By When it comes to vintage fashion inspiration, how can you go past this:
Katharine Hepburn was groundbreaking in her appropriation of male clothing and “glamming it up” to make it a style worth emulating. By the mid 40s, women around the world embraced the look as they took on more of the traditionally masculine jobs through the war years.
So, when I decided I needed a pair of work trousers with a vintage feel – this seemed like the perfect place to start. To help get a feel for what the average woman would have been making for her wardrobe, I headed to the Vintage Pattern Wiki and discovered the lovely Vogue 9016 from 1945. A Sears and Roebuck catalogue pic from the 1940s provided further inspiration, but of course, neither gave me a pattern to work from. So what could I do, but raid my stash of 1980s/90s patterns to see if there was something I could adapt. I picked out two patterns from the 1990s, both McCall’s – 8560 & 6617. I managed to “Frankenstein” the two patterns together and came up with something that resembled the vintage vogue trousers.
Next thing to think about was the opening. Many of the trousers of the time didn’t seem to have a centre front fly, and they were more tailored than the elastic back pant of the McCall’s 6617 (ugh – elastic waist!) I came across the idea of using the pockets for side opening trousers, with the bonus that no zipper is needed! I had to try that out!
[I’ll be inserting instructions here but for now – here’s another blog to help you]
But wait, there’s more! I had about half a metre and other miscellaneous pieces of fabric left over…With a bit of creative cutting and a little voile for the lining, I managed to make the cute vest top from the McCall’s 6617 as a bonus!
Enjoy the video!
And some pics…because why not?!
Yesterday-Today 