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:

Tuesday Stream of Consciousness

Good morning, friends!  I'm back and feeling rested, thanks no doubt to the subliminal messages I received from Joey Heatherton's Serta mattress commercial yesterday.  I may be sleeping on a Serta myself for all I know; I should look.

Today is all about reflection and re-centering.  I hope you'll indulge me and perhaps join me.

First off, Cathy.  Thank you all so much for your kind comments about Cathy's taffeta dress.  They mean so much to my cousin, who's just getting back into the swing of life.  I'm staring at the dress now, as it's still strewn across my ironing board.  I don't know where I'll store it and I may just have to make it a permanent part of the living room decor.



As you may already know, Cathy's lace redingote has three ties across the front bodice made of the same narrow velvet ribbon I used for her slip straps.  I am glad I opted for the thinner strap and thank you for your strong support of that choice.

And speaking of lace overlays, here's a recent picture of Joey Heatherton in her version.  To quote legendary Broadway songwriter Frank Loesser:  Joey, Joey, Joey....

A number of you asked why Michael wasn't wearing a matching bow tie at Saturday's party.  Friends, I made one, but in the end I/we decided it wasn't quite up to snuff.



I'm very much on the fence about Cathy's choice of Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Coralberry.  While very striking against the green taffeta (a classic combination), I think it was too pale for evening.  Next time we'll stick with the blue-reds.



In other news, I have received some wonderful vintage patterns from MPB readers recently, which I always like to acknowledge.  So you can well imagine my chagrin when I confess that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the generous woman who sent me these wonderful men's shirt patterns.  I searched through my email for fifteen minutes and...nothing.



Kind person, won't you please identify yourself in the comments today and accept both my apologies and warmest of warm thanks?  I love these and, miracle of miracles, they're all in my size (14 1/2" neck, 36" chest)

More recently I received this lovely surprise from reader/blogger Sunni, The Cupcake Goddess herself.  Where can I begin?  Cathy is desperate to star in a remake of the Audrey Hepburn classic thriller, Charade, even if it's nothing more than a YouTube video.  Now I can get started on her wardrobe!



I'll likely save this Vogue Bill Blass gem for the big premier.  To. Die. For.



Apropos of which, I think it may be time to drag Cathy out of the late Forties/early Fifties, don't you?  One doesn't want to get stuck in a look.   (Joey...?)

Oh, before I forget!   I got an email from Rain yesterday!  He tells me he's almost done restoring my Singer 15-91!  He says he's "just waiting for some parts to come in."  Readers, I'm confused about what parts Rain can possibly be talking about.  You'll recall that the machine was in working order, though the wires were brittle as Joey Heatherton's blonde shag.

My real fear is that Rain is restoring my 15-91 -- into a bedside lamp.   Recalling our last conversation, I'm not sure I ever clearly articulated my desire to actually be able to sew with this machine.

Seriously though, I have every confidence in Rain's abilities, and am hoping he'll also be able to loosen the screw on my Featherweight that would allow me to disassemble the hook assembly so I can install the new loop guard screw I purchased. How long have I had that Featherweight already?

Beloved readers, we're out of time.  I need more coffee and then who knows?  I really must get organized as we have our upcoming MPB Jeans Sew-Along starting Monday, May 2, I begin teaching at Textile Arts Center on Tuesday, May 3, and then -- I really shouldn't divulge this yet -- I'm planning a Summer sew-along involving none other than Cathy herself!

Tentatively titled "Cathy's Live the Dream Fantasy Sew-Along," participants will create a glamorous day or evening ensemble using a pattern of their own choosing, something they'd normally never wear in real life.  I am a big believer in "build the gown and the event will happen" -- a Field of Dreams-type thing.  We'll post pics on Flickr perhaps and maybe have a contest with categories like "Most Likely to Be Worn by Lana Turner in Madame X."

To quote Joey Heatherton, You'll LOVE it!  How does that sound?

Have a great day, everybody!

A different side of Joey: "contemplative, quiet, beautiful..."

No, no, NOOOOO!

Another screw up on the cocktail dress!

Remember, I had two skirts to hem: the redingote and the taffeta slip.  I started with the redingote.  First I added the velvet ribbon ties.  No problem.



Then.

Friends, I was tired, I was impatient, I was lazy.  Normally I'd have Michael measure the distance from floor to hem but Michael was busy teaching.  I did it myself, being careful not to bend, which is harder than it sounds.  It looked like seven inches.  It seemed like a lot but rulers don't lie.

Parenthetically, I'd planned to roll hem the lace.  But after extensive testing, I realized my lace was not going to fray -- ever.  I don't know what it's made out of -- vinyl perhaps? -- but rub it, pick it, chew it, it does not ravel.  So I decided to simply slice off the extra length.   I lay it on my cutting mat, measured all around, traced a line with chalk, and chopped.  Then I tried it on.



Gadzooks -- it looked too short!  I don't know how it happened but it was not the length I wanted.  I could hem the skirt higher, but the slip would lose its fullness and its late Forties/early Fifties cocktail dress look.

