Timeless sewing

The date on this Vogue pattern is 2008, and I know I snapped it up as soon as I saw it. Now, several years later, I still find it just as appealing, with its interesting seaming and shaping, pleats front and back, flared sleeves and off-center closure. Fashion has not passed it by, at least in my opinion. But, then again, I do tend to keep and wear things season after season.

All the time and effort I put into garments are a main reason I don't lightly cast them aside.  But age, my age, probably also has a lot to do with it.  After so many decades of sewing and dressing, I think – I hope – that I have a fairly good sense of what suits me personality-wise and what flatters me physically.  Plus, for some time now, there seems to be a really wide range of fashion options rather than an over-riding trend, such as the big-shouldered silhouettes of the late 80s. (Alas, I spent too many of my best years enveloped in "fashionable" over-sized clothes that were less than ideal for my short, I mean petite, endomorphic figure.)

Of course, the flip side of believing that you know what's your best look is what women of a certain age are constantly being warned against: settling on an unchanging style in hair, makeup, wardrobe. It's a balancing act, isn't it, keeping current without slavishly following trends.  At least older women aren't expected to dress in the dreary, discreet manner that seemed to be de rigueur in decades past, as the blog American Age Fashion so often illustrates.  Rather, it would be wonderful if we all had the courage and the verve of the ladies of Advanced Style.  My own look is much more sedate, but, who knows, in another decade or two, what I might feel inclined to sew and wear.

Back to the jacket which I made in a cotton twill that had been in my stash since the 80s! I finished it at the end of May, so in addition to waiting for several years to use the pattern, I'll have to wait a few more months to wear the jacket.  By then I will have forgotten any minor flaws and frustrations in its sewing.  It was a simple enough jacket to make, although I probably wouldn't categorize it as Easy which the pattern envelope does.  I toiled away on it in my usual obsessive manner starting with the muslin at the beginning of March; you can read all the fascinating details in my Pattern Review here, if you are so inclined.