sally draper

Sally Draper has been my favorite thing about Mad Men for the past couple seasons.  (Remember last season, how hilarious she is as Roger's "date" at that banquet?  If you've seen this season, that was some serious foreshadowing.)  Anyway, this post is about Sally's clothes this season, which I have been loving.  I must be having a 1960s Girl moment here, because she reminds me an awful lot of Suzy in Moonrise Kingdom in these screencaps.

xo

K

wolverine shoes, 1963

We live a few miles away from Wolverine World Wide, the corporate home of the sellers of Hush Puppies and other brands of shoes.  In 1963, they were apparently doing very well, at least, according to the company's annual report.  They had expanded beyond the crepe-soled Hush Puppies line to begin making work shoes, athletic shoes, leather-soled men's dress shoes, and women's dress shoes, as well as hats and bags.  (I love the red shoes with the little bow on the front cover of the report...and also the gal gazing in admiration at those two-tone men's oxfords.)

When I first moved here in 1998, they were still making shoes right here in Michigan.  They aren't any more.  Now everything is made overseas.  The new, costlier "heritage" Wolverine 1000 Mile Collection is, apparently, made in America, somewhere.  But not in Rockford (though their site kind of implies that they are, with a "Wolverine 1000 Mile Rockford, MI" leather logo stamp on the header).  I've seen some of the collection in person, and they are great looking shoes and boots.  I can't speak to how well made they are.  I do find it a bit depressing that the only way now to have a pair of Wolverine shoes made in the US, you need to have much more expendable income than someone in 1963 did.

Hush Puppies are the ideal shoe for the whole family--in Germany, too!  One reason the company was doing so well was overseas expansion.  They were opening new factories here in the US and abroad to keep up with demand.  (German word of the day: schmutzabweisend, meaning "stain resistant.")

Cutie!

Hush Puppies were (are?) made of pigskin leather.  The tannery in Rockford emitted a most distinctive scent when it was in operation.

The board of directors.  Unsurprisingly, mostly old white guys.  You can see that horn rimmed glasses were the style to wear in 1963.

The back cover of the report.  I love this image--a boot floating over its own shadow to emphasize its lightness!  Cool.

xo

K

a Courrèges fashion mystery solved

So I've had this dress in the shop for a few months.  It looked very much like an André Courrèges dress to me.  He did so many dresses with these little scallop details in the 1960s.

1968 wool knit Courrèges dress, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My dress' tag is missing and I couldn't find another example that looked just like mine, so I figured it was a knockoff.  But kind and sharp-eyed fellow vintage seller (and Grand Rapidian) Love Charles alerted me via Tweet to the two photos below.  The top photo is from the Los Angeles Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum's (FIDM) blog.  Here I learned that many Courrèges designs were knocked off during the 1960s, so much so that he suspended public showing of his designs from 1965-1967, and in 1967 released a lower priced line, Couture Future, to help disable the problem.

The second photo looks like my dress exactly (only, y'know, in black and white).  It comes from the fuckyeah60sfashion Tumblr, and as with so many things on the internet these days, led me pretty much nowhere source-wise.

However.  I've become fairly adept at tracking down image sources.  (Thank you, Google Images Search!)  I discovered that this image came from a 1968 UK Vogue shoot.  (Regular readers might be able to guess where this is heading.)  I trucked myself right over the the fabulous Youthquaker blog, and look what I found in the February 1968 UK Vogue!

Here's the Vogue copy:  "Harrods will be adding a new dimension, and particular sing, to spring by bringing Courrèges Couture Future to London...Brilliant, brief, disarming wool dress, left, Wild poppy red for the bright, short, scalloped top and scallop pockets. White for the collar, and swinging slip of a skirt."

This has me convinced that my dress is from the Couture Future line.  I've updated my Etsy listing (and yeah, the price, too).  Thanks so much for the heads up, Love Charles!

xo

K

new hair, new wardrobe?

Gray wool Marimekko dress, from theprivateparty on Etsy.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I recently went through a major hair color change--my dark brown pixie is now a gray/silver-white (speeding along a process that was already naturally occurring).  For some reason, this has made me want to change my wardrobe.  Well, "some reason" is probably the photo below.  

Bibi Andersson (center) with Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman on the set of Persona, 1966.

Now I want a wardrobe of mod A-line dresses in dark, austere colors.  And Ray-Bans.  Unfortunately, I seem to have a closet full of 1940s and 1950s floral frocks...and not a lot of money to shop with.  Luckily, in my line of work, I can (sort of) patiently shop and hope to find just what I want in my size.  And I *do* have a couple 1960s dresses in my closet that I've held on to that fit the bill.

But maybe this inclination toward mod, austerity, and A-line was already in my brain!  Pre-haircut, I found myself really drawn to these looks from Irish designer J.W. Anderson.

J.W. Anderson, A/W 2012-2013 / via

J.W. Anderson, A/W 2012 / via

J.W. Anderson, Resort 2013 / via

And along with that gorgeous Marimekko dress at the top of this post, I found these on Etsy:

A line geometric skirt, from OiseauVintage.

1960s charcoal wool dress, from BoroughVintage.

Fish print skirt, from persephonevintage.

The new hair.

xo

K