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Welcome to the “Fabric Junkie”!

I’m an unashamed fabric junkie. I love the look, feel, and textures of fabrics of all kinds. In fact, part of the reason I collect, wear, and sell vintage clothing is for love of fabric. The right fabric makes a good design better and can turn a mediocre design into a masterpiece.

Today I’ll tackle a basic topic: fiber and weave. As both a seller and buyer of vintage apparel, I’m dismayed when I ask a seller about the fiber from which an item is made, and she or he doesn’t understand what I’m asking. Especially if the weave is stated in the description. But that’s only half the story. Fabric is a combination of fiber and weave, fiber being the raw material used to create it (e.g., wool, silk, rayon, polyester) and weave being the resulting look and texture once it is made into yardage. There is also the “how” of creating fabric (weaving, knitting, compressing, bonding, etc.), which affects weave, but that’s another can of worms for another day. Let’s keep it simple today!

“So, why is this important?,” one might ask. While some buyers don’t care what fiber a garment is made of, many do. Some can’t wear synthetics, some can’t wear certain natural fibers. For others, it’s a matter of preference. A buyer may want to know the fiber and weave in order to get a sense of how the fabric will feel and drape (or not) on the body. And, for both buyers and sellers, knowing the fiber can determine how to care for/clean/store the garment.

If you ask anyone in Austria, or in Vienna specifically, who was the best-known Austrian fashion designer, chances are they will say “Adlmüller” even today. He was the celebrity designer in Vienna for decades. But what made him, the man who freely admitted that he couldn’t even sew a button on himself, a celebrated fashion designer?

Wilhelm Alfred (usually referred to as W.F. or Fred—he hated the name Wilhelm) Adlmüller was born in Nuremberg in Bavaria in 1909. His father owned several restaurants, and his intention was that Fred should take over the running of one of them later. Fred liked cooking, so he trained as a cook from 1923 to 1927 at the prestigious Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich. Though his liking for good food and cooking stayed with him all his life, he soon realised that he was even more interested in fashion, colours, shapes and design. He had always liked shopping for clothes with his mother and his sisters, but now he wanted to do more. In 1929 he went to Vienna with the purpose of learning more about the restaurant business, but instead he found a job with the fashion boutique Ludwig Zwieback & Brüder. There, he learned decorating, choosing fabric and coordinating accessories and his flair for style and colours was noticed. A little side fact: The great-grandson of Ludwig Zwieback is the actor August Zirner.

In 1931 he went to work as a buyer at Tailors, Stone & Blyth, which was a well-known fashion house in Vienna at the time. At first he worked in the men’s department, and then started expanding the women’s fashion department, not only using his talent to copy couture designs, but also by using his own designs. He created his first couture collection in 1934, and from 1936, he also designed theatre and opera costumes. Adlmüller didn’t serve in WWII because of his health. He stayed on at the company as a director after the original Jewish owners, Ignaz Sass and his wife, were forced to leave and a German was put in place by the Nazis. Thanks to his good connections with the Soviet authorities in Vienna, Adlmüller was able to present his first post-war collection in Autumn 1945, and in 1946 he received Austrian citizenship.

After the war, the German owner of Stone & Blyth was arrested and Sass confirmed that Adlmüller could stay on as interim director. Ignaz Sass and his wife returned to Vienna in 1949 and partnered with Adlmüller as Stone & Blyth Nachfolger – W. F. A. Ges.m.b.H. In 1950 Adlmüller bought the couple out and started his own company. His elegant style became quickly known amongst society ladies and opera singers who had their gowns made by him. His reputation grew so much that soon he was considered the fashion designer to go to.

I would like to tell a little story about a scarf, that in turn tells and connects to so many other stories as only a vintage item can! I originally wrote about this some years ago on my now-sleeping personal blog and was astonished how many comments I received from people around the world, just because they had been searching for the name on a scarf or a hankie. So I thought it would be timely to revisit this story and see if I could find out more.

Here is the scarf that started it all: A lovely vintage silk scarf made by Fisba-Stoffels of Switzerland. I received this as a gift from my best friend. She had selected it because she knew I’d like the colors—plus it said “Swiss Made” on the label, and she thought that was funny.

I love the color combination and the groovy print, and I wear it regularly. One day I showed it to my mother. She took one look at the signature on it and said “Oh Fisba-Stoffels—I used to serve old Mrs. Stoffel at the shop in Klosters!” (she worked summer seasons as a tour guide and winter seasons in ski resort shops in the 1960s). Would you believe it? It seems the Mrs. Stoffel in question was quite a character and well known in town. My father, who grew up in Klosters, remembers her too. Apparently, the company mostly produced hankies, but also scarves. So, if the internet turns up nothing, just ask your mom!

