Whatever Happened to...The Gap?

Readers of a certain age, do you remember the Gap?  I don't mean Gap, Inc., the once popular, now stuggling clothing chain, though there is a connection (keep reading).  I'm talking about The Generation Gap, and its impact on style.

Anyone who grew up in the mid-to-late Sixties or early Seventies, as I did, knows the term.  It defined the wide gulf in values and taste between the generation that grew up during The Great Depression and before, and the generation that was born during the relatively prosperous Postwar period, often termed The Baby Boom.

The concept of The Generation Gap was everywhere in American popular culture.  No self-respecting teenager or young adult in the late Sixties wanted to (or was supposed to want to) think or dress like their parents, and probably vice versa.  The older and younger generations really did seem to live on different planets, at least on the surface. 

1969 was a pivotal year.  Remember Woodstock?  Believe it or not, I was taken to see the film version of that rock concert as a kid.  Of course, my musical tastes tended more toward Jerry Herman...

Young people of both sexes were wearing caftans and jeans, love beads and granny glasses -- unless you worked in the Nixon administration.  Am I over-generalizing?

Even Ken got mod and joined a rock band, just like Desi Arnaz, Jr.

But "Fashion" would have none of this bohemian way of dressing -- or very little.  I'd argue that this is when home sewing lost its way.  When everybody was wearing Levi's, what was there to sew?

Recently I found this fantastic copy of Vogue Patterns (then called Vogue Pattern Book) from February/March 1969 at the flea market.  And leafing through it, you can see how radically different "official" fashion was from the way many, if not most, young people were choosing to dress back then.  While lovely, these clothes seem all wrong for the times.

Here's elegant model Maud Adams on the cover. Cheryl Tiegs is featured prominently inside.  These were like real fashion magazines and not just pattern catalogs.









These clothes make me think of chic Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair or Doris Day in her TV series.  Did anyone under 30 other than Julie Nixon (remember her?) ever wear them in real life?

Don't think this was only a female thing either.  Here I am in 1968 looking like a young David Eisenhower.



By 1971, I'd gone groovy, à la Keith Partridge in The Partridge Family.  I tuned in but I didn't turn on and I certainly didn't drop out.  I was only nine.



As far as Gap, Inc., they were formerly The Gap, which was a reference to The Generation Gap.  They removed the The because it ceased having meaning.  You probably knew that already.

Today, in fashion, there is no longer a Generation Gap.  Twenties, Fifties, Sixties, most everybody dresses the same -- like they're eighteen or so.  Even my eighty-one-year-old mother wears stretch leggings.   Forever 21 isn't just a store, it's a state of mind, and it speaks volumes about fashion today.

Lindsay and Mom

Christina Aguilera and Cher

In conclusion, friends, did you live through the Generation Gap years?  Do you remember how fashion changed -- or didn't it change as radically where you lived?

What do you think of the ladylike 1969 couture fashions from Vogue?  Were you -- or anyone you knew -- still wearing white gloves in 1969?

When do you think the generations started to dress the same again -- and why?

More great pics from my 1969 Vogue Pattern Book here.

Jump in!

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Mad Men and the early Sixties

Friends, I started watching Mad Men yesterday.  With three episodes of Season 1 under by belt, I am sorry to say that I think I've had enough.

It's a lot easier to criticize others' creative output than to be creative yourself and it's obvious that Mad Men is a collective labor of love.  The achievements of Mad Men stylist Janie Bryant in recreating the look of the period deserve praise.  But the writers' take on Sixties attitudes and relationships is one big politically-incorrect cliché.

This series -- which could be dubbed Cigarettes and Alcohol and the Miserable Sexist WASPs Who Consumed Them -- feels like it was made by people who have no living knowledge of the period, but can't get over the fact that women were once called girls.
  
The theme of the banality of prosperous postwar America and the stultifying conformity that oppressed so many affluent white Americans is a familiar one.  We've been here before -- from Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, to John Updike, to films like The Graduate, Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven and many, many others.  

In Mad Men, all the men are aggressive louts and lotharios, the women submissive, competitive (with each other), or outcasts.  Nobody's happy because, you see, the American Dream is....... a MYTH! (Sound familiar?)

This series is so bogged down in recreating Sixties style -- long-line dress silhouettes, knotty pine kitchen cabinets, vintage IBM Selectric typewriters; endless close-ups of office bars and ashtrays and rotary phones and tailfins -- that the substance takes second place.

And the substance -- society's "winners" and their lives of quiet, nicotine-addicted desperation -- is old news.  

The postwar world of corporate conformity was already ripe for satire while it was happening.  Just watch Billy Wilder's Oscar-winning The Apartment starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine, from 1960.  Nobody was more cynical about contemporary American life than Billy Wilder, and this classic film nails the greed, the sexism -- indeed the sickness -- beneath the slick veneer of American success.

The Apartment still feels fresh today.  It's funny, knowing, and terribly moving.  You'll learn much more about life in 1960 than you ever will from the Postwar America 101 version that is Man Men.

Looking for a deftly clever satire on advertising?  Try Lover Come Back, starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson from 1961, another brilliant send-up of the duplicitous, appallingly sexist, cut-throat world of the early Sixties three-martini-lunch business world.

Both Lover Come Back and The Apartment address the competitive "jock" culture that was very much in evidence in (and in many ways defines) the corporation.  But unlike Mad Men, these films handle these themes with a lightness and charm utterly lacking in the contemporary series, not to mention sharp writing, masterful acting (neither Jack Lemmon nor Doris Day has ever been better) and genuine affection (and sympathy) for their characters.

