Fall Foliage, Stiff Petticoats, and Wool Skirts, McCall’s 9900
The deep brown of the skirt on the right reminds me of fallen leaves and the wool skirts that I am now pulling out of my closet. Those of us up north turn to wool when the air turns crisp as it is doing now.
This full skirt with six gores—that is six wedges from waist to hem—shows off the full hips and tiny waists that were the fashion back in 1954. The lower edge at the hem for a skirt with a 26” waist was a whooping 101 inches or almost three yards around which is a lot of fabric. But notice how the hem stands well away from the body. Now, in a crisp linen, or Zebeline suiting, a thick, silk twill, which are some of the fabrics recommended, that is a natural possibility. These fabrics would be likely to stand away from the body.
But for many of the other fabrics recommended, only a stiff petticoat beneath would have the force to defy gravity by holding up the fabric of the skirt. These fabrics include lightweight wool which would not be stiff, rayon suitings, ditto; corduroy which would be heavy, velveteen ditto; or tweed which admittedly can be a looser or a stiffer weave.
This vast range of fabric tells you that the pattern company thought it was a skirt that serve for many occasions. Corduroy was a sporty fabric and the brown skirt has topstitching along the seamlines, another sporty feature that was first used to make a seam tougher and ready for hard wear. But velveteen and Zebeline were more formal fabrics for dressier occasions.
Notice too that by the mid-1950s, skirts had moved up from the lower-calf length which debuted in 1947 with Christian Dior’s New Look and were getting closer to a hemline a bit below the knee. While we tend to think in decades having one particular silhouette or hemline, there was always some variety within a decade, and some evolution as well. Not as much as the very wide variety we have today, but enough to give almost everyone some choices worth having.