Author Archives: liztregenza

Welcome to my world: Adventure in my boudoir

Posted in Horrockses by

Today I’ve made it back down to good old Romsey. Which is my sometimes hometown. I’ve come back to find my room completely transformed from what it looked like three months ago. My mum has been out of work for a while and clearly beautifying my bedroom is a way she has been spending her time!
I’ll take you on a quick tour (it’s only small!) and you can see some of my lovely vintage goodies : )
my mum likes making arty displays. The dress here is actually a new look dress that i’ve had for at least 7 years. Its such a sweet little piece. The handbag is a Mappin and Webb 1950s one.

Onto my wardrobe. The two dresses seen hanging are two personal favourites the black one is handpainted silk by London town and the blue number is one of my gorgeous Horrockses!

This is just a tiny selection of mine and my mums vintage jewellery collection. We have ALOT more

 My lovely art deco dressing table. Apologies for all of the parcels piled up on the chair. Ebay addict o’clock.

 A closer look at what is on my dressing table. The shoes were an absolute find and are amazing supple gold kid leather that date to around 1890. The vintage handbags are a mixture of mine and my mums. Handbags is how i started my vintage collecting habbits.

 Two pairs of Rayne mules. Oh how i wish my feet were narrow enough for these!!!

My amazing 1930s light fittings. Aren’t they stunning!

Oh and just a cheeky image of my Horrockses bedding with my original Horrockses dress. Just a little bit of a Horrockses super fan you could say.

And my lovely little illustrations on the wall that my mum and I picked up at a vintage fair in Halifax (P.s. I hate these curtains with a passion and they are the only part of my room that i dislike. I actually hope my mum reads this and gets the picture : ) : ) )

Matilda Etches: long forgotten couturier

Posted in 40s by

I have a bit of a thing for long forgotten couturiers. Couture now is such a dying art and the couture system today is only a tiny proportion of what it once was. For example in France couture represented  a third of the countries G.D.P in the late 1940s. Yet today there are just 11 offical members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture


Britain on the other hand has a very different couture legacy with couture houses often seeing their money made (unitl 1958 when presenting stopped) through debutante dresses. In Britian today  the couture industry has all but ceased to exest and those names who were once revered in a similar light to the French couturiers (for example Hardy Amies and Bianca Mosca) are often forgotten.
Today I would like to introduce you to a particular British couturier of note, Matilda Etches (sometimes seen as Matilda Ethces-Homan). Etches for reasons I will discuss later has a very important position in terms of the acceptance of fashion into the museum world.
Etches was famed throughout the 40s particularly for her fashionable yet innovative clothing that often featured careful sculptural detailing. I originally discovered her work when investigating garments using minimal seams. I then found this example of her work in the V and A collection. The jacket here can be worn either as seen in the image or worn the other way round to create a dramatic peplum. The jacket must have been created as a circle for this to be possible.
Etches though should be remembered for her pivotal position in terms of the Victoria and Albert museums acquisition  policy. Etches had two of her pieces (seen here) accepted into the V and A collection in 1969. The pieces “were shown to senior Museum officials as key acquisitions. They were the first modern fashion items to be accorded this honour” (V and A website)
From correspondence of Madeleine Ginsburg to Matilda Etches-Homan, letter written 9 June 1969, following acceptance of the Etches collection & dossier 

“The image of our 20th century costume collection has received a great boost through you! For the first time clothes from this century have been chosen to show the meeting of our advisory committee – a honour usually reserved only for medieval embroideries. They are to see the Butterfly cape and the West African cotton dress.”

So all in all a pretty important lady in terms of British couture no doubt! I was also rather lucky to find two pictures of her. These are from the Doris Langley Moores book “the Woman in fashion” and see Etches posing in a dress from 1900(above) and 1913(top of post)
Moore used key people in fashion of the day for this book, so Ethces must have clearly been considered important enough in 1949 to be included!
(additional images from the V and A collections website)

30’s film star glamour- Joan Crawford

Posted in 30s, Joan crawford, Letty Lynton by

I absolutely adore the glamour of Hollywood in first half of the century but the stand out decade for me has to be the 1930s. This truly is the “golden age” and when film and fashion were in perfect synchronicity. The 30s is often recognized as the decade when Hollywood was dominating fashion rather than Paris, this had a lot to do with the audience at the time. So many more women were able to see films in the cinema than ever were able to see them in the Paris salons. Fashion was openiing up to new aucdieces and people were really able to understand how fashions moved and actually looked on bodies rather than seeing them in static form in fashion magazines. Interestingly it was Schiaparelli (one of my all time favourite designers) who was the first couturier to recognise the influence of film on fashion.

One of the most famous stars of the decade was Joan Crawford. Crawford appeared in numerous films throughout the 30s but the film she is probably best known for is Letty Lynton. The film is incredibly rare with few original recordings left. This is mostly due to the fact that the film was banned in the 30s as the plot following too closely to the play “a dishonoured lady” .The film also has some of the most sensational costumes of the decade.

The designs were by Gilbert Adrian , probably the most respected film costume designer of the 1930s. He later went on to design the costumes for the wizard of Oz, which he is probably best known for.
lettylyntonmain3.gif
The costumes throughout the film are typical of early 30s Hollywood glamour. Crawford wears a number of slinky bias cut dresses and also luxurious mink fur coats. The character she plays is a socialite so the clothes really helped to embody this stylish New Yorker.

The dress the film is probably best known for is widely known as the “Letty Lynton dress”. The dress, a design by Adrian, was made from white cotton organdie. The department store Macy’s soon copied the gown and over half a million copies of the dress were sold across the U.S. (This figure is wideley debated, just to warn. Sometimes you see it as 50,000 and sometimes half a million. Although, I have seen it mostly stated as half a million)

The styling of this dress was very modern at the time, and helped to usher in the new shape of the “romantic” 30s with its puffed sleeves and full skirt. I’m just waiting for my new 30s dress (green and white silk check) to arrive which is definitely inspired by the infamous Letty dress!

All of these images come from www.legendaryjoancrawford.com a wonderful website for anything related to the star.