How to Copy: 1963 Party Dress & Draft an Over Skirt

This adorable vintage illustration from 1963 shows a navy or black brocade cocktail dress with a bustier type bodice and gathered skirt with a folded over-skirt or apron. It has a simple concept that appears more complicated than it is. By using current patterns, it's possible to copy this dress on your own.

Lilly Pulitzer: Close-up

Lilly Pulitzer fabrics and fashions made a transition during the later half of the 1960's to include white trimmings that were heavy and textured. She used the popular caftan shapes that were constructed with vertical seam lines and slash necklines to create 'outlines' and seam accents.

She had been using cotton fabric around edges, and expanded on that with shirred trims, ruffles and ruched panels cut from the dress fabric for texture.

These close-up view of her trims and textiles show how she used contrast and texture to create additional new looks and add a fresh face to her well known shift dresses in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Her textile design color palette was based on citrus and tropical brights. She continued to make that her brand identification, rarely including other hues. During the 1970's she did work with deeper brights along the lines of then popular Pucci prints, as shown above.

The themes and images that she used in her designs tended to have a sea and surf motif. Usually there are identifiable images within each design, rarely using all abstract shapes. Floral are dominate, along with fish, frogs and other water creatures.

When trying to date her dresses, it is important to find examples that 'match up' to what you have found. With Lilly designs, due to her use of classic silhouettes and prints, this can be difficult to do, since some styles span a decade or more. In her early career, it is possible to find photos of her wearing her designs that date to the early and mid-1960s. Often she is shown wearing a triangle scarf to match the dress.

The 1960's dresses have a simple cut with popular details such as patch pockets and a deep side slit with contrast white banding and a bow. Contrast rick-rack or banding is also seen around the necklines and armholes. This might be due to the garment construction where under-lining or flat-lining is used to support the thin cottons she printed on. This technique requires that the seam allowances are pressed open and are not hidden behind a lining 'shell'. Rather than loose facings she seems to have chosen contrast binding, rick-rack or piping around the edges, most often in white as you can see in the photos.

Some primary sources are her advertisements (often in "Vogue"), catalogs, press photos, and magazine editorials. Because well known personalities such as Jackie Kennedy wore her dresses, photos are available with dates (note that Jackie favored simple gingham shifts, rather than bold prints).

I have found quite a few examples and have saved them in a Pinterest board "Lilly Pulitzer" for research reference. Feel free to let me know if you locate additional images.

Biography

the New York Times

Palm Beach Daily News

Huffington Post

This post is part of a three-part series. Part one: "Lilly Pulitzer and Her Dresses" can be seen HERE. Pinterest photo album can be found HERE

Lilly Pulitzer & Her Dresses

The Lilly Pulitzer revival continued this year with a small but punched up exhibition of her dresses and other designs for both men and women. It was a good opportunity to view the diversity of her work over the span of her career, with many examples of silhouette and style all created from her textile designs.

Lilly dresses from the 1960s and 1970s are like those from other well know textile designers such as Pucci, Vera, and Marimekko designs: the fabric is first and foremost, while the garment structure is often the vehicle for the textile, rather than the other way around.

The photos here show some of the garments that were in the exhibition, and I offer them as an example of her diversity as a designer of fabric who found a way to marry those splashes of color with simple garment silhouettes. In a second post I'll share more detail photos and textiles close-up.

One important fact that is seldom emphasized about Lilly Pulitzer (1931 - 2013) is that she wasn't a homely Florida orange grove owner's wife selling juice, as the myth is often told. She was a socialite married to a Pulitzer publishing heir, living in Palm Beach, Florida. She was socially connected and knew the major characters who resided in Palm Beach as well as most of the east coast as well. That Jackie O was a former room mate at boarding school who owned and wore her dresses for a magazine cover photo attests to how easy it was for Lilly's company to gain popularity and success. The design business that she began in 1959 included a partner who had been a fashion editor, so she was given great advice along with expert assistance. Her brand is also a story of how a creative individual with drive can become a success especially if they are part of the established upper class system where their work is easily accepted and promoted.

