It feels like I've been looking at this picture my whole life, but it's only been 69 years.
Once my parents divorced in 1953, my mother traded her subscription to Good Housekeeping for Vogue. She sold every stick of furniture in the house, sent herself to secretarial school and began her new life (along with two daughters to raise). I hold my mother responsible for my early and never-ending fascination with fashion as well as a great cache of midcentury modern furniture in my house today.
My sister, Lonnie, was nine years older, so in 1955 she was still living at home (barely), working for an advertising agency and engaged to be married. I was 13; her life seemed as if from another planet.
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| Lonnie's 1955 engagement photo |
I do remember my mother cutting out a photo from Vogue, mounting it on cardboard and tacking it to the wall, above the sewing machine, in the hall outside the kitchen. She said it looked like Lonnie, and it did. A glamorous and effortlessly thin Lonnie at an exotic locale in a very chic outfit*, but Lonnie nonetheless.
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| The pin-up on the wall |
That photo followed my mother ever after, from apartments in Cleveland to her eventual apartments in New York City, ending up in a big box of miscellaneous photos I will never ever sort through. The jumble of people and years as they exit from that box is half the fascination.
I was never quite sure what issue of Vogue it had been. I now know, thanks to Beth, the proprietress over at Midcentury Fashion on Facebook. Beth is a prolific poster, covering everything fashion from ads to catalogs to vintage treasures. Her own description of her page is "for fans of '40s-'60s fashion, everything from couture to kitsch". She has a great eye, so whatever she chooses to post has interest.
Monday is Magazine Mondays over at Midcentury Fashion. Beth posts pretty much a whole magazine, vintage copies of Vogue, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Seventeen, etc. These issues are hard (and expensive) to come by nowadays, so I love Magazine Mondays.
Today's issue was Vogue, January, 1955, one of the few months that only published once. Back then Vogue usually came out every two weeks. Can you imagine? This part of the editorial was shot in Sicily at "Villa Igiea, Palermo harbour". If that sounds exotic today, imagine its being 1955. The past year's hit movie, "Three Coins in the Fountain" took place in Rome, an impossibly faraway place.
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| Would I ever get there? P.S. Yes |
When I saw that girl leaning against a wall, looking out to the ocean, you can be sure I didn't see a model. I saw my sister Lonnie, looking to a future she could only guess at. That marriage would not be a happy one, but there were two sons and a second, happier marriage. She couldn't sustain the dieting that for her was a Herculean task and eventually settled into a weight that was less fashion model and more Lonnie. She was such a creative dresser, she makes my efforts look paltry (but she couldn't sew on a button to save her soul).
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*The white twill jacket with black knitted cuffs and collar was $18, the corduroy shorts $8.
