Yesterday's post closed with an issue of Life magazine. So let's start today's by looking at another cover of Life, this time from 8th January 1945, celebrating crocheting.
That's something that would never happen nowadays: despite new and younger generations rediscovering crafts such as crocheting and knitting, contemporary magazines are too keen on models and celebrities to leave them behind and pay homage to these arts. The design on the cover and the ones in the photoshoot inside the magazine were created by German emigre Greta Plattry.
Born Margarete Hutschnecker in Berlin, Germany, in 1909, she married Frederick Plattring in 1931, and moved to New York in 1937. After her US naturalization application and her divorce, she anglicised her last name to Plattry.
A short article on this issue of Life magazine states that when he arrived in 1937 in the States she was wearing a crochet dress and, soon after, she started crocheting gloves, sweaters and scarves winning quite a few American clients (American women were more accustomed to knitting, so they were very keen on her creations).
Plattry turned crocheting into a business, establishing a workshop with 130 women, and producing sweaters, halters and coifs (head scarves like the one on the cover of the magazine). Among the fancy designs included in this issue of the magazine there is a black wool scarf covered in gems and matched with a pair of gloves with coloured gems for nails (very Schiaparelli) and a crochet hood with mittens in single crochet stitch of two-ply yarn decorated with pom-poms.
In the following years Plattry became also known for her knits and sportswear: one example is this hand-knit cardigan from 1949, ideal for after-skiing lounging. In the '50s her label expanded to include also bathing suits, functional dresses ad more elaborate outfits, though in the mid-to-late '60s she left it and went on designing for Teal Traina (originally started by Anthony Traina, the financial partner of Norman Norell, it closed in 1978). Looks like a rather interesting career and what makes it even more intriguing is that it all started with crocheting.
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