As an enthusiastic seamstress, I love this photo of the interior of a professional clothing design workshop. You can see all the necessary tools of the trade—a dress form, a bodice draped on the form, a worktable in the background with pattern paper and perhaps more muslin fabric. Finished clothes hang on the rack, and there is even a tin of those ubiquitous Danish sugar cookies for a snack.
For those of you not familiar with the design process, there is a draped bodice in plain muslin on the dress form which might in the future be made into a pattern for a finished garment. I think this is a posed photo because the garment in process is incredibly simple. It has none of the details that would make for an interesting finished outfit. Maybe they have just started, but there really needs to be a dart at the bust. I looked in vain for a photo of the process further along in a professional workshop. However, I mainly found fashion school photos, which almost always showed brighter and more spacious backgrounds. Here’s one from the 1930s.
Looking closely at my found photo, I’m guessing that the woman in back, standing and wearing a dress, is the one in charge. That would make the Asian American woman in front the one doing the design work. One clue is her comfortable pants outfit. Draping can involve time crawling around on the floor with pins in your mouth.
How to date the photo? There’s a touch tone phone in the background, so it can’t be earlier than 1963. Given the look of the Asian American woman’s outfit, I’m guessing sometime in the following decade. That looks like indestructible seventies polyester to me.
