“This is a busy, bustling time for the girl who makes her own clothes and who perhaps is lucky enough to have a mother or sister to help her when it comes to a bit of fitting.  I have made these clothes for our Sewing Room display, and I feel sure you won’t find them difficult.  With the exception of the full skirt, they do not require much material.  They are typical of styles found in good pattern books – not necessarily identical, but similar.

This year there are two silhouettes for evening – the pencil slim and the wide.  Choose which you will: both are good.  Straight and narrow lines perhaps look and are newer, but the full-skirted dance frock is too becoming to be abandoned.

Here you see it in its most enchanting mood. It could be of silk velvet or some stiff, self-assertive fabric.  Yards and yards of materiel make the skirt, which gathers slightly where it joins the low basque, then swirls out into wide hemline.  For a dramatic effect the entire underside could be face for eight inches or more in vivid contrast.  The up-in-front line frames the shoes instead of the ankles.

The dinner suit in silk sating, silk crepe, or silk velvet is still the smarted thing for late-afternoon-into-eveing parties, Sunday night suppers, hotel dining, night clubs.  It is smart all in one color and fabric, but a sequin or lamé top is refreshing,.  This one shows the new severe slimness.  The tight-fitting jacket, button right up the front to the little round collar, gives a covered up look and is worn over a slim skirt to slip.

The two-piece is high fashion again.  Sometimes it’s all in one fabric; but more often frocks for formal afternoons and evening when you don’t dress have lamé or tissue-metal tops.  Silk velvet, wool, or a silk cloy material in black and dark colors is perfect.  The open neckline hugging the sides and back of the neck is unusual; so are below-the-elbow sleeves.”

Source: Caroline Gray of The Fashion Staff, Good Housekeeping, October 1937