Moonbeams & Fireflies: 1970s

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Finally Found Her

I can't even remember how long I've been looking for an affordable vintage dress form. She didn't have to be perfect. She didn't have to be beautiful. She just had to be.

Now, after all this time, meet Marvey (short for Marvelous). I met her at a local estate sale and took her home with me. She isn't perfect. Her body is unevenly faded and more than a little dusty (she fits right in around here), her innards are rusty, but all the parts work (more than I can say about myself!) and she has a number of small blemishes on her skin. But, she stands tall, proud and stately.

Take a look inside her and you get a glimpse of a bygone era and a forgotten project.

Recently, when I was cleaning out my work room, I pulled out a few items I had stored away in one of my old steamer trunks. Here's Marvey modeling some of my personal '70s fashions.

My mother was an accomplished seamstress. When my sister and I were growing up, Mom made most of our clothes (something that, unfortunately, we didn't fully appreciate at the time). She taught herself to knit and also knew how to crochet. In 1970, I headed off to college in style in this wonderful poncho she knitted for me.

While I was still in college, she crocheted this striped beauty. Are you getting the sense yet that I loved ponchos?

It didn't stop there. In what could have been dubbed The Year of the Poncho, Mom also made me a gorgeous brown plaid wool poncho with a hood. It was fully lined and finished with a gorgeous brown trim and big wooden buttons. Imagine the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I discovered that poncho wasn't in the steamer, where I thought I had stored it along with the other two. Oh, I do hope I find it somewhere. When I reflect on my college years, I most often visualize myself in one or another of those lovingly made, wonderfully special ponchos.

To close out today's 1970s style show is this fabulous crochet and suede vest. Far out, as we used to say! My mom didn't make this one. I found it at a thrift store back in the 1980s and have held on to it over the years. It's in like new condition.

Thank you, Marvey, for making this fashion retrospective possible.

Make it a great day!