Sherry Sklar Blog

It's All in the Cut, Drape and Valuation.

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a little touch of REVOLT!

— Arnold Scaasi, Chet Baker, Ed Sullivan, Fashion, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pauline Trigère, Ray Ban, South Pacific (musical), Uncategorized, United States

Harmay dress

Arnold Scaasi, The Butterfly Dress

Who in the world is Nellie Forbush? She was the naive nurse in Rodgers & Hammerstein‘s smash hit South Pacific that premiered in 1949 and won a Pulitzer in 1950. Ensign Nellie is hickish, wide-eyed and in love with a middle-aged French plantation owner whom she meets on active duty while in the South Pacific. The original “Cockeyed Optimist” she is sure that things will work out and love will endure. So it seems somewhat ironic and prescient that while thumbing through my sizable collection of vintage Broadway Playbills today, she spilled across my desk.

I think Nells is the perfect heroine for three weeks gone mad, where the cradle of civilization has had a meltdown, beloved TV anchors were brutalized and beaten and otherwise stable citizens from mid-western towns and cities showed up well-organized at their capitols and town halls, pitch forks in hand to skewer their representatives, accused of visciously cutting and slashing funding for everything from organ transplants to street sweepers.

I feel (and you may agree) that it is about time to hold up one perfectly shod kidskin gloved hand, step forward with our silk stockinged, stiletto-ed left legs and shout in a fierce lady-like tone, “Stop The Madness!” It would seem that we all need “a little touch of REVOLT”!

My favorite fashion accessory these past three years has been my Ray Ban cat-eyed rose-colored glasses–perched oh so delicately on my freckled powdered nose. So I will share with you in this post an article entitled, “a little touch of REVOLT” from Playbill on October 6, 1958 by fashion writer Barbara Blake, with illustrations from Pauline Trigere, Arnold Scaasi and a long-gone label, Harmay–lost in the fashion annals of time…an era when the country reached a zenith of conservatism and prosperity. M-Ad men ruled Madison Avenue. Cocktail and country club culture reigned supreme. Levitt homes were the aspirational dwelling of choice. Big finned Caddy’s from Detroit were referred to as “Motoring Majesty.” Marcella Borghese advertisements stated, “For the woman who selects her cosmetics like precious jewels…” A time before faded, baggy yoga pants, wife beater tees, baseball caps and microwavable dinners. When the end of the day meant dinner together, Chet Baker on the turn table, Ed Sullivan on the black and white tube, twilight hours to announce the end of a work day, brocade plumed slippers, floating negligees and hand mixed classic cocktails….perhaps a world that didn’t really exist in such retro-perfection, but one in which my mind’s eye, I aspire to now…don’t you?

Then, follow me, over to my well-appointed home bar and let me stir up your favorite mocktail or cocktail, for it’s the twilight hour…
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“Call us Nellie Forbush if we don’t see waistlines–yes, and hemlines, too–edging back to what was a happy norm in this country for seasons on end! The waistlines, often nipping big, full skirts, already are present (see in sketches here, where American fashion leaders are heading). And, regarding hems, we’re willing to stick our little necks out with the prophesy that doom is looming for the short-short skirt.

For the latter revolt in the bud, we’re inclined to give less credit to Paris, where the house of Dior is leading a drop-the-hem movement, than to the dismal discovery that, even in America, legs are simply not what they used to be in the days when Dancing Daughters charlestoned their heads off every night, and lucious stems–perhaps for that very reason–were a dime a dozen. Already the smartest women we know (and we’re talking about “mother-wit” as much as fashion-sense) are letting down, just a little, hems that were raised to knee-height only a short while ago. What a year it’s been for the little tailor around the corner!

All right, we’ve been accused, before this, of cockeyed optimism. But remember the chemise? And how we said, “Don’t look, and it will go away’?

–Barbara Blake
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Perhaps we can all take Barbara’s and Nellie’s forward-looking perspective my dear friends and lend a little cockeyed optimism in the midst of caterwaulling and Cassandra shrieks of doom and gloom. America, as this article illustrates, was always full of pluck and independence–not looking for cues from others…reinventing ourselves and our looks, raising and lowering the hems when we decided–this attitude and nature–it’s in our very cut and drape…

Ponder this over your cocktail of the evening (better if served in vintage glassware), which is the classic Rob Roy…appropriate for the zeitgeist of the moment, The Rob Roy is made with scotch and sweet red vermouth. Named after red head Roy MacGregor, Scotland’s Robin Hood, the drink imparts a sublte smoky taste due to the scotch base. Also known as a Scotch Manhattan for the substitution of scotch for bourbon. Combine two or three parts scotch with one part sweet vermouth, a dash of Angostura bitters and garnish with a cherry. Substitute orange bitters for the Angostura for a Highland Fling (sounds like fun, ladies, no?!) and a dash of Drambuie, making a Bobbie Burns. Slip on your negligee or smoking jacket and cheers…Chin up, good posture, lipstick on luscious lips and off teeth…deep breath and forge ahead. Until we meet again…