When costume designer Marion Boyce noticed the elegant citrine-coloured hat by famend French milliner Jean Patou, she knew she needed to have it.
Weekends spent trawling for treasures typically meant Marion would stroll away with armfuls of ribbons, buckles and garments from a bygone period.
It’s resulted in a formidable assortment of classic clothes and equipment — one so massive it wants its personal cupboard space.
But it was many years earlier than the Patou hat lastly had its on-screen second, when Marion obtained a name from the workforce behind ABC TV’s new collection Ladies in Black.
Vintage treasures dropped at life
Set six months on from Bruce Beresford’s movie of the similar title, Ladies in Black is a time capsule of traditional early 1960s fashion.Â
Set in the ladieswear division of Goodes Department Store in 1961, the Patou hat might be seen on Angela, one among the girls promoting hats, gloves and clothes to the rich girls of Sydney.
“I’ve lugged it around my whole life! It was thrilling to be able to use it,” Marion says.
Marion’s eager eye for fashion element had beforehand been put to make use of in TV collection Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Jocelyn Moorehouse’s movie The Dressmaker.
Ladies in Black gave her the alternative to as soon as once more dig into her in depth classic assortment.
“As a costume designer, it was a delicious period because you have the best of the early ’60s, which was really elegant fashion, but then you have the excitement of the youth movement.”
Kitten heels, trousers, pillbox hats and A-line clothes seem all through the collection, and in a testomony to their traditional attraction, some nonetheless seem on runways at present.
Dior’s A-line gown
If you are a girl, likelihood is you most likely personal a gown or skirt modelled on the A-line reduce.
Narrow and fitted at the prime and widening out from the bust or waist in the form of the letter ‘A’, the model was launched in 1955 by Christian Dior with the launch of his “A line” assortment.
“The [A] shape-shifted from the traditional hourglass silhouette and paved the way for the ‘trapeze’ and ‘chemise’ styles of Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent,” says fashion historian Lydia Edwards.
“The easy-wearing nature of this style fit perfectly with the simple mini dress and growing defying of gender convention during the ’60s.”
Rise of androgynous silhouettes
Popularised at a time when girls not often wore pants, Audrey Hepburn ushered in the age of the capri pant whereas filming the film Sabrina in 1954.
The model would dangle round till the early ’60s and, propelled by girls’s need for mobility, would finally usher in the extra androgynous-shaped pants youthful girls had been starting to favour.
“Women wanted to move around the world, through space,” says Emily Brayshaw from the University of Technology’s School of Design.
“They wanted to move through their cities, they wanted to dance, and they wanted to have fun.”
For Marion, the ’60s signified good suiting.
“Just think of Jackie Kennedy during that time – matching colours, the perfect hat and the perfect-coloured handbag,” she says.
The cropped jacked, specifically, was a mainstay.
According to Lydia, there’s hypothesis that the cropped, significantly bolero-style, jacket might have come from the French navy jacket, the Zouave.
Named after French navy items from then-French-colonised North Africa, its reduce and match intently resemble the model of the cropped jacket.
History costume and textile specialist Nicole Jenkins agrees that there’s a navy hyperlink however suggests the jacket was extra probably a pure development of the “ensemble” — a gown with an identical jacket of the similar material.
“[The ensemble] was invented in the 1930s, perhaps by Norman Hartnell for the queen mother,” says Nicole.
“The dress and jacket were always the same length until the ’50s when they started being more tailored and hourglass … and similar to a suit jacket.
“Into the 1960s, the deal with the cinched waistline shifted to a extra androgynous silhouette – the jacket grew to become shorter and boxier, floating above the waistline.”
Pillbox hats and turban stylish
The pillbox hat grew to become particularly standard in the early 1960s, made well-known by American first woman Jackie Kennedy who wore one, by American fashion designer Halston, to her husband’s inauguration.
Emily calls the pillbox hat a “stunning innovation”.
“It’s eye-catching and the cause it popped is she had this outfit made to put on in Washington in 1961, however apparently eight inches of snow fell and it was freezing chilly so the rich girls wore their huge mink fur hats and she stepped out on this small pillbox hat.”
Unsurprisingly, the pillbox hat additionally has hyperlinks to navy uniforms.
“Its origins are blended however most frequently put right down to navy design over many centuries,” Lydia says.
Hats, like Marion’s yellow hat by Jean Patou, appear throughout Ladies in Black, alongside the turban.
The glamorous wrap, which more recently has appeared on Rhianna, Lady Gaga, Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue, has been appropriated by fashion for decades.
“Turbans had been first made extensively standard in the 18th century as part of modern Turquerie clothes” Lydia says.
“In the 1910s, [French couturier] Paul Poiret renewed their significance and they grew to become a sensible alternative throughout the ’40s.
“This carried on into the ’60s but was glamorised [and] formalised, partly in order to move away from the wartime association.”
Kitten heels and ballet slippers
“Kittens” had been worn by teenage women in coaching for grown-up stilettos.
“Previously, a girl would have made a very swift transition from flat shoes to adult-heeled shoes, but this marked that intermediary period,” Lydia says.
By the early ’60s, the kitten heel grew to become modern for older youngsters, and finally girls of all ages.
“It was a move away from the stiletto of the ’50s — again it’s coming from wanting that ease of movement,” Emily says.
Eventually, the beatnik world would come to view the kitten heel as hurting their freedom of motion and freedom of expression.
And proving fashion is continually evolving, it might finally usher in the age of the ballet slipper, permitting girls to take even larger strides.
Stream Ladies in Black anytime on ABC iview or watch on ABC TV, Sundays at 8:30pm.