Diana, Princess of Wales, wears Yuki to a banquet hosted by Emperor Hirohito in May, 1986. Image: Pinterest.

Gnyuki Torimaru, or Yuki, is most famous for dressing Princess Diana on her 1986 state visit to Japan. But his licensed sewing patterns date to the year before.

Born in Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan, Gnyuki Torimaru (b. 1937) studied architecture in Chicago before settling in London, where he attended the London College of Fashion. He launched his own label, Yuki, in 1972, after stints at Norman Hartnell in London and Pierre Cardin in Paris. (For more, see Suzanne Kampner, “Out Goes Majolica, In Goes Nothing.”)

Image: Vintage Fashion Guild.

Visitors to the Boston Museum of Fine Art can see his blue, pleated gown and other designs in the museum’s extensive Yuki collection.

Gown by Gnyuki Torimaru. Image: Boston Museum of Fine Art.

Torimaru made his name in the 1970s with his draped jersey gowns. Jerry Hall’s cream Yuki gown, seen on the cover of British Vogue and in Barry Lategan’s editorial, “Dare the Ritz,” has a hem that doubles back as a hood. The Boston Museum of Fine Art has a silk version; model-turned-actor Gayle Hunnicutt donated her carnation version to the V&A.

Jerry Hall wears Yuki on the cover of British Vogue, July 1976. Photo: Barry Lategan. Image: Pinterest.

Hunnicutt wore two Yuki pieces in her 1973 British Vogue editorial. The second, low-backed gown is carnation jersey, cut in one piece. She later wore it to a ball at Windsor Castle.

Gayle Hunnicutt in Yuki, British Vogue, October 1973. Photo: Henry Clarke. Image: Pinterest.

Gayle Hunnicutt in Yuki, British Vogue, October 1973. Photo: Henry Clarke. Image: Youthquakers.

Yuki also designed the costumes for Frank D. Gilroy’s romantic comedy Once in Paris… (1978), which starred his client, Hunnicutt.

Style Patterns’ earliest designer series includes two Yuki designs. Both dresses, one a voluminous one size fits all, showcase his trademark draping.

Style 4489 by Yuki (1985)

Misses’ Dress in Two Lengths: Dress is gathered from yoke. Draped sleeves are raglan. Opening is button loops. All edges are topstitched. Suggested fabrics—Fine silk or synthetic jersey, lightweight silk types, lightweight crepe types, crepe de chine, georgette. One size.

Style 4490 by Yuki (1985)

Misses’ Dress in Two Lengths: Dress has fitted under-bodice with draped front and back, which is gathered on padded shoulder and forms fluted sleeve. Skirt is slim with centre back split on full length version. Suggested fabrics—Fine silk or synthetic jersey, lightweight silk types, crepe types, crepe de chine.

Click the Style Patterns tag for more British designer patterns.

Yuki gown featured in Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950 (V&A, 2012) Photo: David Hughes. Image: The Cut.

Detail, Virginia Slims advertisement, 1975.

Today is World No Tobacco Day. Here’s a look at a Virginia Slims ad that ran in Vogue Patterns magazine.

The mid-’70s ad—with the famous You’ve come a long way, baby slogan—contrasts the fashionable, contemporary Cheryl Tiegs with the Edwardian “Mrs. Florine Knauff,” caught smoking during a fox hunt. Along the lower left-hand side, the caption reads, Fashions: Vogue Patterns.

Virginia Slims advertisement in Vogue Patterns, January/February 1975.

Doesn’t Tiegs’ green dress look a lot like Emanuel Ungaro’s goddess gown?

Vogue 1135 by Emanuel Ungaro (1974)

The popular design was reissued in 2001 (as V7521).

A handful of ’70s Virginia Slims ads credit Vogue Patterns, most notably this Yves Saint Laurent couture pyjama, as worn by Beverly Johnson:

Virginia Slims advertisement, 1973. Image: Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising (SRITA).

Vogue 2912 by Yves Saint Laurent (1973) Image: Paco Peralta.

There were even promotional Virginia Slims sewing kits. This one contains FDR-made upholstery needles:

Virginia Slims needle pack cover. Image: Etsy.

Virginia Slims needle pack. Image: Etsy.

Click the Beverly Johnson ad to learn more about SRITA, Stanford’s tobacco advertising project.

Nothing says Swinging London like Mary Quant. The pioneer of the Chelsea Look will receive a major retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2019. (An earlier exhibit, Manchester Art Gallery’s Mary Quant: Fashion Icon, had to close early due to conservation issues.)

The V&A is seeking vintage Quant for the show, including garments — or even photos of garments — made with Mary Quant patterns. See here for more details, or email the curators at maryquant@vam.ac.uk. Update: submissions are now closed.

Butterick licensed Mary Quant patterns from the mid-’60s to the early ’70s. (See my Mad Men-era post.)

For knitters, there were also ultra-mod knitting patterns. Some of these vintage booklets are available as official reissues, like these ones from Mary Maxim. (More on Ravelry.)

Mary Quant and her husband were profiled in Life magazine as early as 1960. (View story here.)

For his 1963 Life feature on the Chelsea Look, Norman Parkinson photographed Melanie Hampshire and Jill Kennington in these Mary Quant dresses:

Butterick released its first Mary Quant patterns in fall, 1964. Here’s Celia Hammond on the cover of the retail catalogue:

The Butterick Home Catalog hailed Quant as the originator of the Chelsea Look.

The earliest Mary Quant patterns pre-date the Young Designer line. This dress pattern even includes the rosette:

British copies of this dress pattern say “featured in Queen magazine.” Jill Kennington wore this and other Butterick Young Designers in what was billed as “The Queen’s first ever make-it-yourself fashion.”

