This one is not what it seems to be. Yes, it's occupational clothing, but it's not inspired by Butterick's marketing research that indicated that women interns of the 1970s (still a fairly small cohort at this time) wanted or needed to sew their own shirts - either strictly professional or in the weird ruffly version.
Although this isn't stated anywhere on the pattern, I believe that this is a tie-in to a medical drama television series called The Interns, which ran in 1970 and 1971. The series itself was a spin-off of an apparently mediocre movie of 1962, also called The Interns.
Dr. A. would appear to be modeled on Sandra Smith, who played Dr. Lydia Thorpe. Here's the only (regrettably muddy) image I was able to find of Smith in this role.
I assume that the program attracted a fairly young audience, so this pattern would probably have been targeted toward young women (notice the fairly limited range of sizes.) This gives the whole enterprise an odd cultural tension, as it seems to play to both home sewing, a very traditional female activity, and the career of physician that was beginning to become more widely available to women. Perhaps dressing up like a doctor was the first step toward thinking that one could actually be a doctor.
7 comments:
Nice bit of research you've done there, and I like the idea that first you dress for the job, then study for it!
My grandmother sewed one of these shirts for me in the 1960's when I was a teenager. They were popular then because of the show, Dr. Kildare. I remember wanting to wear one because I liked the show and I didn't even THINK about becoming a doctor. I guess I wasn't a progressive enough thinker or something. ^_^
It was fun to see this shirt again in a pattern. I loved that shirt.
Actually, that's sort of interesting considering how everything now is being marketed as "Mad Men" this and that.
My mom had one of these in the mid 1960s. She said it was a HUGE trend inspired by Dr. Kildare -- she talked about it as one of those embarrassing teenage trends that come back to haunt us in old photographs. I still say it's better than the stirrup pants and birds nest hair I had in the early 1990s.
Since posting this pattern I've had people tell me about their memories of both Dr. Kildare shirts and Ben Casey shirts, I guess depending on the source of your crush. Both programs ran between 1961 and 1966. I can imagine that the producers of The Interns hoped to capture the Kildare and Casey fans, and since the show lasted two years, they must have succeeded to some degree.
Until I've had a chance to do more research, I'm still assigning this pattern to The Interns, based on the branding on the envelope; it's worth considering that there may be a similar pattern from the mid '60s out there somewhere.
I wonder if part of the popularity of scrubs in recent years is related to medical shows such as E.R. and St. Elsewhere, Grey's Anatomy, etc.
I know that you want to place this pattern in the 1970s, but it's clearly from the first half of the 1960s. First, it has the old pattern sizing (14 = bust 34) which changed in 1968 (14 = bust 36). In addition, the hair styles are clearly no later than mid-60s. The typeface used in the words "Intern Shirt" is 1960s (tres "groovy"). And finally, the Butterick logo and placement is one that was changed in 1966. (It moved to the top of the envelope.) Patterns of the '70s had a very different look to them. I would likely think the influence for this pattern design would be Ben Casey or Dr. Kildare. It sure is a cool pattern, though!
I agree with paloverde, for all the reasons she stated. This is definitely an early-60s pattern. They just named it "Intern" because they evidently couldn't use the "Ben Casey" or "Dr. Kildare" names (probably for copyright reasons), but wanted to refer to both. Personally, I remember the shirts as "Ben Casey" shirts; I recall I wanted one but can't remember if I actually had one, but the memory is very vivid. That was in around 1962.
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