Monday, June 11, 2007

The Shirtdress, Part I

Saturday, when I went to answer the door wearing my usual Saturday house cleaning decrepit shorts and T-shirt, I had a kind of epiphany. To save myself from further embarrassment, and to spare my local tradesmen further aesthetic distress, I should adopt the household costume of the 1950's housewife, the print shirtwaist dress. My reasoning was that those dresses should be at least as comfortable as shorts, possibly cooler because they're loose, and, while concealing, should carry a certain ironic post-modern cachet.

So, delivery accepted, I logged onto ebay to see if I could find a few vintage shirtwaist dresses at bargain prices; however, for my search I typed in "shirtdress" instead of "shirtwaist dress". The results yielded vintage dresses from the 60s and 70s, and I was immediately distracted.

Check out this black and white beauty, for sale at Lux Eternal. Except for the sleeve style (i.e., it HAS sleeves) it doesn't look vintage at all, and the print simply fab. And I simply loved the cream lace dress below, but that's already been nabbed on a buy-it-now. Some lucky person really scored for $19.00.

Of course, even if they fit, I wouldn't consider doing housework in either of these dresses, and I'm willing to bet that the close-fitting cream dress isn't that comfortable to wear. But sometimes, it really IS better to look good than to feel good.



6 comments:

miss vintage love said...

Oooooh, I LOVE shirtwaist dresses!

ROSAMARIA said...

Hi! Sorry, couldn't find an email address so am dropping a message here about possibly doing another link exchange with you? Email me back or check my profile for link to my new blog ( didn't want to spam your comment page with a big URL). Hope to hear from you!

PS- Good call on how the first dress shouldn't have sleeves.
PPS-So who was it that was at the door?? ;)

Anonymous said...

i don't know about shirtwaist dresses, but i did notice that gap was selling "shirt dresses" (basically like a men's dress shirt, but elongated and tapered to serve as a "dress" for women) this summer.

it was odd because they had french cuffs on a couple of those shirts, but STILL no french cuffs on any of their men's shirts.

grrr. seriously. i'm not against women having french cuffs (since they basically usurp every other bit of men's fashion), but at least have the decency to continue to offer it on guys shirts, where, umm, it belongs.

*laughs* sorry! rant over! :)

Ms. Corley said...

I am very into the shirt dress and have noticed for fall it seems they are being replaced by the sweater dress (saw them on the lord & taylor webpage)...any thoughts on them?

Anonymous said...

Shirtwaists are lovely, whether or men or women. I found a similar dress to the ones you show at www.hornfashion.com, a store I stumbled on while browsing local boutiques. It's currently holding a 50% off sale on all it's items right now, as well!

Unknown said...

Nice work on the white dress..sure will feel good while wearing these types fashion dresses.