That Seventies Pattern

I never know how a post is going to affect the reading public, but the last thing I expected after I threw daddy's peekaboo robe at you is that you'd ask for more.

Never let it be said that I don't try to give you what you want.

This is the other woman's magazine from the rack in my now-defunct Living History of the Nineteen-Seventies Bathroom. Woman's Day, April 1974.



John F. Kennedy was no longer alive and Jackie Kennedy was no longer a Kennedy; but their faces still sold copies. At least we were spared a portrait of Mama Rose, whose typically gushy, self-aggrandizing memoir is excerpted inside. I will spare you quotes.*

What I will not spare you, because you asked for it, is two specimens from the NEWEST TO KNIT AND CROCHET that's trumpeted below FASHION FINDS and above 50 TIPS  TO MAKE ANY DIET WORK.

(Will the headlines on the covers of women's magazines ever change?)

We have, first, "Mosaic Vest," in crochet.



All I'm going to say about this is that if I produced a woman's upper garment with beep-beep daisies squarely over each nipple I'd be accused of knowing nothing about female anatomy. (There are great gaps in my knowledge of female anatomy, I admit. But I know where the boobs are located.)

Second, we have "Bare Shouldered Flatterer," in knitting. It's a tube top.



Now, I took a look at the pattern and the only thing holding this up is that it's worked in ribbing. That's it. The only thing fighting slippage is k2, p2.  It's the top of a sock, writ large. Reach for anything that's higher than waist level, lady, and nobody will be looking at your bare shoulders.

Just one other thing to point out, and that's her underarms. Unretouched!  Nowadays, even a low-budget magazine with tight deadlines would have taken those out with Photoshop. Even stick-thin models have skin that wrinkles when they move. It's rather comforting to see it, don't you think?

* I don't often edit after the fact, but I've decided to remove the extended Rose Kennedy commentary that was here. I fear it will be prone to provoke tiresome debate, and that's not what this space is for.  Suffice it to say I didn't care for her, or for the Kennedys-as-American-Royalty mythology–in case that wasn't clear from my tone above.