Stewardesses and scribes

This year J and I decided we're going to be a Pan Am airline pilot and stewardess from the 1960s for Halloween. Very Catch Me If You Can. At first I was going to buy my costume, but after doing some research I balked at the prices I saw online -- 50 bones for a shiny and ill-fitting polyester sheath?! Please. I'd rather spend that $50 on something I've wanted forever but couldn't justify the purchase of, say this.

Anyway, I went to the fabric store, spent a whopping $13 total on materials and set to work making my costume. I used some artistic license in terms of the costume's conception (i.e., though the Pan Am stewardess of yore were much more stylish than today's flight attendants, they still wore conservative electric blue pencil suits).


Cute, but such is life in Technicolor. Unfortunately we have to deal with modern-day lighting here, people.

So I decided my kind of Pan Am stewardess would wear a white cap-sleeved blouse tucked into a high-waisted electric blue mini skirt, complete with blue pillbox hat, neckerchief, and signature logo patch pinned to chest. Here are my finished pieces:

I can't take credit for the belt (from an old shirt I bought at Forever 21), but the skirt (above) turned out better than I expected.

This is the best I could do with the patch. Kept super-gluing my fingers together by accident so finally just stopped fussing over it.

I'm most happy about the pillbox hat I made from felt (above).Yes, the last time I worked with felt was 1st grade when I ended up eating half my film roll container of paste. But that was another time. I followed Humble Bumble B's video tutorial on ThreadBanger for this design, then added the three white buttons as a detail to tie the whole costume together.

For J's costume he'll be wearing his navy blue suit that he already owns (tricky, tricky, we know), and pilot's hat and pin that we bought for about $10 total at the Halloween store.

We're going up to Manhattan for the weekend to visit one of my good friends and her husband. They just moved into a new apartment very near Central Park and we can't wait to see them. Apparently I've been told we'll be attending a "Liquor Treat" party on Saturday night (costumes required), which already sounds fun. Revelry will undoubtedly ensue. J's never been to NYC, so let's also hope he doesn't get any ideas about finding a legal job there after our weekend jaunt up north.

In other news the animals will be staying here, but I couldn't resist taking hilarious pictures of them in costume:

A disgruntled Lola.

An oblivious Moneypenny.

Spooky.

And finally, NaNoWriMo is almost upon us! Are any of you kiddies going to partake in November's thirty days and nights of literary abandon? If you have no clue what I'm talking about go here, but if you're a participant you can find me under the username "TildonKatz". (As a Mad Men fan you should get that reference. Period.)

I'm pretty much done with the outline for the book I plan to write in November. It's about an ex-Nazi doctor who flees to Buenos Aires after WWII to start a new life as a cab driver under an assumed identity. Riveting, isn't it? Will he overcome his prejudices? Find redemption? Be caught and extradited? Can we ever really "start all over" in our lives, or do our pasts eternally haunt us? All will come to fruition in November in what I've tentatively titled "In the Hall of the Mountain King." Obviously I'll probably be blogging less next month (50,000 words in 30 days scares even me), but I'll keep you updated. The nearly finished manuscript for my first book will be going into a drawer and not looked at till Dec. 1st.

What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

So wrong, yet so right -- in 1959

Because I'm obsessed with all things retro (I really think I was born in the wrong decade), I came across these vintage ads a few days ago and thought I'd share:

This first one (above) is advertising "Chase & Sanborn Coffee", but it looks more like an ad about the consequences of having an affair with your gardener. Apparently if your husband ever found out that you weren't "store-testing" for fresher coffee on your weekly grocery trips back in the day...well, you'd better watch out! You may be relinquished to a firm slap on the bum just like your 4-year-old caught red-handed in the cookie jar.


This second ad is supposed to be a Mr. Leggs slacks ad, but looks like more like a living room rug advertisement with its photo and corresponding "It's Nice to Have a Girl Around the House" tagline. The faceless man with his foot on the woman's head? Seems to symbolize that the hunter has finally dominated and caught his trophy of a wife, just like the moosehead he no doubt has on the wall of his study. The smaller print is harder to read, but it says:

"Though she was a tiger lady, our hero didn't have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her. ... If you want your own 'doll-to-doll' carpeting, hunt up a pair of these Mr. Leggs slacks."

I laughed out loud when I first saw these, as they are hysterical caricatures of all that 1950s male chauvinism we poke fun at. But the ironic thing is that these weren't at all un-politically correct back then -- in fact, they perfectly epitomize the gender stereotypes in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. Crazy, huh? Now they're quite laughable and even shocking, but can you imagine living in a world where these kind of ads wouldn't even elicit a second glance? That they accurately represented everyday life for men and women, husbands and wives? It seems unfathomable to me now, but this was reality not that long ago.

Wonder if the Sterling Cooper team would approve of these ads? For some reason, part of me thinks yes, especially since they mocked up this sleek and savvy Playtex ad in 1962, asking us bra-wearers whether we're Jackies by day and Marilyns by night:


'Cause you know...there are only two categories we fit into as women. Me? I'm a Marilyn....no, actually more a Jackie. Wait, scratch that, I mean more Marilyn. But then somewhat of a Jackie. Oh you get the point. ;)