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Enid Beatrice Gilchrist OAM (died 17 October 2007, age 90) [1] was an Australian fashion designer, who became well known for her numerous self-drafting sewing pattern books which were very popular in the 1950s to 1970s.
Enid studied dress design at Melbourne Technical College (now Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and during World War II worked as a dressmaker for a pattern firm. She worked with the Victorian Infant Welfare Department and the Kindergarten Union to produce a series of patterns for babies and young children. She later taught dress design at Footscray Technical College and the Emily Mcpherson College.
Enid began to make patterns using a pattern-drafting method. These patterns were published in The Argus from 1946 onward into the 1950s. They were also published in The News (Adelaide) in 1953. Her pattern drafting techniques were collected in books that were sold widely across Australia. The first editions sold out and they went into multiple printings. In the early 1950s she also lectured widely to suburban state school mothers clubs, church groups and Red Cross auxiliaries in Melbourne, featuring the clothes that she designed and using local children as models. She later joined New Idea magazine, where she published articles and patterns and produced sewing books showing clothes which people could make up from the pattern drafts.
In 1953 she was one of the judges of a competition for wool fashions with a parade of the finalists run by the Royal Melbourne Show. [2]
While her books were published without dates, they can be grouped by reference to the decimalization of Australian currency in 1966, demonstrated by the price on the cover.
Earliest Publications
Publications before 1966
Publications Circa 1966
Publications Post 1966
The Japanese school uniform is modeled in appearance similar to that of the European-style naval uniforms. It was first used in Japan in the late 19th century, replacing the traditional kimono. Today, school uniforms are common in many of the Japanese public and private school systems. The Japanese word for this type of uniform is seifuku (制服).
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era. Before the invention of spinning yarn or weaving fabric, archaeologists believe Stone Age people across Europe and Asia sewed fur and leather clothing using bone, antler or ivory sewing-needles and "thread" made of various animal body parts including sinew, catgut, and veins.
In sewing and fashion design, a pattern is the template from which the parts of a garment are traced onto woven or knitted fabrics before being cut out and assembled. Patterns are usually made of paper, and are sometimes made of sturdier materials like paperboard or cardboard if they need to be more robust to withstand repeated use. The process of making or cutting patterns is sometimes compounded to the one-word Patternmaking, but it can also be written pattern(-)making or pattern cutting.
A hoop skirt or hoopskirt is a women's undergarment worn in various periods to hold the skirt extended into a fashionable shape.
Children's clothing or kids' clothing is clothing for children who have not yet grown to full height. Children's clothing is often more casual than adult clothing, fit for play and rest.
Fashion in the years 1750–1775 in European countries and the colonial Americas was characterised by greater abundance, elaboration and intricacy in clothing designs, loved by the Rococo artistic trends of the period. The French and English styles of fashion were very different from one another. French style was defined by elaborate court dress, colourful and rich in decoration, worn by such iconic fashion figures as Marie Antoinette.
Mary Brooks Picken was an American author of 96 books on needlework, sewing, and textile arts. Her Fashion Dictionary, published by Funk and Wagnalls in 1957, is the first dictionary in the English language to be published by a woman.
Fashion in the period 1690–1740 in European and European-influenced countries is characterized by a widening silhouette for both men and women following the tall, narrow look of the 1680s and 90s. This era is defined as late Baroque/Rococo style. The new fashion trends introduced during this era had a greater impact on society, affecting not only royalty and aristocrats, but also middle and even lower classes. Clothing during this time can be characterized by soft pastels, light, airy, and asymmetrical designs, and playful styles. Wigs remained essential for men and women of substance, and were often white; natural hair was powdered to achieve the fashionable look. The costume of the eighteenth century, if lacking in the refinement and grace of earlier times, was distinctly quaint and picturesque.
In a decade that broke many traditions, adopted new cultures, and launched a new age of social movements, 1960s fashion had a nonconformist but stylish, trendy touch. Around the middle of the 1960s decade, new styles started to emerge from small villages and cities into urban centers, receiving media publicity, influencing haute couture creations of elite designers and the mass-market clothing manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.
Fashion in the years following World War II is characterized by the resurgence of haute couture after the austerity of the war years. Square shoulders and short skirts were replaced by the soft femininity of Christian Dior's "New Look" silhouette, with its sweeping longer skirts, fitted waist, and rounded shoulders, which in turn gave way to an unfitted, structural look in the later 1950s.
The most characteristic North American fashion trend from the 1930s to 1945 was attention at the shoulder, with butterfly sleeves and banjo sleeves, and exaggerated shoulder pads for both men and women by the 1940s. The period also saw the first widespread use of man-made fibers, especially rayon for dresses and viscose for linings and lingerie, and synthetic nylon stockings. The zipper became widely used. These essentially U.S. developments were echoed, in varying degrees, in Britain and Europe. Suntans became fashionable in the early 1930s, along with travel to the resorts along the Mediterranean, in the Bahamas, and on the east coast of Florida where one can acquire a tan, leading to new categories of clothes: white dinner jackets for men and beach pajamas, halter tops, and bare midriffs for women.
Fashion in the period 1900–1909 in the Western world continued the severe, long and elegant lines of the late 1890s. Tall, stiff collars characterize the period, as do women's broad hats and full "Gibson Girl" hairstyles. A new, columnar silhouette introduced by the couturiers of Paris late in the decade signaled the approaching abandonment of the corset as an indispensable garment.
Phoebe Philo OBE is a British fashion designer. She was the creative director of fashion brands Céline from 2008 to 2018 and Chloé from 2001 to 2006.
A dress is a garment traditionally worn by women or girls consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice. It consists of a top piece that covers the torso and hangs down over the legs. A dress can be any one-piece garment containing a skirt of any length, and can be formal or casual.
Breeching was the occasion when a small boy was first dressed in breeches or trousers. From the mid-16th century until the late 19th or early 20th century, young boys in the Western world were unbreeched and wore gowns or dresses until an age that varied between two and eight. Various forms of relatively subtle differences usually enabled others to tell little boys from little girls, in codes that modern art historians are able to understand but may be difficult to discern for the layperson.
Maternity clothing is worn by women as an adaptation to changes in body size during pregnancy. The evolution of maternity clothing began during the Middle Ages, and became fashionable as women became more selective about style and comfort in the types of maternity clothing they wore. Fashions were constantly changing over time, such as the high-waisted Empire silhouette style maternity dress that was fashionable at the turn of the 19th century, and the "wrapper" style dress of the Victorian era that a woman could simply wrap around herself and button up.
Fashion in the twenty years between 1775 and 1795 in Western culture became simpler and less elaborate. These changes were a result of emerging modern ideals of selfhood, the declining fashionability of highly elaborate Rococo styles, and the widespread embrace of the rationalistic or "classical" ideals of Enlightenment philosophes.
JoJo Maman Bébé is a multichannel maternity wear and baby clothing retailer with stores in the United Kingdom. Founded as a mail-order seller in 1993, it was acquired in 2022 by Next and an investment group.
Fashion and clothing in the Philippines refers to the way the people of Filipino society dress up in instances such as while they are at home, at work, travelling and when attending special occasions.
A sailor dress is a child's or woman's dress that follows the styling of the sailor suit, particularly the bodice and collar treatment. A sailor-collared blouse is called a middy blouse. In early 20th-century America, sailor dresses were very popularly known as Peter Thomson dresses after the former naval tailor credited with creating the style.