Clothes and Home Dec And the Gamine Look
This picture comes from a page headed "Decorate to your way of living" in the ring-bound Better Homes & Gardens Decorating Book originally published in 1953, again in 1961. Today, I guess we would use the word lifestyle. 5 different sketches appear with 5 different women. Colonial style goes with a woman in a shirt-waist dress who likes things cozy. An ornate chair goes with a woman with an updo and a black dress who likes what is elegant. The sentimental woman with frills on her shirt has a ruffle on her chair. And a formal home and a wingback chair has a woman primping in a hand mirror with pearls on her neck.
And smack in the middle we find this gamine type, the only one in slacks, the only one with cropped hair, in a striped, boatneck top like a French sailor. Gamine is the French way of saying tomboy, by taking a name for a boy and adding the "e" to make it female. She might remind you of Audrey Hepburn in the movie Funny Face which came out in 1957 although the haircut is more like Hepburn in Roman Holiday from 1953.
It was a young look at the time and the sketch described someone who preferred "easy-care materials for informal living." And she preferred a mid-century modern chair. The book offers up the same kind of advice on colors, on harmony, on playing up good points and distracting the eye from bad points for home decoration as the Dress Doctors taught for clothing. For example, "Reserve bright colors for accents of accessories" refers to a bright red paint on the lower half of a wall, when it could just as easily refer to a hat and bag in red.
It sent the message that fashion styles cover both clothing and home decorating. The woman who wanted to modern casual chair would also be the woman who wanted the latest in casual clothing.
