50s Coat

I was reading one of my sewing blogs, Did You Make That and a recent post talked about a fab 50s swing coat Karen found. But in her post, she mused a few questions.

1) What makes the differences between 50s and 60s coats?
2) How does one date patterns?

Everyone was congratulating her on her new coat and offering ideas as to how to date patterns, but no one was jumping on how to tell a 50s or 60s coat apart. So I pulled out my coat from Grandma, and set to work. Rather than lose my analysis to the whims of the internet, I'll archive it here:

Ok, I pulled out my 50s coat from my Grandma and thought this over.

I’m going to give a big AMEN to whoever mentioned “swing coats” up there, because that’s what these are.

One of the main details of these is they are VERY full in the back. The front is basically a normal coat, but lots of full ness in the back.

Mine has 3/4 sleeves or so, but that could also be because my Grandma has much shorter arms than I.

Looking at that 60s coat, I see lots of vertical lines. The 50s didn’t do that vertical lines thing. Even sheath dresses and pencil skirts had some diagonal to give width. So my coat has a really exaggerated diagonal shoulder/arm seam, almost like a raglan, but not all the way up to the neck. I also have a 2-piece sleeve with the top seam running all down the top of my arm, and the under seam running parallel. The back piece is divided into two and has a seam running down the middle. Mine also has a HUGE, very exaggerated shawl collar. That little mandarin doohicky on the 60s coat? Would not have been used for this kind of coat. You want some kind of wanna-be tailored but still floppy and extravagant collar.

Mine also doesn’t close in the front. It has no fastenings. So it has a beautiful drape when open, and I COULD wrap it all the way around me if I needed to and belt it, but if it’s that kind of weather, this is not the coat to wear.

It’s hard to tell from the pictures just what the actual seams in your coat are, but it has a similar enough feel to my Grandma’s coat that I figured it couldn’t hurt to analyze it a bit.