Ladies Home Journal 1139 - Men's Overalls

1917.  What I most like about this pattern (after the brilliantined hair, the jaunty pose, and the spats) is the fact that the gentleman is wearing a tie.

This pattern was featured in an illustration in the November 1917 issue of Ladies' Home Journal entitled "Practical Work Clothes and so Easily Made."

This is an interesting style of overalls as there is no waist belt - the bib and trousers are cut in a single length.

Both the fly and the shoulder straps are buttoned.

This is an unprinted pattern.

When I unfolded the pocket piece, I found this fairly substantial thread of fabric.  Note that it's plied blue and white.  This is not typical of the yarns used to make denim, chambray, or hickory stripe.  If used in both the warp and weft, fabric made of this yarn would have had a mid-blue color, somewhat similar to chambray (even though the construction is different.) Because dyeing adds cost, plying dyed and undyed plies will eventually yield an economical fabric.  This contributes to an overall sense of the thrift of making work clothes at home.

Updated September 2015 with information from the Ladies Home Journal magazine.

Ladies' Home Journal 2452 - Men's and Youth's Overalls or Mechanics' Suit

By the style of the envelope, this one is probably the late 19-teens to the 1920s.

When you unite a shirt with a pair of pants, you get union overalls.  In the UK this garment is called a boiler suit.   The other major style of overalls would be the apron or bib-and-braces style, which we've seen with Pictorial Review 3701, Boys' Overalls.  Either of these garments is also called coveralls.  Confusingly, overall or coverall (singular) in some cases refers to a woman's apron or rarely, a shop coat.

Making a ladies' apron at home offers the maker some opportunities for self-expression, if she has the money for pretty fabric and the time to add embellishments such as rickrack or embroidery.

Making overalls at home, on the other hand, is purely about getting the gentleman suitably dressed for his job.  The 27" fabric width is common for denim at this time.  There is nothing easy about cutting out, basting, or sewing denim.  While treadle sewing machines handle multiple layers well, button holes will still have to be sewn by hand.   In some household economies, home-made overalls must have made more sense than placing an order from the Sears, Roebuck catalog.

This unprinted pattern has been used and subsequently led a hard life in storage - it's been a little mouse nibbled.

Here's a nice variety of overalls worn by the crack mechanical team of 1919 at the Haverford Cycle Company in Washington D.C.

Found at Shorpy

Ladies Home Journal S-36 - "ENGLAND"

After 1905, probably before 1920.

Ladies' Home Journal produced quite a few of these country-themed fancy dress patterns.  Here is their description of this pattern representing England:

"ENGLAND." Pastoral life in England may be charmingly depicted by the eighteenth century milkmaid, whose picturesque dress makes even the most democratic person regret the repealing of all sumptuary law which is responsible for the gradual elimination of the picturesque peasant garb of foreign countries and the adoption of less attractive and usually more tawdry modern dress.

Never let boring old historical fact get in the way of a good marketing strategy.  England is generally held up as one of the few countries which never developed distinctive "folk" or peasant costume, though there are a few garments with strong regional affiliations (farmers' smock frocks and fishermen's ganseys, for example.)

The linking of the repeal of sumptuary laws (which attempted but always failed to control what people wore, particularly in the matter of luxury and imported textiles) with the decline of peasant garb is a real head scratcher as well.

Fancy dress parties or balls were common during the first part of the twentieth century.   They were sometimes used as charity fund-raising events, perhaps on the theory that people might be more inclined to attend if they didn't have to deal with the pressure of being properly turned out in evening clothes.  With fancy dress, just about anything goes.  Recall also the fancy dress party that goes horribly wrong in Daphne DuMarier's Rebecca.

The milkmaid's occupational cousin, the shepherdess, was apparently a common sight at these fancy dress dances.  In a fashion column for February 15, 1914, The New York Times states:

The day has gone by when a group of shepherdesses, some short and plump, some tall and scrawny, some diminutively dainty and some possessing truly Minerva-like proportions, would be likely to meet on the floor at a fancy-dress dance.

The image of the milkmaid has carried a lot of iconography for hundreds of years, for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

Our milkmaid, whose occupation is confirmed by her pail and little milking stool, wears the stock "peasant" laced bodice and long skirt.  The panniers and cap declare her to be nominally eighteenth century.

This pattern, which was offered in one size only, retailed for 35 cents at a time when most Ladies' Home Journal patterns sold for 15 cents.