were three shops — the flagship store in Brisbane’s Wintergarden, an exclusive boutique in Sydney’s prestigious Double Bay, and the remaining store at Brisbane Arcade, which has been in business since 1977. The existing store is called Keri Craig Emporium.
A lover of “classic fashion”, Keri took a lot of her design inspiration from old movies starring Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor.
{…}Istanbul based haute couture designer Vural Gökçaylı went to Paris in 1962 to study at Ecole du Louvre and Académie des Beaux Arts. He interned at Givenchy and worked at Jean Patou as the assistant of Michael Goma. In 1967, he became an artistic director in Franz Molenar in Holland. In 1968, Gökçaylı went back to Paris and designed for the collection of Sylvie Vartan’s boutique. In the same year, Gökçaylı returned to Turkey and founded his couture workshop in Istanbul.
Written by modamuzesi
Born in Basel, Switzerland, Katherine Gellhorn studied graphic arts and ceramics in Leipzig and Berlin before coming to the U.S. in 1939. Settling first in Chicago, Gellhorn studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, later opening a millinery shop, Katherine’s Hats of Distinction. When Gellhorn and her husband moved to Spokane, Washington in 1957, she resumed her millinery business and continued until 1973. Gellhorn died in 1997.
Katherine Gellhorn’s hats have “labels” that are her hand-sewn first name, with an exclamation point.
Written by denisebrain
Nordstrom was founded in 1901 by John W. Nordstrom. Using his $13,000 stake from the Alaska gold rush, he started a shoe store in Seattle, Washington with another Swedish immigrant, Carl Wallin, a shoemaker he had met in Alaska. The shop was called Wallin & Nordstrom.
Business grew, and a second store was opened in 1923. Five years later, John Nordstrom retired, passing his business over to his sons Everett and Elmer. The next year, Wallin passed his share in the business to Nordstrom’s sons. In 1930 the stores were renamed Nordstrom’s.
The sons, now joined by John’s youngest son Lloyd, successfully grew the business even during the Great Depression and WWII. Postwar saw Nordstrom’s becoming the largest independent shoe chain in the country, with new stores in Portland, Oregon, and suburban Seattle. Nordstrom’s success was based on having a full range of sizes, extraordinarily large inventory, and excellent customer service.
By the early 1960s there were eight Nordstrom’s stores, and 13 shoe departments that Nordstrom’s leased through Washington, Oregon and California. The company had 600 employees and grossed $12 million in 1961. The brothers purchased Seattle-based Best’s Apparel in 1963, and Portland’s Nicholas Ungar in 1966, with an eye on diversifying their inventory. In the mid to late 1960s stores were built to sell shoes and apparel, adding men’s and children’s departments. In 1967, the company was renamed Nordstrom Best.
The next year saw the retirement of the Nordstrom brothers, as they handed over control to the next generation, sons James, John and Bruce Nordstrom, a son-in-law, John A. McMillan, and a family friend, Robert E. Bender.
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Tussi was Owned by Australian Sidney Sernack. The label was for very glam 1980s formal dresses, women’s suits and coats.
Sernack’s decision to specialise in ladies’ coats and suits brought instant success. His ability to anticipate the trends, and to source materials and designs from London, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo, saw his business grow and diversify during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite a number of financial and trading failures, he reached the pinnacle of his fashion career in 1984 when the Tussi label won the After Five section of the FIA awards. No record of the label can be found after 1987.
written by Alice M.
Oilcloth is a plain weave cotton fabric made waterproof with a coating of boiled linseed oil and pigment. It can have a dull, pebbled or smooth finish. The finish is prone to cracking. Since the 1950s, the traditional oilcloth has evolved to be made of PVC bonded to a woven or nonwoven cloth backing.
Uses: Rainwear and dress trims; casual tablecloths, tents and shopping bags.
See also:
See Oilskin
