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Tag: 1950’s fashion

December Magazine Covers 1920s-1950s

I recently started a series on Vintage Magazine Covers for the month we are currently in and since we are about to hit the end of December, I figured I better put out the December Edition.

Let us see what I found…..

Disclosure: Some of the links on my blog from Etsy are Affiliate Links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. 

Le Petit Echo de la Mode French Magazine, Number 52 December 1925.

1920s vintage magazine cover: Le Petit Echo de la Mode French Magazine Number 52 December 1925. 1920s Fashion

Source: Etsy

December 1924 Needlecraft Magazine. How pretty is the fine detail on those hankies?

1920s Magazine Cover: December 1924 Needlecraft Magazine

Source: Etsy

Fortune Magazine Cover, December, 1933. How very festive!

1930s Magazine Cover: Fortune Magazine Cover, December, 1933 featuring an illustration of christmas  presents

Source: Etsy

Stitchcraft December 1934. Love the Art Deco Free Transfer. Super magazine for fans of Knitting, needlework and sewing.

1930s Vintage Magazine Cover: Stitchcraft December 1934. Love the Art Deco Free Transfer. Super magazine for fans of Knitting, needlework and sewing

Source: Etsy

Vintage December 1935, McCALL’S Fashion Magazine (3 magazines in one). What a beautiful hair piece on the fashion model illustration.

Vintage 1930's Magazine (Dated December 1935) McCALL'S Fashion Magazine.

Source: Etsy

Life Magazine, December 20, 1937 – Hope Chandler, ” The Prettiest Girl in Paradise”. Child actress and chorus girl Hope Chandler (pictured at age 16) photographed for LIFE magazine backstage at the Paradise cabaret and restaurant. (photo credit: Peter Stackpole).

She would go onto marry, David Whitmire Hearst, son of William Randolph Hearst and a vice president and director of Hearst Corp.

1930s Vintage Magazine Cover: Life Magazine, December 20, 1937 - Hope Chandler, " The Prettiest Girl in Paradise".

Source: Life

Seaman Schepps jewels on the cover of Vogue, December 1935. What fancy wrapping. See the nail polish design as well? Half moon on top and bottom. Cool!

1930s Vintage Magazine Cover featuring Seaman Schepps jewels on the cover of Vogue, December 1935

Source: Pinterest

Chatelaine December 1940s Magazine Cover featuring a solider getting engaged to his sweetheart before deployment.

Chatelaine December 1940s Magazine Cover featuring a solider getting engaged to his sweetheart before deployment.

Source: Chatelaine

Motion Picture Magazine, December 1945 with a Deanna Durbin Cover & Buy those Victory Bonds plea.

Motion Picture December 1945 Deann Durbin Cover

Source: Pinterest

Star Weekly, December 20, 1942 shows the joy of a father’s homecoming.

1940s Vintage Magazine Cover: December 20, 1942 shows the joy of a father’s homecoming. Star Weekly vintage magazine

Source: Elinor Florence

MY HOME, December 1948 featuring a very stylish 1940s woman in a beautiful red dress.

MY HOME December 1948 magazine cover featuring a woman in 1940s dress holding a Christmas Card.

Source: Pinterest

Oh those Teenagers! Teen-age Fun, passing the ring. December 20th, 1948 Life Magazine Cover.

Further Reading: 1940s / 1950s Teenage Fads & Expressions of Love

1940s Vintage magazine cover: Teenage Fun, passing the ring. December 20th, 1948 Life Magazine Cover.

Source: Time

December 1950 Popular Songs Magazine-Can anyone explain?

December 1950 Popular Songs Magazine

Source: Etsy

The American Home Magazine, December 1951. Decorate your home 1950’s style!

Vintage American Home December 1951 -1950s magazine cover

Source: Etsy

December 1956 Seventeen Magazine featuring an Ice Skater. “All the things you want for Christmas”.

1950s vintage magazine cover: December 1956 Seventeen Magazine featuring an Ice Skater

Source: Worthpoint.com

Vanity Fair cover, December 1956 – For the Younger, Smarter Woman.

Vanity Fair cover, December 1956 featuring a woman in 1950s dress playing in the snow.

Source: Pinterest

Well readers, I hope you enjoyed my December edition of vintage magazine covers. Did you have a favourite from above? Share in the comments below! And make sure you check out Novembers, HERE.

