Meyer's Modeblatt 1946 - No. 8, 23rd February

So here we are again. I'm a bit late, I admit (due to work), but the nice thing is, I've now caught up with the year! Since I'm also off on my well-earned holiday tomorrow, I'll be keeping things a bit shorter today!

 

Oh, look at that cover - isn't it utterly gorgeous? Love everything about it. The easy, casual hairstyl (not what you usually seen in 40s photos!) and the simple, classic dress (by Nabholz). Everything about this is so timeless! And yes, I absolutely want THIS dress ;-).

The fashion

More knitting patterns... vests, sweaters, cardis, a school girl dress - and crocheted stockings no less! I admit this is something I've not yet seen before!

   

Pretty tea-dresses - just what I like! 

More chic things for spring! A suit, a raincoat and a casual, sporty jacket that closes only with a belt, called a "Canadienne", and made from corduroy.

Interesting women

 

An illustrator of children's books. She didn't just draw, she actually produced collages with real little chains and such things! I think this looks great. 

Marina Viorica Nicolescu - deputy premier of Romania at the time. Certainly something very unusual then! 

This'n that

Winter in the rather remot Safien Valley. You can also read up more about it here: http://www.myswitzerland.com/en/safien-valley.html

Peace conference at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris, Swiss championships in figure skating, death of French pilot Maryse Hilsz, Field Marshal Montgomery in Switzerland, Miss Wyschinski, daughter of the deputy foreign minister of Russia (see also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Januarjewitsch_Wyschinski), who apparently made quite an impression in London with her clothes and hairstyles!

Ad-tastic

Kleenex! Love her turban!

 

 A Steinfels soap ad, showing their factory in Zurich. Why am I including this? Because where that factory used to be (and a lot of other factories and industrial complexes) is now Zurich's "in" place. Read more about it here: http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/hbd/de/index/entwicklungsgebiete/zuerich_west/projekte_realisiert/steinfels-areal.html - it's now home to the Abaton (or Cinemax as it was) cinema and was one of the first bits of this area that were re-developed. Steinfels produced well-known products like Maga or Niaxa.

 Good old Maggi had been around for decades even then!

 A big automatic watch ad on the back of the magazine!

Slimming ad
Nothing new in this issue - just good old Orbal (did they ever give up?)!

Breast enhancment ad

  

Rondoform wasn't going to give up either! But it seems they printed a different ad in every issue! It again talks about the important hormones in the pills (ugh) and a photo was added too...

Meyer's Modeblatt 1946 - No. 7, 16th February

 

So, here we are again for the next issue! The cover again shows a high-fashion model, nothing for the housewife to buy the sewing pattern from... Matelassé wool jersey suit with long jacket by Bruyère (if you want to know a bit more about the firm, please check out the VFG's Label Resource). I like this - it looks so cosy and warm!

The fashion

Fashion in this issue was all kids - mostly teenage girls - with neat dresses and separates that resemble very much adult fashions of the day. The dresses on this double page were intended for confirmation. On the pattern sheet, three of them are also shown in a floor-length version for catholic communion. 

The beauty

This is titled "Short for the day - long for the evening" and talks about new hair style trends from the US. Whilst the style shown in the middle left is for the day, on the right it has been styled a bit differently and a hair piece added for the evening. The elaborate style at the bottom is clearly one for the evening - this two was achieved also with a hair piece. The article talks about hairpieces and fashionable shades for them, which seem to incorporate a lot of red - copper, auburn and darker ones, and about a new trend for pieces that are not all the same color, but where the color actually goes from darker at the top where you attach it to lighter at the tips! I swear I haven't heard about that before - and would love to see a color picture!

The big wide world

This time just a small column of  random news: the heir of the Spanish throne, Don Juan, leaving Switzerland for Lisbon, the 80th birthday of a concert singer, Tyrone Power being welcomed by his wife upon his being discharged from the US Army, A woman in Tallahassee giving birth to the fourth set of twins (how amazing is that - she must have had some crazy genes!) and a street market in Berlin, where people try to sell whatever they can.

Random stuff

A small ad announcing that the Sunlight soap factory was paying for a public sauna in Olten. I still have a few 1940s sunlight soap packs here - it's one of the best and still gentlest ways of getting stains out of washable clothes.

A ready-made house - built in 5 hours! Hm... it looks awfully small and fragile, I admit.

 

Home advice - people could write and ask for advice how to furnish or redecorate a certain room. Not something we could imagine today I guess...

And like in all other issues - a whole page full of ads, mostly of people selling all kinds of things - fruniture, clothes, appliances - whatever. Plus some marriage and penpal ads.