Watch these films and then go back to Mad Men and you'll know what I mean instantly.  The slurred diction and amateurish acting alone make it painful to watch.  And the unrelenting ugliness of the human relationships represented is depressing.

In other news, friends, I also watched Coco Before Chanel and I loved it.  Audrey Tautou gives a beautiful performance as the young, soon-to-be-famous couturier, and the period styling is perfect without the film ever being about the period styling.

Why are French films able to present human relationships with subtlety and non-judgment and create characters of such dimensionality -- even when they're biographical films and have to stick to the facts -- and why can't Hollywood do this anymore (if it every could)?

In closing, friends, I'm taking off my film critic hat for the day now; I'm much more comfortable with the sewing machine. And there will be sewing today. There must be!

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

Anyone seen The Apartment or Lover Come Back?

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Mid-Sixties Style or "Glamour's Last Gasp"

Fun find at the flea market this morning, friends!  Three mid-Sixties pattern magazines, all dating from 1964-65.

This was a fascinating time in fashion.  Styles were about to change in a big way, but on the surface we were still in the late Fifties "Populuxe" era of shantung cocktail ensembles and white gloves.  It was glamour's last hurrah, but who knew it at the time?  Let's take a look!



There's a sense of  affluence in these magazines that reflects the United States in this "Great Society" era.  The middle class was doing better than it ever had before.



These magazines are full of ads, not only for sewing machines (and there are a lot of those) but for buttons, thread, interfacing, new synthetics (like Kodel Polyester), stretch fabrics, and more!







The sheath dress and shift were very popular, and everything is ladylike in the extreme, though more relaxed and suburban than a decade before. 





As you'd expect, the Vogue pattern magazine has an emphasis on Paris designers, though the silhouettes are very similar to those in the McCall's magazines.



I love that the Vogue fashion shoots are not studio-bound, and there's a great spread of a romantic adventure in NYC with musician Skitch Henderson.  (We must get a dashing mature man to escort Cathy in her next photo shoot.)  I love the copy too!

"A tunic designed to melt over your figure and garner many an approving glance, beautifully stated in Lesur needlepoint wool."



"A float of chiffon, almost out of this world -- but completely realistic about arousing every Galahad instinct.  Exotic color-over-color, new feminine triumph, in silk chiffon and surah by Liberty of London."



Who writes like that anymore?!

At this point, in 1964-65, there's just the smallest inkling of some of the psychedelia that's to come later in the decade... 







The McCall's magazines include patterns for Barbie and troll dolls -- fun!





We complain about a dearth of men's patterns today?  In three magazines there is only ONE.



There is, however, a fair amount of focus on mature fashions (fashions for "women"), a rarity today.







I think this is one of fashion's forgotten eras.  It's too much like the late Fifties, and doesn't yet feel like what we've come to associate with the Sixties.  I can't think of any vintage sewers who really seem to relish this era's fashions other than Susan of Spare Time, who can really rock a sheath dress.  If you sew mid-Sixties patterns too, speak up!

You can see more photos from these mid-Sixties pattern magazines here.

Friends, what do you think?   Do these styles seem too quaint for today, too prim and proper?  Why do you think this period is so unloved (if you agree that it is)?

If you grew up watching Doris Day movies like "Send me No Flowers" and "Move Over Darling" or TV sitcoms like "Bewitched," you were fed a staple of these looks from an early age -- maybe that's why they still resonate with me. 

Anything here you really like -- or hate? 

Jump in!

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Photo Album 2...and the Featherweight arrives!

More pics from the magical mystery photo album -- and so much more, my friends.  But first...

Who wants a Tom Collins?



Belly up to the (home) bar, boys!



Just three more drinks till dinner, hon.



Ray-Bans, madras shorts, chinos...







Grammy seeks a quick exit.



Don't eat the fruit, Bunny...



Happy Birthday, Chip!



Lots more fun pics of the life I'll never have but at least someone did here.

In other news...the Featherweight arrived yesterday!





Carrying case intact though a little beat up, as expected.  The inside is a bit moldy looking (and smelling).



And there she is.





Not for the first time with a vintage machine, I turn her on, she runs and then immediately seizes up.



I take off her hand wheel and find decrepit thread wound around the shaft.



Under the throat plate, ancient mystery lint.





I'm not entirely sure I understand how to thread her, friends, though I DO have the manual.  I did get her to sew a bit (with a fresh needle)



But then the top thread would get tangled up below.  Here one possible cause:





The hook is loose.  Do you see how it comes off that little protruding doohickey on the left?  I don't have the correct screwdriver for this so I'll have to pick one up later today if possible.

The good: her motor sounds fantastic -- strong and quiet -- and when I run her with no thread she's smooth as can be.   I'll need to tighten up that hook (I might disassemble the shuttle race first)  and take it from there.

This is the first time I've bought a used sewing machine and not been able to sew with her right off the bat -- disappointing, but I suppose it builds character.  The seller said she sews and that's factually true but there's no way, judging from the condition she arrived in, that she was fully tested.  They probably turned the light on, revved the motor, and called it a day.  

I'm glad to have her, though, and eager to get her sewing.  Now about the smell...  (Haven't we been down this road before?)

Happy Wednesday, everybody!  Any Featherweight fans out there?

What are you having?

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