Christmas book – what to wear for a party…

During December I like to post entries which are more Christmas in Books than Clothes in Books. However - this one combines both, with the full glory of party dresses

 

Women in Black by Madeleine St John

aka Ladies in Black

published1993

set in 1960

[excerpt:]  At nine in the morning on the third Monday in December the great glass and mahogany doors of Goode’s Department Store were opened to a large bevy of early-rising housewives all determined upon the prosecution of their Christmas shopping campaigns. From the wooded slopes of the salubrious North Shore to the stuccoed charm of the Eastern Suburbs, from the passé gentility of the Western ditto to the terra incognita of the Southern, had they travelled by train, bus, tram and even taxi cab to this scene of final frantic activity.

There remained presents to be bought for sundry difficult relations, there remained clothes to be purchased for their gigantically-growing children, there remained even frocks to be found for themselves, and then shoes to match these frocks: there remained almost everything to play for, and they were resolved to win.  Miss Jacobs stood at her post, ready for anything whatsoever, her tape-measure draped around her neck and her pins beside her. Let them come: she would be as a rock in the great storm...

 

What with Christmas and New Year and all the parties coming up, and consequently all the cocktail frocks vanishing off the rails and into the fitting rooms quicker than you could say knife, Miss Jacobs had her work cut out with pinning up the alterations…  ‘Mind you tell them, Lisa,’ continued Miss Jacobs, ‘that if they want alterations doing before Christmas, we can only do hems by then, not seams, and we can’t do hems either after Wednesday, whatever they say. After Wednesday, with the holiday and everything, they can’t have their alterations until the New Year.’

‘Yes, I’ll tell them,’ said Lisa.

comments: And here we are on the third Monday of December.

For more about this book see earlier entry. I said then that I do love a book set in a department store, and such a shop at Christmas is even better. (This is Australia, so it is also the height of summer – no snow as there might be in a book set in the northern hemisphere.) See the entry on Bond Street Story in 2019, and an Ellery Queen story  - I called the post ‘Is Santa guilty?’.  There’s Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn. Emil Zola wrote a wonderful book about a department store back in 1883, Les Bonheurs de Dames – I had to do my own translation from the French in the excerpt for my blogpost.

I loved the book for its good-hearted but clear descriptions of the workers, the way it followed them into their personal lives, and of course for the clothes. Christmas is close to being the climax of the story – heroine Lisa is working her summer holidays while waiting for her exam results. She has her whole life ahead of her. And she does have some clothes envy in the book.

There is a 2018 film of the book which I enjoyed hugely, and strongly recommend for anyone in need of an entertaining few hours – very true to the story, and Julia Ormond is untouchably wonderful as Magda, the fabulous East European refugee who is glamorous and Bohemian.

The film is called Ladies in Black, and the book has also been relaunched under that name.

And, what an excuse to show some clothes that the women of Sydney might have been able to choose for their parties…

The fashion photos all came from a site which no longer exists, so I can't give links.

The top photo would seem to be New York, but it is from 1960 and seemed in the spirit of the description.

Pale lace cocktail suit. 

‘Cocktail hat with a stiffened gauze visor’ (IKR? Seriously, I die), 1959 

Dress with cream satin bodice.

Black cocktail suit with mink trimmings, Jacques Fath (one of the designers stocked by the store in the book).

Two women also in Fath dresses.