“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