Colour gives me life. So much of the available reference material showing fashions from the early to mid part of the 20th century - such as photographs, magazines and catalogues - are in black and white, but life was colourful! I love discovering the colour palettes that were around back then, colour-printed style features; the advice in magazines on the latest fashionable colour combinations; and “this year’s colours” in mail order catalogues.
Yardley ran this series of wartime adverts over 1942/3. Each shows a woman engaged in "war work" - Wren, factory girl, nurse - and a patriotic message encouraging women to "work hard and let no weariness appear". The superficial read of course is that a woman’s duty above all is to be decorative — but, if you look at it a bit deeper, what intrigues me about this campaign is the focus on a specifically feminine strength.
I'm currently participating in #thevintagefashionchallenge on Instagram; this week's themes are colour-based, so this morning we made an early morning visit to Kew Gardens for a green-themed photo shoot. This dress was a charity shop score - it's a modern LK Bennett in silk jersey; I just couldn't resist the novelty key print, especially as at the time I was trying to incorporate more green into my wardrobe. Although it's clearly not true vintage or repro, the silk jersey is amazingly comfortable and I think it styles as vintage quite well.