Suddenly a light bulb: I'd add a lace border!  I hightailed to Pacific Trim on 38th St.  And lo and behold...



I bought three yards.  That little mistake cost me $7.50, not to mention what it did to my blood pressure.  The trim cost more per yard than the 60" wide lace I made the redingote out of.

I got it home, tried on the dress for the upteenth time, and then realized I'd overreacted: a shorter skirt length was actually more becoming.  I enlisted Michael's help this time and measured carefully, matching skirt length to redingote length and hemmed, by hand, the taffeta slip 2" around.



I love it.  Cathy loves it.  I'd panicked unnecessarily.  I'll use the lace border for something else.

I also picked up 3 yds. of black tulle and I may make a little black petticoat with it, nothing fancy.  The white one I made for the rose dress is OK, but it's nice to see black tulle peeking out of a dress like this and who knows if Cathy will be called on to do her famous can-can dance.

Friends, that's it.  I hope I haven't agitated you too much this morning.  Of course tonight's event will be well-documented and I hope to share some photos with you tomorrow.  Now I'm off to make a matching taffeta bow tie for Michael.  Maybe he'd settle for a scarf.

Have a great day everybody and easy with the shears, please!

And speaking of Joey Heatherton...

Liz Style

Like many people around the world, I was shocked and saddened by the death of Elizabeth Taylor yesterday.  It just seemed like that Dame was going to live forever -- she'd been through so many health emergencies and always pulled through.  Alas, this time it was not to be.

I've always enjoyed Elizabeth Taylor as an actress and admired her very public support of the gay community and people with AIDS at the height of the AIDS crisis.  In fact, I got to hear her speak at an AmfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) fundraiser about twelve years ago. It was exciting to see her in person, though even then her health was not great.

Elizabeth Taylor was a symbol of so many things -- perhaps most notably a lust for living life to the fullest. No one would argue that at seventy-nine she hadn't filled her cup to the brim.

It seemed like she'd been around forever and she felt like an old friend we begin to take for granted.

Today I'd like to talk about Liz as style icon, both in her film roles and her private life.  With her dark hair and heavy brows, her full figure and kittenish voice, she was the epitome of a kind of pull-out-the-stops glamour that seems, if not gone, then self-conscious and labored today (think every starlet at the Oscars).

I hope I don't offend, however, when I say that Elizabeth Taylor was extremely poorly served by the styles of her heyday period, the 1960s.  With her ripe hourglass figure, she often looked shoehorned into the mini dresses and wacky psychedelic youth-quake fashions of the period.  Moreover, while sometimes slim, she was never skinny, in a period whose fashion icons were Twiggy and Penelope Tree.

This only made us love her more, I'd argue, because with her high-profile marriages and jet-setting lifestyle, she made it clear that she didn't care particularly what anybody thought.  She gained weight and lost weight and wore as much jewelry as she wanted.  She wouldn't make anybody's Best Dressed list -- she was no Audrey Hepburn or Catherine Deneuve -- and she clearly wasn't trying.  No Paris couturier made her his muse.  Even before camp, Liz was campy.  Refreshing!

In her MGM days, her public image was carefully controlled by the studio, and dressed by Helen Rose or Irene Sharaff, she looked elegant and alluring, both demure and vampy.

Then the Sixties happened and everything got bigger: the career, the scandals, the jewelry, the hair -- and la Liz herself.

If you've ever seen 1965's The Sandpiper you know that tent-like beach cover ups and caftans were not her best look, yet that movie spawned a thousand sewing patterns...nearly always with a facsimile of Liz on the front.

As the headlines and scandals eclipsed her acting career, the outfits got kookier and the films less memorable.

Into the Seventies it all got bigger still, and you just knew Liz was in on the joke -- she didn't care if she raised eyebrows or invited criticism, she was going to do her own thing.

Into the Eighties and beyond, it was more of the same, and she continued until health problems slowed her down, and even then, she was always around, showing up at celebrity weddings and funerals, launching a successful perfume line or a jewelry business.

Liz was the model for taking what life gives you -- in her case, beauty, talent, and drive -- and running with it.

She will be missed.

Any favorite Elizabeth Taylor movies, looks, or other memories you wish to share?  Please leave a comment below.

Look, Ma, I'm teaching!

Loyal readers, all sorts of exciting news today.  First, I'm delighted to announce that at this very moment I am blogging directly from my bed.  That's right, friends, my home internet service has been restored and I couldn't be happier.

Though I never want to even smell another bagel ever again, I would like to thank the kind staff at Brooklyn Bagel & Coffee Company for allowing me to type away for hours on end for nearly a week, all at the cost of a daily cup of coffee.  You're the best!

And now some even more exciting news...

Starting in May I'm going to be teaching!  (Sewing -- not men's grooming)  I'll have much more information shortly but it looks like I'll be offering three month-long elementary and intermediate-level classes in men's clothing construction.  Nothing's written in stone yet, but the Play-Doh is hardening.

Live teaching is exactly what I want to be doing now, though my longer term goal, as you already know, is to have my own sewing/musical-comedy variety TV show -- a cross between This Old House and Donny and Marie.  I just hope it happens while Steve and Eydie are still kicking, and will someone please get Charo on the phone?

