As it is March and St. Patrick ’s Day is coming upon us, my strong Irish heritage compels me to post the habitual green-themed project on my blog, as I do annually. I have quite the unique piece to share this year – an oddity called the “dinner dress”. This very sophisticated design with an unusual intent is a great way to further comprehend the amazing variety of options that vintage fashion can provide. My feminine yet flashy dinner dress has the best of the classic features for 1939 and completely justifies why that year is practically my favorite particular year for elegant, interesting fashion. Enjoy this dive into the extravagance of the late 1930s with my fabric-hogging, twirl-worthy dinner dress project!
THE FACTS:
FABRIC: JoAnn Fabrics “Holidaze” line of material – a green striped semi-sheer black organza from the Christmas 2021 collection
PATTERN: McCall 3169, a year 1939 original from my stash
NOTIONS NEEDED: lots of thread and one zipper
TIME TO COMPLETE: This dress took me over 20 hours to make and was finished in March 2022.
THE INSIDES: I cleaned up and controlled the fraying of the fabric by doing several runs of tight zig-zag stitching along the raw edges to imitate serging (overlocking) with my old machine.
TOTAL COST: 5 yards of this fabric (on discount) cost me about $56
First off, let’s dive into a little terminology to clear up any confusion. With a forgotten and outmoded name as “dinner dress” given to this amazing design, finding a description for what makes a dinner dress was important to understanding my sewing project from a historical standpoint. A basic search led me to Dictionary.com which defines it as “a dress, often long and having sleeves (or a jacket), which is more elaborate than one for daytime wear but less formal than an evening gown.” This tells me that the fabric and the styling, as well as time period, is all important to making a dinner dress what it is. Otherwise, there is a very fine line that a dinner dress rides before it becomes an evening gown, which morphing seemed to happen at some point between the 1940s and 50’s. For social occasions such as dining, I suppose the casual clothes you wore in daytime were probably considered both out-of-place and discourteous to your guests, but a formal gown was over-the-top, as well. This post’s pre-WWII dinner dress is a vision of the last vestiges of the opulent elegance of the American Depression in which the “modern woman” could display her social aptitude and societal visibility in a variety of public spaces. A woman’s wardrobe was expected to be up to the task and present a grand visual display of what role she had in society!
The same Dictionary.com site mentioned above has a small blurb which notes that the first recorded origin of the dinner dress goes back to circa 1810 (the Regency era). There is no clear primary source reference I have yet found for this information besides seeing an 1824 “dinner dress” from The MET museum online archives (as seen here). This timing makes total sense, though, since museum archives as well as original fashion plates show just how popular dinner dresses were by the Victorian times (the time period following the Regency era). See this National Gallery of Art article on “Dressing for Dinner in the Gilded Age” for more amazing info. For the Regency era, clothing became more abundant (especially for the wealthy) as well as more functional than ever. Women were also more independent and active than the previous 1700s. Many changes of clothing were required for ladies to present themselves as “respectable” for doing anything that the day’s activities or appointments required. A dinner dress has its origins from a time when women were on display, under the critique of society. At the same time, a dinner dress presented women with yet another extension of fashion as well as a conventional opportunity to be a greater part of society. See this post by Liz over at “The Pragmatic Costumer” blog for more dinner dress inspiration.
For all that explaining, I’m still personally confused because an evening gown is so alike a dinner dress from a modern viewer’s perspective. Supposedly a dinner dress was for a very specific time frame – after 5 pm, but not past one’s bedtime – so it was definitely not for an evening out. Yet, I am not bound by these conventions and have worn this as if it is an evening dress for a night of dancing. Nothing can compare to the swirl of such a full hemline!
The fabric of this dinner dress was recommended to be chiffon, organza, taffeta, voile, netting, and ninon fabric. In other words, a lightweight semi-translucent woven that has a crisp structure to its hang seems to be ideal for this design, probably to keep the full skirt silhouette without needing a petticoat or hem stiffening. I did follow the pattern’s envelope recommendations to the letter because not only did I want to be specific about making a dinner dress but also the perfect novelty organza happened to come my way. Leftover Christmas material stuck me as very St. Patrick’s Day themed when I found it in the clearance racks in March, and buying it became one of my rare impulse purchases. Holiday aside, it is a wonderful organza that has bright green satin thread woven through it to imitate the look of attached ribbons. I have seen vintage material very similar to this fabric on old 1930s dresses and thus I was over the moon to find such a fabric.
