Happy Mother's Day: Mother-Daughter Fashion from the Mid-1940s

With Mother's Day only a few days away, it seems timely to post about that wonderful fashion trend of the 1940s and 1950s, Mother-Daughter fashion! This trend to dress mothers and daughters in matching outfits certainly provided charm for the ladies in the family. In this post, I feature mother-daughter dresses from the mid-1940s that are perfect for spring and summer.

Mother Fashion - Simplicity 1553

Daughter Fashion - Simplicity 2068

A dirndl skirt in swing length and artfully puffed short sleeves - very nice! Add sash ties or not. The style looks especially cute when contrasting fabrics are used. I rather prefer view 2, myself. :)

3 Ways to a Girl's Party Dress

Three dresses, similar looks! Any popular fashion look can be achieved by any number of sewing techniques. The following three patterns (dating from the late 1940s to early 1950s) each feature a similarly-looking dress, but yet each uses a different method to achieve the look, in this case a scalloped yoke and scalloped lantern sleeves.

Hollywood 1616 (view 2, specifically) simply applies trim along the bodice and along the middle of the puff sleeves to produce a faux scalloped yoke and faux scalloped lantern sleeves effect. Cute and easy-peasy to sew!

Mail Order 3856 from The American Weekly magazine actually has a scallop-edged yoke and two-piece lantern sleeves that are joined with a scalloped seam! Seams are joined with a French, or lapped, seam, in case you were wondering! Lace trims the seams of the yoke and sleeves. Very cute! While not difficult to sew, the scalloped seams take a bit more effort.

McCall's 1654 is heirloom-quality and features a button-on guimpe (chemisette) to achieve the effect. The upper bodice and upper sleeves button to the scallop-edged bodice and scallop-edged lower sleeves. Dainty hand-embroidered roses accent the lower bodice and lower sleeves. Exquisite and takes careful sewing!

Now, which dress would you sew?

In Search of Style: Finding Inspiration for a 1940s Girl's Dress

The Pattern: This is a classic girl's dress from 1948, with a sweet yoke and short sleeves. It's perfect for every day and for party occasions too!

McCall 7366

The Clippings: Tucked into this pattern, though, were some interesting clippings and hand-made pattern pieces! Both clippings show a great use of contrast fabrics to add a bit of spark.

This second clipping is from an ad for a mail order pattern. Rather than simply order the mail order pattern, though, the sewist chose to use it for inspiration instead, Note the yoke's zig-zag detail.

And also tucked inside the pattern were the hand-made pattern pieces that would create the bodice front! So we know what she sewed. :)

Note the references to the holidays in the newspaper. I wonder if the dress was sewn for Christmas specifically. The ads for cars are interesting - all are for 1940s models, with 1949 the latest model listed!