I will be back with one more post next week before we end 2019. It will be a reflection on my decade, I will share some favourite posts I have done since my blog started in 2012 and other goodies I stumble upon between now and then.

Have a great weekend!

Liz

Clare Potter-Trend Setting 1930s-1950s American Fashion Designer

Clare Potter Fashion Designer Cow print hat and bag

Clare Potter Design


Disclosure: Some of the links on my blog from Etsy , eBay, are Affiliate Links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Note: If you click on an item and it is no longer available, don’t fret! The websites I have provided are updated daily with 1000’s of new & vintage items. Just do a quick search and see what you find.


Clare Potter-Trend Setting 1930s-1950s American Fashion Designer

Brief History of Clare Potter

Clare Potter was a fashion designer who was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1903. She studied at the Art Students League of New York and began her studies at the Pratt Institute of Design in fine arts. After seeing clothes that Potter designed and made for herself, the director of the Pratt Institute recommended that she study costume design.

In 1925, before her graduation, Potter left Pratt to work for Edward L. Mayer, a wholesale dress manufacturer in Manhattan, where she spent three years developing her skills and designing mid-market sportswear.

In the 1930s she was one of the first American fashion designers to be promoted as an individual design talent. Working under her elided name Clarepotter, she has been credited as one of the inventors of American sportswear. Based in Manhattan, she continued designing through the 1940s and 1950s. Her clothes were renowned for being elegant, but easy-to-wear and relaxed ( favoring well-tailored linens and burnished wools in pants, shorts, pajamas, skirts and other sportswear ), and for their distinctive use of colour.

She founded a ready-to-wear fashion company in Manhattan named Timbertop in 1948. The company shared its name with the turkey farm in West Nyack where Potter and her husband, architect J. Sanford Potter, lived.

By the mid-1950s Clare Potter worked independently from a barn on her farm. Her later clothes were more tailored and dressy than her earlier designs.

In the late 1950s the Potters moved into a Japanese-style house on Lake Nebo in Fort Ann, New York that was designed and built by J. Sanford. In addition to their professional work, they bred Dalmatian dogs.

Sanford Potter died in 1994 and, at the age of 95, Clare Potter died in 1999 at their home in Fort Ann (Source).

Meet Clare Potter (thru vintage photos)

1938-Dress designer Clare Potter wearing a circle-printed dress, sitting on the couch of her West Nyack, New York, home, with Siamese cat in her lap and Dalmatian dog sleeping on the floor.

1930s Fashion 1930s photo of fashion designer clare potter in her home

Photo by Horst P. Horst/Conde Nast via Getty Images

Clare with her Dalmatians.

Vintage Photo from the 1930s /1940s of Fashion Designer Clare Potter with her dalmatian dogs out for a walk.

Her Influence on Fashion

American Fashion Designers in 1935 praised Potter, noting, “Her ideas come not from Paris, but from simply being a very wide-awake, active person who understands the wardrobe requirements of the American woman.”

“Large numbers of American women want clothes that are refined,” Ms. Potter said in a 1948 interview with The New York Times. ”I aim to give them in a medium-priced, ready-to-wear costume what they would find in custom-made styles.”

(Source)

Clare Potter Fashions

“June Day” ensemble, 1947. A: Shirtdress in lavender rayon crepe.

Clare Potter American Fashion Designer June Day Dress 1947. Example of a Shirtwaist dress

Source: Google Arts & Culture

Clare Potter Cigarette Advertisement from Vogue, September 1st, 1941, the Autumn Issue.

Clare Potter Fashion Designer -Clare Potter Cigarette Advertisement from Vogue, September 1st, 1941 featuring 1940s fashions designs from Clare.

Source: Etsy

“Dinner Duet” a 1950s Pink, Clare Potter Vintage Dress in Rayon Silk Satin Faille w/ original layout image. Stunning and for sale HERE.

1950s Fashoin: 1950s RARE Clare Potter Vintage Dress Rayon Silk Satin Faille Dinner Duet

Source: Dressing Vintage

1950s Pink, Clare Potter Vintage Dress in Rayon Silk Satin Faille. 1950s Evening Gown / 1950s Fashion.

Beautiful buttons down the back. Simple, but lovely detail.