I was stuck in a rut over how to interpret the dinner dress before this ribbon organza came my way. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with my idea if there are a few 1930s originals to back me up on the material being era appropriate. Yet, the stiffer structure, dressy but not formal status, and semi-sheer opacity of the fabric also helped this dress to check off all the rest of the boxes I had to fill for me to have the “perfect” vintage dinner dress. With either a bold print or a solid color for this dress, I could see my smaller height might make me look drowned in fabric. Vertical stripes are slimming and lengthening and were the balance I wanted between plainness and busyness. So many stripes are a lot to look at, but to me it is a controlled chaos that also provides some direction to the design. The seam lines and interesting cut of the grain are shown off in a way that may have otherwise been lost in either a print or a solid. Plus, the hint of see-through between the stripes creates a subtle hint of sexiness as well as the impression that the dress is light and airy…and it is! I hardly feel it on me. It was important to keep this dinner dress weightless with as much fabric as was needed.
The pattern itself was overwhelming to work with…the pieces were so large they barely fit in the envelope! This of course carries over into the fabric amounts needed. The view with the short sleeves (view A, the one I was making) calls for 6 ½ yards for a 50” wide material and 8 ½ yards for ones 35” width (such a small selvedge is very common for fine fabrics as well as any dating to the 1930s era). Just think of how heavy this would have been in a satin or crepe! However, my fabric was a clearance find and I found myself at the mercy of whatever amount was leftover. I was only able to buy a three yard cut and then a two yard cut, giving me only 5 (divided) yards to work with. The cutting counter employee did an inventory search but did not find any other cuts of the ribbon satin in town. I had to make do with what I could find. I doubt there are very many sewists of today that have 6 to 8 yards of any fine fabric on hand. I would’ve been reluctant to buy (and sew with) that much, anyway. How did a woman of the 1930s have that much material?!? I guess it goes to show just how much the United States had recovered from the Great Depression…or maybe we were just having fantastically glorious aspirations. No doubt it was important to have a home sewing pattern of such a garment as this because going the homemade route may have very well been the only way certain women could afford the extravagance of such a garment.
My fabric was 55” width and the five yards I had only put me at a 1 ½ yard discrepancy. It only took a few rather necessary modifications to make things work. Firstly, I pinched out some of the fullness to the skirt hem from the knees down. This makes the dress have a graduated fullness, and it is still plenty full for my liking! Next, I found the overall length of the finished dress to be longer than the average tall woman’s height, so I folded up the pattern in equal gradients to suit my almost petite frame. Even with doing these adjustments the waist and hips ended up being a few inches too long on me. Yet, this was nothing that a little letting out of some seam allowance room couldn’t fix. In all, I generally didn’t have much to adjust for the try-ons which I did in between construction. My pattern tissue modifications did the trick for fitting both the dress on my body and the pattern on the fabric. Never take vintage patterns for granted…always measure up to find the finished sizing to whatever old design you find yourself working with before cutting. You’ll save yourself grief later. I didn’t have any fabric to fall back on here and everything had to be perfect the first attempt. I nailed it, happily!
Just any undergarment was not going to do here when the dress is semi-sheer. Therefore, I used two (probably 1990s era) black nylon half-slips that my mom no longer wanted to refashion something for myself. They were in sizes too large for me in lengths that reached down to the floor and never worn (still with tags). I had a good amount of fabric to work with here, so one slip became my main body, and the other slip was cut into strips for a ruffled bottom hem. The fabric of these slips is a lightweight tricot nylon mesh, so it is equally as weightless as the dress yet entirely opaque. I loved using what was on hand to make the slip – a rather unnoticed touch but still something that my dress needed to be fully completed.
It is wonderful to be able to re-imagine this vestige of fashion history from the past for my enjoyment today! Such a dress is timeless in the way that – even today – it gives grace of movement, beauty of form, and an air of luxury. It proves that you don’t have to “bare it all” to be appealing, attractive, and enticing. There can be a strong power of suggestion behind a finely crafted dress!
It’s no wonder long length, fancy lounge and evening wear is having a moment of popularity amongst the vintage community and revival in the designer world. The very year I made my dinner dress (2022) Rodarte came out with a dreamy, very late-1930s inspired collection for Fall-Winter, and two of their dresses (look no.35 and no.44) were quite close in design lines to my own vintage original dinner dress. I want to point out that the king of irony and shock-value – Italian designer Franco Moschino – resurrected the “dinner dress” idea in the most humorous and lighthearted way possible for 1989. See it here on the MET Museum’s site for yourself! A little black cocktail frock with a cravat that looks like a napkin – complete with dinnerware as decoration – is a hilarious but literal interpretation of a dinner dress that everyone can understand with little explanation.
I do love the idea of dressing up to enjoy a meal with friends or family. When the effort can be made, it’s a wonderful way to show love and appreciation for those around you. Sharing a meal is something special. Many cultures and traditions see food as a manifestation of love and empathy, and we make sure to carry some of such a beautiful understanding into our family. Food and clothing are basic human needs but can nourish so much more than carnal concerns…they both can cultivate creativity, charity, character, companionship, and comfort. When you can combine those needs into one…well that is a kind of magic that heals, builds bridges, and creates memories. Do we need to bring dinner dresses back, do you think? I’m ready to try! Who knew clothes meant for dining in could be so fun and fancy yet still comfortable?
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