Sadly, I can't give you the dates or descriptions for the garments in the exhibition because nothing was labeled. More to the point, this show appeared to be mounted for entertainment, rather than education, with odd and inappropriate accessories and pairing of garments. All of this aside, it was great to see her diversity when it came to textile design.

These photos were taken at the southern California exhibition "Loving Lilly: Lilly Pulitzer From the Keni Valenti Collection" on view late this summer. All garments shown are from the collection of Keni Valenti, a Miami-based vintage clothing collector.

A Closer Look: 1960's Sheath Dress with Cape Drape

I thought it might be fun to take a closer look at this Mad Men era sheath dress with a great cape drape around the neckline. The back view really makes the dress, while the front view has a classic silhouette.

It looks like a circle cape is sewn around the neckline, that plunges to a deep "V" that is squared off at the point with a wide bow in back. This cape was then folded up at the neckline in front (see detail), and arranged over the shoulders in a fold, while the back floats open.

I include here a view that shows me lifting the back drape so you can see how it is sewn to the dress.

And finally a few close-up views to show more details.

This pink crepe cocktail dress was designed by Anita Modes (I'm guess it was sold at the popular Anita shops). It is fully lined with a center back zipper that has the cape floating open over that zip. A wide bow covers this opening. The sheath dress design has darts to fit and is very simple.

Isn't this inspiring? This style of cape could be added to an existing simple dress for a great holiday look. It flows nicely in crepe here, but a soft satin or even a soft lace could be gorgeous over a simple dress you already own. I would love to try draping this kind of cape collar sometime. If you try it, let me know how it goes!

Cashin: Knits and Girdles in 1961

Bonnie Cashin's fashion style seems so natural, easy fit and easy to wear. But the illusion is often easier to achieve than the reality, as we can see in the foundation garment advertisement from the spring of 1961.

The dress is described as a green and gold striped knit on bright red which is such a modern, 1960's color concept. The knit has a 'natural' fit in the shoulder and body torso. This ad suggests wearing a Maidenform girdle to achieve that slender, effortless looking silhouette. It was promising a newer, more natural girdle of power mesh that would do the job. Where the previous decade had seen a stronger, boned waistline, the early 1960's would lead into a silhouette where natural was the newest look, and Bonnie Cashin was a leader in that field.

1960 Dress Style: How to Get That Look

Aren't these classic dresses from 1960 cute? They are from a Penney's department store advertisement. The dresses are cotton and use a black and white gingham check. What makes each one special are the details: pockets, borders and banding trims.

When you plan to sew a dress like this, designing the details are half the fun. This ad has very simple dresses when you look at the cut and style, yet the details make each one seem interesting and stylish. All of these elements would be easy to copy using a pattern that has the basic fit.

1960 Dresses: I found some current fashion patterns that could be used to sew up your own dress in this early 1960's style. What I looked for were fitted bodices with either simple darts or princess seam lines. For a curvy figure, those princess seams are best, since a clean fit can be shaped down the bodice dart in front. More slender figures can use the simple darted bodices.

It isn't easy to find a current dress pattern with a fitted bodice and gathered skirt. You may want to make your own full skirt. Many of the best full skirts are about 3 yards around, or 108". This was probably due to the fact that their cottons were sold in 36" widths. They would cut 3 panels that were the full fabric width and sew them together down the selvage edges for each skirt.

Some skirts are gathered, others are "knife pleated". These are the small pleats you see in dresses that tend to 'flatten' the skirt around the waistline. For many, this results in a more slender look at the waistline.

Yardage: How much fabric do we need for a full skirt?
1. Measure your length from waistline to hem.
2. We want about 108"(36" x 3)around for this skirt. If we use current 42" wide fabric, we need 3 panels. Two would be the full fabric width, but the third panel is going to be only 24" wide. If your fabric print is large, you may need to make adjustments to plan for the motif.
3. For each panel, add 2" for the hem and 1/2" for the seam allowance around the waistline. This means that yardage for a skirt with three panels would require: 3X length + 7.5".

Next we will look at how to get our details and trims to have the same cute look!