Perfect in its bloom

What to buy for your Spring wardrobe? In 1935 from May 18th to 23rd, London store D H Evans (once the flagship of the House of Fraser stores but now closed) was holding Silk Week. A wee booklet promoting it showed the newest patterns and suggested styles for making the cloth up.

The names of the fabrics are lovely – Tennis Tussore, Antung, Daisy Cloque. And, seen here - Crepe Daphne and Crepe Elise.

They certainly knew how to do a patterned fabric then. Stylised daffodils and chrysanthemums dance across heavy silk rayon, which was a ubiquitous fabric in the mid-1930s wardrobe.

These fabrics would have been made up into a Weldon’s or Butterick pattern. Small puff-sleeved blouses or below-the-knee dresses, cut on the bias. They would slide over the body with a flourish of colour and spring verve.

And of course the outfit would be topped-off with a hat, a picture straw or a small toque with spotted net. You’d grab your leather clutch bag and you’d be ready to go.

Small and beautifully formed

My love of all things retail extends (when no one is looking) to toy shops and illustrated books about shopping. From Ravilious’ High Street to the Ladybird book Shopping with Mother. The latter was a favourite when I was young. I’d pour over the pictures – shop windows, shelves of packaging, wicker baskets et al. Foretelling obsessions to come?

A blissful morning spent looking at cases and cases of stuff in the Museum of Childhood yielded up this gem, a wooden model of a shop labelled simply ‘Butcher shop 1800s’. There isn’t a lot to write about these naive art pieces. Lovingly detailed and quirkily figured, they may have been made for Victorian children to play with, but more probably as display pieces for the classy nursery.

At a push it is possible this may have been made as a record of an actual shop - as a kind of trade sign. As soon as photography came along in an affordable form, shopkeepers commissioned advertising postcards of their shops, which are now highly collectable bits of social history. The cards depict very similar scenes to this model - suggesting a tradition being followed - people stood outside their shops, often with nicely tidied and re-arranged stock in the windows. Or, in this case, with a grand array of meat cuts.

Butchers tend to be rather more circumspect in their display these days. Health and safety concerns and notions of hygiene have curtailed such proud retailing.