I'm currently reading A to Biba - The Autobiography of Barbara Hulanicki In the book she describes 2 dresses which essentially kicked off the Biba Boutique Postal Service
The Sugar Pink Gingham shift dress and the Brown Pinstripe smock
There are limited images of the Pink gingham dress but even less so of the Brown chalk stripe dress.
Google has so far been unhelpful. Granted it is an early item and therefore is as elusive as the gingham dress. But I thought perhaps someone may have found the original article and scanned it to their blog or Flickr?
The description in the book reads;
"Our next editorial write up was with Woman's Mirror. It was a drawing of a brown pinstripe smock with the eternal matching kerchief"
"... We had received two thousand orders by post for the chalkstripe brown smock with fluted sleeves and kerchief"
By the sound of the description all you have to do is turn the book over to see the little illustration on the back.
The illustration has a small fluted sleeve and of course stripes - but what do you think? Is this the image of the Brown chalk stripe dress?
So why am I so keen to see this image? Well it may have something to do with a sewing machine and a modification of this pattern
I'd probably start by changing the sleeves to a subdued bell style, removing the gathers in the bust, and also widening the neck slightly and changing the sleeves to gathered instead of set in.
What do you think? Is this a similar image that you see in your mind when reading the description or perhaps something different?
Hopefully I can make a faithful and honorable reproduction - especially as brown chalkstripe is the same fabric that her fathers suit was made from the last time she saw him.