It's going to happen, I just know it.  I'm doing my daily visualizations.  Are you?

Friends, sometimes I wonder how many of you know what I'm talking about.  I mean, I know you're reading and all, but I fear some of my younger followers, as well as those on other continents, are often at a near-total loss.  Google Analytics assures me I'm a favorite among the Pygmy and !Kung tribes, but do they get the jokes?

Finally, I want to apologize publicly for yesterday's epitaph to the secretary which, based on your passionate comments, was clearly premature.  I also learned why so many of my followers have time to read blogs in the middle of the day.

Administrative assistants, office managers, and other committed team members, you are appreciated -- and I take mine black, no sugar, please.

I'm keeping it short today but I wanted once again to thank all of you for your ongoing support and encouragement.  I couldn't do it without you.

Have a great day, everybody!


Picture something like this...but with sewing machines.




4 PM UPDATE: If you're craving more, read my latest article over at BurdaStyle (reworked from an earlier MPB blog post).

Men Who Dress Like Women

Friends, finally, the topic you've all been waiting for.  Isn't it time we addressed the 10-ton elephant in the room?  And what better time than MPB Guy Week?

Grab a cup of coffee, turn off the radio, and shut the door -- I have a confession to make. 



You know how in books,  movies, and sit-coms like The Prince and the Pauper, The Parent Trap, Dead Ringer, and The Patty Duke Show, there are always those moments when the identical cousins, or twins, or what have you, will switch places to play a trick on everyone else -- usually the high point of the story?

Well my beloved cousin Cathy and I....oh, dear, here goes....sometimes we do the same thing and we've been doing it for years!  I'll even share this: in more than one of the more than dozen Cathy photo shoots you've seen here on MPB, you're actually seeing me and not my cousin Cathy.

I bet you'd never have guessed.  That's because we look so much alike!



(I remember once receiving a comment to the effect that, Cathy looks like she's having a bit of a 5 o'clock shadow problem, and it was all I could do not to blurt out, You fool -- that's me!   But of course I didn't.)



In any case, let's talk a little about this.  A lot of people are probably wondering:  What on earth would possess a man to dress up like a woman?

Friends, there are two kinds of men: men who occasionally enjoy dressing up like a woman, and men who would enjoy it if they ever gave themselves the chance.  There are a few other kinds of men too but we can't possibly cover everybody today.

In any case, I think if you men were to ask yourselves -- and you women were to ask the men in your lives -- if they'd ever put on a brassiere, lipstick, or a pair of pantyhose (not necessarily at the same time) the answer would be 100% affirmative.

Rest assured, the ones who are denying it are simply not telling you the truth, likely out of fear of condemnation.  I'd wager that whenever they find themselves safely home alone for more than an hour or two they're rifling around in your makeup kit or trying on your Christian Louboutins. 

But why?, you ask.

Because it's 1) fascinating, and 2) fun!

Have you ever been in a play?  Have you ever experienced the thrill of pretending to be someone else, of putting on a costume and making yourself look (and feel) different?  And if you were actually good at it and elicited a positive response in others, you know it was doubly thrilling.

Men dressing up like women -- cross-dressing, as it were -- has a long and celebrated history, stretching back to the days when women were not allowed to perform on the stage (and probably before).   Women have been dressing like men equally as long, but for too many reasons to go into here, it never seems to have the same power or impact on an audience (says me).

There is something about seeing a man dressed as a woman, say Flip Wilson as Geraldine (above) that packs an emotional wallop you don't get from Lucy dressing like Harpo Marx or Ragtime Cowboy Joe, though neither Flip nor Lucy is especially convincing.

I have always loved watching men impersonate women, and some of the best, like Charles Pierce and Jim Bailey, were often guests on popular variety shows like Carol Burnett.  (Flip Wilson, of course, had a show all his own).  Today's fantastic drag performers have fewer mainstream venues and why this is could be a blog entry all its own.  Sure, there's Ru Paul, but the media landscape is much more fragmented than it was forty years ago.

Which brings me to the final point: male-to-female drag or "gender illusion" as it's sometimes called, can make some people very uncomfortable in a way that a man dressing like a clown does not.  Why, do you think, are there still so many people who don't want to see the lines blurred, or crossed, or what have you, and would punish severely any (male, it's always the male) child of theirs they caught dressing up like a girl?

If a boy likes to dress like a girl, or vice versa, why is this a problem for anybody?  It's not for the boy or girl; it's the soul-crushing social stigma attached that causes the pain and confusion.

I hope that if you have a cousin Cathy you like to dress up as, you will do everything you can to make your Cathy side welcome and cherished in your lives.  Emotional health and happiness comes from embracing everything you are and celebrating it fully; anything less results in frustration, depression, and worse still --projected self-loathing onto others.

Gender identity is too rich a topic to distill into a short blog post but rest assured it's both more varied and more benign than many would have us believe.

It doesn't have anything to do with who we are in our hearts and the positive contributions we can make to the world.

Go for it!