1950s Pink, Clare Potter Vintage Dress in Rayon Silk Satin Faille. 1950s Evening Gown / 1950s Fashion.

Source: Dressing Vintage

1950s Pink, Clare Potter Vintage Dress in Rayon Silk Satin Faille. 1950s Evening Gown / 1950s Fashion.

The dress below (I think it’s a dress but after a second look maybe pants) is so very slick and stylish and looks extremely comfortable. I will order 3 please!

1940s advertising for Clare Potter Fashion Designs featuring 1940s pants suit in driftwood colour.

Source: sarahescamilla.weebly.com

“She likes easy-flowing lines and no trimmings that ‘stuck on’ to detract from the almost classically simple designs of most of her clothes.”

Beryl Wiliams said of Clare Potter

Linen Dress, 1937–38.

1930s Fashion: 1937-1938 Vintage Linen Dress by Clare Potter.

Source: The Met

1944 photo – Model wearing a slate blue and white sleeveless dress by Clare Potter, jewelry from Harry Winston (John Rawlings Photo).

1940s Fashion-Model wearing a slate blue and white sleeveless dress by Clare potter, jewelry from Harry Winston

Source: Vintage Everyday

During the 1940s, well-known Potter designs included a two-piece bathing suit consisting of separate small top and bloomers.

1943 — Model wearing brown halter top below a white, long-sleeved, cropped jacket and short white skirt with big brown polka-dots; skirt and halter by Clare Potter, white sandals and hair tied back in a mustard-colored scarf.

Model in White Jacket and Polka Dotted Skirt by Pond 1940s Fashion by Clare Potter

Source: Flickr

Bermuda 1947- Models Janet Stevenson and Sabine model summerwear by Designers Clare Potter (left) and Dorothy Cox (right). Photographed by Genevieve Naylor.

Bermuda 1947 Clare Potter 1940s Summerwear fashions.

Source: Flickr

Clare Potter sleeveless blouse in menswear shirting with linen skirt leans against a Buick Roadmaster convertible – Vogue May 15, 1949.

1940s Fashions / 1940s Photo: Clare Potter sleeveless blouse in menswear shirting with linen skirt leans against a Buick Roadmaster convertible - Vogue May 15, 1949.

1946-Model is wearing a sand-colored jersey dinner dress with a fluted hemline. Gorgeous!

ca. 1946 --- Model wearing sand-colored jersey dinner dress with fluted hemline by Clare Potter. 1940s Fashion.

Source: Flickr

I stumbled upon the below image, while looking at vintage yearbooks online and the dress our lovely beauty is wearing in this 1947 yearbook photo (for the beauty queen comp), feels very much like a Clare Potter gown (similar style to the dress above). I think it’s the belt and the cut of the dress. What are your thoughts?

1940s vintage photo of a college beauty in a 1940s dress and 1940s hairstyle as seen in a 1947 yearbook.

Source: Digitalnc.org

1953 November Vogue showcases what one wears when they play scrabble. Which is clearly a silk & rayon satin gown by Clare Potter. That is what you wear right?

1953 Vintage Photo: 1953 November Vogue image showcases what one wears when they play scrabble. Which is clearly a silk & rayon satin gown by Clare Potter.

Source: Flickr

On October 23rd, 1942, Potter designed a blue wool dress that Eleanor Roosevelt wore to meet the King and Queen of England (seen below). Roosevelt had been a fellow founder with Potter and others, of an association of women interested in advancing elegant and fashionable clothing for women, the Fashion Group International, FGI (Source).

1940s Photo: October 23rd, 1942, Potter designed a blue wool dress that Eleanor Roosevelt wore to meet the king and queen of England

Source: Wikipedia

More Fashion Designs

1943 Dress-Photographed by John Rawlings.

1940s Fashion: 1943 Women's Dress by Clare Potter featuring a fur coat over top and a 1940s hat.

Source: Flickr

Sportswear style featuring Bermuda shorts and a low V cut top.

Clare Potter Sportswear Designer -Sportswear style featuring Bermuda shorts and a low V cut top.

Source: Flickr

1940s skirt with matching blouse.

1940s Fashion: 1940s skirt with matching blouse by Clare Potter.

Source: Flickr

Question Time: Have you ever heard of Clare Potter? Do you like her easy to wear relaxed designs? Share your thoughts & your favourite look in the comment section below.

Further Reading:

Liz