Photo Friday: Mother Knows Best Edition

Good morning!

For Photo Friday, I thought today I would show you just a couple pictures from a Flickr account I was looking through the other day. The user's mother was a Betty Draper style gorgeous, elegant blonde newlywed in the sixties', and I was initially drawn in by a picture of her in a vacation dress. However! When I looked back into photos from that lovely lady's childhood, I have to tell you, I was most struck by the mother's mother, labelled "Grandma Birdie" in the photos:

This is part of a set of photos taken in 1937, in the couple's backyard with the new baby, all chubby cheeked and sweet, probably to send to relatives, I guess? Do you see Birdie's perfectly marcelled hair? And the pattern on the coat caught my eye....with good reason!

Oh my GOODNESS, look at that coat! And the hounds-tooth check skirt underneath. What a wonder! I think, upon further inspection, the figures in the lower third of the pattern are peacocks or cranes. Can you imagine what colors this must have been in real life? About 90% of the people I see in 1930's pictures are either wearing a plain dress with one kind-of-neat-to-the-period bow or fancy trim, but not this gal. I don't care if that's her housecoat, it's THE NEATEST HOUSECOAT EVER. Plus the skirt! In all the heart palpitations I was going over because of the tapestry looking garment on Birdie, I almost forgot to mention how handsome the grandfather looks-- with bassinet in background, his pant's crease sharp as a knife, white sweater blindingly white, and hat tilted just so-- doesn't he look like he could be Bing Crosby's stand-in?

And if you didn't think that was enough:

A year or two later, we can see a) that the tiny baby has grown, and had an older sister left out of the earlier pictures who is now included in this group shot; b) that the Birdie picture above is not a fashion fluke, she actually looks like she's been dressed by Schiaparelli in all her pictures (the hat! the brooch! the string-and-ball embellishment on the coat!); and c) of course she dresses well, she must get that from her ma! Birdie's mother, Rose, is pictured with her daughter and her daughter's daughters in this photo, and look how the hat, and the coat, and the no-doubt matching dress underneath, and the t-strap shoes. It's no wonder the blonde gal grew up to have so much style-- she apparently comes from a line of snazzy dressers! I was so bummed I couldn't find any other pictures in the same set of Birdie, except in the background of one or two. Bummer. At least I got to see these, which I'm telling you, are going to influence the course of my fashion choices for at least the next week.

Speaking of, I want to run home and throw on one of my string ties that I like to wear and a big floppy hat right now. Or at least some fabulous brooch. Is that wrong?

Do you have any pictures of your relatives where you're just "wow'd" by a particular article of clothing? Which one of Birdie's two ensembles would you like to recreate in 2013? Did you mother inherit a sense of style from her mother, or you from her? Let's talk!

That's all for this week, kiddos! I will see you right back here on Monday with more vintage snips and snaps. Have a great weekend!