Making a Ginger Rogers Dress

What can you say about Ginger Rogers that hasn't already been said on a million other sewing/vintage style blogs?  I'll try to come up with something. I've actually written about her a few times, early on, here and here.

Growing up, I adored Ginger Rogers and the more I learned about her the less I liked her.   Aside from her politics -- don't get me started -- she apparently wasn't much fun to work/be/live with.  As recounted by someone I knew years ago who performed with her in Hello Dolly, she was very grand and very cheap, at least by that time in her life. 

But let's not let facts get in the way of fiction.  On screen, especially in the late-Thirties, early-Forties (her heyday), Ginger was wonderful fun.  Working women, especially, identified with her.  You always knew, whatever part she was playing in the film -- and she was usually a shop girl or dancer -- that she'd worked hard to get where she was.  Nothing had been handed to her, and she was tough, which endeared her to struggling Depression-era audiences.



And how lovely she looked.  Obviously she didn't dress herself, but she wore clothes beautifully, having been blessed with a lean and lithe dancer's body.   The films she made with Fred Astaire at RKO are classics and her on-screen contributions are equal to his, especially in the later films.  When they dance, I watch her.

Whatever her personality quirks, Ginger Rogers endured; she started in movies in the Twenties and was still working in the Eighties.  I saw her live at Radio City Music Hall in 1980 in her nostalgic one-woman (and a zillion effeminate chorus boys) show, and I remember being very entertained by it.  She even autographed my program!

Cathy has been begging me to make her a Ginger Rogers-style dress and I'm kind of eager to make one too.  The styles are easy to find: nearly any late-Thirties secretary dress from a pattern company like Hollywood or DuBarry fits the bill, and I recently found one that had a lot of the elements from the dress pictured up top, which Ginger wore in the Pick Yourself Up number in Swing Time, one of the very best of the RKO Astaire-Rogers musicals.

Here's what I recently bought on on Etsy:

Another shot of the Pick Yourself Up dress:

If you inspect Ginger's dress (you can click on it to supersize) you'll notice it has a fitted midriff yoke.  I may or may not try to recreate that.  This Hollywood pattern, currently for sale on Etsy, has a similar yoke, but I will not pay $35 for a vintage dress pattern.

Ginger's skirt is pleated and it seems to wrap across the front, below the midriff yoke (or does it?  If you inspect the top photo you'll see it looks like the layers overlap for additional fullness; in the video below not so much).  What do you think a dress like that was made out of, silk?

Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about sewing next, or soon, though things could change, as they sometimes do.

On an unrelated note, if you haven't contributed your recipe for a happy life on yesterday's post -- or you'd like some good instructions for whipping one up this weekend -- please have a look.  Some wonderful comments -- and a lot of wisdom -- were contributed.

Thoughts about Ginger/the Ginger dress?

Happy Friday, everybody!

Ginger as I saw her:



In her prime:

Sheers, Gowns, Elaine + POLL

Kids, I'm hooked on sheer fabrics.  I know it sounds crazy -- sheers tend to shift like crazy and fray something awful.  But they're purty.  I like the way they float.

I loved the sheer chiffon yoke on Cathy's Twenties dress...



When I recall childhood memories of favorite movie gowns, the black one up top always comes to mind.  Marjorie Reynolds wore it in "Holiday Inn."  Remember how she and Fred Astaire pose in silhouette behind that big paper valentine and and then leap through it at the end of the "Be Careful, It's My Heart" number?

That's the gown I want to sew -- demure, sheer, floaty, Forties.

Here's another floaty childhood favorite, albeit from the 60's.  Who doesn't love a champagne gown with ermine trim -- and crown?  (That's "Queen" Ginger Rogers licking her upper lip at 0:37.)

So friends, was it mere synchronicity that a certain you know who -- let's call her "X" -- no doubt bored out of her wits altering old schmattas reeking of paradichlorobenzene, suggested I make this gown for Cathy?

Do you like it?  I'm on the fence.  I like the gown itself but that sheer gathered overblouse...I don't know.  Is it a little too jeune fille for a sophisticated New York model on the wrong side of thirty?  "X" says it reminds her of Ginger Rogers.  But are we talking the Ginger of "Swing Time" or the Ginger of "Love Boat"?

(Apologies for the simultaneous Polish translation...)



Look, I accept that "X" has impeccable taste even if she can't see that taupe satin T-straps with a blue-gray dress are oh-so-wrong.

So what do YOU think?  (I also welcome your written comments: I hate to put words in your mouth!)

My Favorite Gown

I'm a big old movie buff. 

In early April we talked about glamour, the good the bad, was it still around and did we even care.  For me, if there's one garment that epitomizes what glamour is all about, it's the evening gown.


In old movies, they're everywhere, in almost every film genre barring Westerns.  Gown designers often got their own screen credit (back when screen credits were brief) -- i.e., "Miss So-and-so's gowns by _______." 

It's amazing how prevalent gowns still are on the fashion runway, at "red carpet" pseudo events, and in films like Sex and the City.  Apart from the odd wedding, when does a woman wear a gown anymore?  It's like we're not ready to let them go.  I'd argue that gowns are more popular today than say, forty years ago.