So, my curiosity was piqued, and I started doing a bit of research, but could not find much. Revisiting the topic now, I have found quite a bit more information that gives a better picture and brings together two important names in Swiss textile history, especially regarding St. Gallen. Whilst the city is probably most famous for its convent with the abbey cathedral and library, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it was and is a centre of the textile industry. The production of linen and cotton led to a specialization in lace and embroidery from the mid-18th century. This started as a cottage industry and, with industrialization, morphed into mechanized production. The legacy of this today is companies that specialize in the production of elaborate lace and embroidery fabrics for haute couture.

The two names involved with Fisba-Stoffels, and which are each on their own famous, are Stoffel and Fischbacher. The Stoffel company has its roots with Franz-Xaver Stoffel (1794-1841) dealing in textiles and opening a weaving mill for silk ribbons in 1822. Over the years, the company changed its profile from dealing in textiles to their production, and taking over other textile companies in eastern Switzerland in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The company Stoffel & Cie. (later Stoffel AG) was formally founded in 1888. After World War I, the company’s focus shifted to new materials like synthetic fibers and special textile finishes. The company grew to one of the biggest in the region and by 1960 had offices in Paris and New York and exported its products worldwide. They were also famous for their “Stoffels-Tüechli”—finely woven handkerchiefs, which were first introduced between the two world wars. Starting in 1965, Max Stoffel gradually sold the company to Burlington Industries. This process finished in 1968. The Stoffels brand name continued on for a time it seems, and their fabrics used in garments were labeled “A Division of Burlington Industries Inc.”

Ad from 1948 for Stoffels fabric with pre-printed aprons for home sewers Stoffels handkerchief from the 1960s

This is the third in a series of the essential books in VFG member Maggie Muellner’s vintage fashion library. Read about the others in previous recent blogs.

The subtitle of this little book is “Repairing and Preserving Garments and Bedding”. It is such a gem! The author—who had a long career as a physician and psychiatrist—became chair of the “mending committee” for a Vermont charity after her retirement. The group became increasingly expert menders as the years went by, learning by doing and sharing, as well from feedback given by recipients of their efforts. I love the picture this conjures for me of that group—I wish I could sit in with them for a session or two!

The book is slim at 180 pages, but it is dense with the kind of handy advice your grandmother might have given you if she was a domestic goddess. For example, I have a sewing machine and know about “machine darning”—I rescued the torn seat of the bib overalls I wear for gardening using machine darning recently. Lucky for me that denim fabric is fairly firm and dense, and the repair went smoothly. One of Ms. Foote’s tips for machine darning is to stretch the area you are working on using an embroidery frame so the fabric won’t get puckered during the process.

The manual is sprinkled with simple pen and ink illustrations—73 in all, covering tasks such as crotch repair, frayed cuffs folded inside, and invisible woven-in mending.

This is the second in a series of the essential books in VFG member Maggie Muellner’s vintage fashion library. Her previous pick is here.

Dover put out Mary Brooks Picken’s A Dictionary of Costume and Fashion, Historic and Modern in 1999. It’s an unabridged republication of Picken’s Fashion Dictionary, originally published in 1957. This one covers more ground than Essential Terms of Fashion (reviewed here), both in breadth and depth. It is a true dictionary, but focuses on words associated with wearing apparel and accessories and their components. From “aal” (a red dye obtained from the root of an Indian shrub) to “Zulu cloth”, there are more than 10,000 entries and nearly 1,000 illustrations.

The entries include “groups”, similar to the focused chapters in Essential Terms, but covering a wider range – examples include “Lace, Weaves and Embroideries” in addition to the more obvious elements like “Sleeves, Collars and Necklines”. There’s a lot here for historical costumers as well as students of fashion like me.

Maggie Muellner of Mags Rags and MagsRagsVintage on Etsy shares one of her essential vintage fashion reference books.

I’ve been collecting vintage clothing & accessories since I was 20 years old.  As a visual learner and voracious reader, it was probably inevitable that I would accumulate an extensive library of books about vintage fashion, some for reference, and many for the sheer eye candy indulgence. Here’s an introduction to one of my favorites.

The single reference book that I use the most is Essential Terms of Fashion: A Collection of Definitions by Charlotte Mankey Calasibetta, published in 1985.

I keep this book next to me when I’m working on writing descriptions. As you can see from my photo, I’ve used it so much the binding has cracked. Sometimes I need to confirm that I’m using the correct term for a design detail (is that deep set sleeve dolman or raglan or batwing?). In the process of double-checking, I often stop to browse. Then the next time I’m faced with an unusual collar I know just where to go. I can open the book to the collar chapter and pinpoint that long collar that’s rounded at the end instead of pointed – aha! It’s a dog’s-ear collar!