Interesting women

This week it's Russian ballerina Wanda Grossen. Born in St. Petersburg, her family fled the Bolshevik revolution to Riga, which she later had to leave for Germany, where she could in the end not stay either due to the Nazis, so she moved on to Switzerland in the end.

Ad-tastic

Bell tinned meat in different varieties. The company still exists and until not long ago, the logo was even the same! The ad conveniently reminds housewives of the fact that each ration card has a special coupon just for tinned meat.

 Möbel Pfister was at it again too - basically telling young women who are planning to get married in the next years to reserve their full set of furniture (something like shown in their ad of last week) now already and start paying for it now, with 5% interest on their money!

The famous Lux soap! The ad adds a cheeky P.S. saying that it is also very popular with men...


On the back of the magazine: a full-size page ad for toothbrushes - rather modern!

 

Breast enhancement ad 

 

Rondoform did it again! This time it talks about how tragic it is for any woman when her breast have remained "underdeveloped" etc. - and how disadvantageous it is for relationships. Duh. 

Slimming ad

Nothing spectacular - just good old Orbal again. 

Quick follow-up - knitting an winter traditions

It's funny what kinds of things I'm unearthing from my old Meyers Modeblatt issues. Remember issue no. one, which had only baby clothes knitting patterns? Personally I had thought this was the least interesting issue of all, because it had no fashion. Well, think again... I am actually currently knitting the little jacket shown on the page there, for my cousin's baby. She discovered that knitted things are so much more soft and flexible and easier to put on. Simple as that. Not so simple though, I must say, was finding the right wool. I was used to baby wool back from school - soft, pure wool, available mainly in pastel color, they came in plastic packs that had a small embroidery motif pattern printed on the cardboard label. Well, that's not available anymore, and all the department stores now carry half or fully synthetic baby wool. Now, who would want that?! Thankfully I live in a 'burb that isn't trendy and still has a certain amount of "old-fashioned" shops. Including a wool shop, which doesn't exist anymore in downtown for example. There I actually found pure wool baby wool - and thankfully it uses the same needle size as in the pattern. There's no gauge in the pattern, as probably all baby wool available then was the same anyway... Otherwise, I must say the pattern is not very difficult to read and easy enough to follow!

On another note, in last week's issue, there had been this article on the revival of a winter tradition of the Prättigau valley - older kids playing "horse" and drawing sleights in which the younger kids would sit.
 
Well, it turns out, my dad, who grew up in the valley, actually played "horse" several times as a teenager. A colleague at work, who's a little younger than me but grew up in this area too remembers sitting in a sleigh as a small child. It seems though that nowadays, it's not in practice anymore.

 When I sent this on to my mum, she remembered another tradition, Chalandamarz, (read about it here), that my grandfather would participate in in his youth. Whilst dad has no photos of him as "horse", there is one of my maternal grandfather at Chalandamarz - he's the one in the middle up front:

This would have been in the 1920s I guess. This tradition at least still goes on, and has also been immortalised in the iconic children's book Schellenursli. I'm always fascinated what loops looking through these old magazines I'm sometimes being sent on, or what I discover there...

Cocktail anyone?

What fun! This super cute cocktail apron pattern was amongst the patterns that arrived yesterday - and it's even unused.

Even more fun - when I examined the sleeve, a piece of folded paper fell out:

 

 An ad cut from a newspaper, for cocktail aprons by the Swiss supermarket chain Migros. The funny thing aside is for me that Migros never sold alcoholic beverages (they still don't these days). According to the ad, the aprons were made of cotton in "modern colors" with different designs embroidered on.

Looks like the previous owner of this pattern saw the ad and thought she could make this herself, but never got around to. Well, you now have the chance, because the pattern is available in my Etsy shop :-).

Coming soon...

After a day of wiggling around in a true 1950s wiggle skirt and high heels (no, not very practical, but looks good & gives me a kick every time I wear it!), I came home to find that new stock for my Etsy shop had arrived - yeah! I have realised I need to re-stock vintage sewing patterns, since they seem to be in good demand, and just happened to come across some nice ones. So, coming to my Etsy shop soon: lots of chic 50s to 70s patterns, most of them in not-too-small sizes!

As you may know, I occasionally also blog in a professional capacity. My latest epistle has just been published and can be read here: http://blog.travelhouse.ch/de/2013/01/28/das-great-barrier-reef-in-australien-mehr-als-nur-ein-riff/ (sorry, German only). Yes, we are turning quite social media-active! I admit, it's fun and it's pretty easy since we have a dedicated team taking care of this stuff, we don't have to wait around long anymore for things to happen. My next entry should be coming up soon as well!