There still are formal affairs like fundraisers and galas where women wear gowns, primarily in big cities.  But it's rare to see a woman who isn't wealthy or a celebrity wearing a gown.  Not good not bad, just the way things are.

I decided to choose my all-time favorite movie gown.  You've no doubt seen it before.  It's the feathered gown Ginger Rogers wore in the Cheek to Cheek number in Top Hat.  It was designed by Bernard Newman, apparently with a lot of input from Ms. Rogers herself.

I actually got to see the original at a Hollywood costume design exhibit Diana Vreeland organized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the mid-Seventies, a wonderful, wonderful show.  Let me tell you, Ginger Rogers was petite and Astaire wasn't much bigger.

The gown truly seems to come from another world: it floats, it's white (on screen at least; I think the real thing was pale blue so as to photograph better); it shines (on the satin mid section); it's fragile but also sturdy.  It bounces to the music and supports the mood of the lyrics.

You've probably heard the old story that Astaire hated the dress because the feathers had a tendency to fly off and stick to his tailcoat and in the film you can see a few feathers aloft.  Rogers was adamant about wearing it and I'm glad she stood her ground.  

If you've never seen it in motion, you must.  The dance itself starts at 2:10.



It's hard to separate a famous costume from the actor who wears it.  In this case, it was a perfect pairing.  No one wore -- or danced in -- a gown in quite the same way as Ginger Rogers.  Breathtaking.

As long as there's video, kids, glamour lives on!

Style Wars: Ginger vs. Marlene

After digging around the vintage sewing blogs lately, I've noticed a surprising appreciation for the style of Ginger Rogers.

Casey's article last month about Thirties film fashion is an excellent example.

While Ginger is best remembered as Fred Astaire's dancing partner, she was a tremendously popular dramatic and light comedic actress in the late Thirties and early Forties, winning an Academy Award in 1940 for "Kitty Foyle." 

During Ginger's heyday, she embodied a classic film type: the shopgirl Cinderella -- tough, hardworking, no-nonsense, quick-witted.  Audiences connected -- and still connect -- with Ginger's ability to project both strength and vulnerability; there's a Depression-era weariness and, I believe, woundedness that lurks just below the surface that feels very real. 

Although she was sharp-tongued, Ginger wasn't brassy, like Lucille Ball; sarcastic and desexualized, like Eve Arden; or willing to play "the girl" or the sidekick, like Joan Blondell and Una Merkel (the latter playing the same types Ginger did in the early-Thirties but never getting promoted).

Oddly, Ginger's star began to descend relatively early, after a dreary performance as Liza Elliot in "Lady in the Dark," which I wrote about here.  Ginger never completely faded, however, and she was still turning up well into the Eighties on "Love Boat" and the celebrity talk show circuit. 

You see Ginger's persona best in "Stage Door," where as a working class dancer living at the Footlights Club,  she's forced to share a room with wealthy aspiring actress Katherine Hepburn.  Ginger gives a wonderful, wholly credible performance as tough-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside Jean Maitland.

Ginger wore clothes beautifully, and a lot of the costumes she wore in the late Thirties look almost contemporary today: the sporty rehearsal outfits, the tap pants, the day clothes, the soft, shoulder-length hair.

It's unfortunate that as her star ascended, Ginger became increasingly shellacked and mannered; less accessible and less loveable.  Compare Penny Carroll from "Swing Time" to Irene Malvern of "Weekend at the Waldorf."  Two very different Gingers!

The anti-Ginger was Marlene Dietrich.

Where Ginger was all-American, Marlene was exotic: the foreign accent, the langorous body, the seductive, sophisticated air, the decadent opulence.  Where Ginger worked as a dance instructor, shop girl, or radio actress, Marlene was an empress, an international jewel thief, a gypsy.

Ginger always looked modern; Marlene looked like a fetish object.  Marlene's style seems inaccessible today: the endless feathers, beads, and veils, the half-moon eyebrows and softly-shadowed facial contours.  The early films she made directed by Josef von Sternberg must be seen to be believed.  The art direction and costuming stun.

One of my favorite Marlene Dietrich films is Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated comedy "Desire," co-starring Gary Cooper.

The gowns, by Travis Banton, with whom Marlene worked closely to create and maintain her glamorous image, are other-worldly.

One highlight below (with a lovely song by Marlene at 0:35):



You can wipe me up off the floor now!

What makes both actress's images so powerful and enduring is that these women played to type, again, and again, and again.  They worked for major film studios dedicated to maintaining a star's image for as long as the public would buy it.  When they left their respective image-defining studios (RKO for Ginger, Paramount for Marlene), they often struggled.  Times changed, too, and interest in their types either waned (as in Marlene's case) or shifted to younger actresses (as in Ginger's).

In closing, do you agree that Marlene is the anti-Ginger, or am I comparing apples and oranges?

Who, if anyone, are their modern descendents?

I'd love to hear from you.

I love a movie fashion show...

..and this one is immediately followed by a glorious dance by Astaire and Rogers, from the film "Roberta."

Gowns designed by Bernard Newman, head costume designer at RKO Pictures.

TRIVIA QUIZ - Can you name the tall blonde in the feathered cape?