Here Moyra Swan models a mod scooter dress. Suggested fabrics include linen, jersey, lightweight wool, and knits.

This jumpsuit or playsuit came with a matching mini skirt — “the latest put-togethers”:

What to wear with a Mary Quant mini dress? Why, go-go boots, of course:

By 1970, a Quant jumpsuit was more fluid, with a pointed collar; this pattern also includes a maxi-length cardigan. The catalogue gives a better view of the inflatable chair:

Mary Quant in a more romantic mode means a sheer tunic worn with knickers. View B is a maxi dress.

After 1971 or so, Butterick Young Designer patterns had illustrations, not photos. This Mary Quant dress dates to circa early ’73.

Have you made anything from a Mary Quant pattern?

As part of its recent Mary Quant exhibit, the V&A shared a pattern for an early Quant design. The Georgie dress dates to the Bazaar days, before Quant’s deal with Butterick.

The V&A’s Georgie dress— purchased new in Truro, Cornwall — is striped cotton lined with cotton batiste.

As Quant’s archive shows, the dress was also available in taffeta-lined chiffon as the Rosie, in black, pink, or jade.

The Georgie pattern was developed from Quant’s original by London’s Alice & Co Patterns, a mother and daughter team with a connection to the museum: the younger generation, Lilia Prier Tisdall, works there as a costume display specialist.

The dress has a surplice bodice, three-quarter sleeves, pleated skirt, and sash belt. For the original’s lively, reverse stripe effect, cut the skirt on a different grain than the sleeves and bodice.

The pattern gives detailed instructions, including for the pleated trim.

Download the Georgie dress pattern. (Instructions here.) The pattern has 7 pieces, arranged in 3 formats: A0, A4, and US Letter. Test square included to check scale.

Size: Two size ranges, UK 6–16 and 18–22

Yardage: 4m (4.5 yds) of 45″ fabric, 1m (1 1/8 yds) lining

Recommended fabrics: Soft cotton, cotton blends, or glazed cotton.

Seam allowance: 1cm (3/8″)

Notions: 56 cm (22″) flat zipper, interfacing for belt.

Notes: Skirt, frill, and belt pieces are to be drafted.

Click here for more instalments in my Free Designer Patterns series.

Vogue’s new patterns for Summer include two formal gowns in Easter-egg hues. A mint goddess gown evokes red-carpet glamour, while Badgley Mischka’s lilac confection is fit for a fairy queen.

The “secret gardens” of Savannah, Georgia were the inspiration behind the tulle gown with rosettes at the shoulders — a design from Badgley Mischka’s Spring 2024 collection.

The original is still available at the Outnet:

Belt not included…

With the 78th edition of the Festival de Cannes starting today, here’s a look at a couture pattern with a fun cinematic connection.

When Vogue’s Clifford Coffin photographed the first batch of Paris Originals on location in Paris, circa 1949, he shot the Lanvin design in a museum setting, beside a fantastical red figure that’s mostly out of the frame.

It’s the Selenite from Georges Méliès’ Voyage dans la Lune (1902) — revealing the location as the Musée de la Cinémathèque, in its old digs at the Palais de Chaillot on the Trocadéro. The model of the moon-dweller in Méliès’ landmark film was recreated for the museum ca. 1947, not long before Vogue’s photo shoot.

Vogue’s suggested fabrics match the colours in Coffin’s photograph: grey wool jersey like the couture original, and “flame Foreman silk Shantung” like the red of Méliès’ lunar being.

“Rick Owens: Temple of Love” opened today at the Palais Galliera in Paris. To celebrate the designer’s first retrospective, this post is dedicated to SHOWstudio’s latest Design Download: a Rick Owens shrug.

Part of the beauty of Owens’ avant-garde garments is their cut, so it’s fitting that the exhibition catalogue contains a section on pattern cutting. (Publisher’s preview here. For more, see Sally Singer, “‘My Role is to Provide Other Options’: Rick Owens on his Landmark Career Retrospective in Paris.”)

The SHOWstudio shrug is called TEC T, and is from Rick Owens’ Spring 2020 women’s collection, named Tecuatl for his Mexican-born mother’s side of the family.

Shown at the Art Deco Palais de Tokyo, the Tecuatl collection explored the designer’s Mixtec heritage and memories of his youth in southern California, referencing Aztec culture, Bauhaus artists Josef and Anni Albers, and Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

As Owens notes, the sharp TEC shoulder is a thread running back to his time designing in Hollywood in the 1990s. On the runway, it reappeared in sequinned jackets in white, black, and Aztec gold:

View SS20 collection images at the Rick Owens website here, or watch the runway video below. (Plus: a post about the headdresses from Wintercroft.)

You can see a current-season version of the design on the Rick Owens website — part of the Spring/Summer 2025 Hollywood collection. The structure and seaming detail are more visible in the Dust colourway (click here for full description):

Owens shared these notes and instructions for his SHOWstudio pattern:

This TEC T was shown on the Spring Summer 20 Tecuatl runway but the shoulder comes from some wool capes made at my Hollywood studio in the Nineties.

This cropped version has a round neck and level line running across the chest and down the arm to finish at a geometric line at the elbow.

It features high shoulders which rise into rounded points extending the long skinny sleeve.

This version was made in a stretchy cupro jersey.

The TEC shoulders are formed with an internal structure and fusing.

The body is double layer, cut on the fold, positioned at the bottom hem. The long sleeves are a single layer of fabric, with raw edge at the cuffs. Front neckline is finished with a bias binding, left raw on the inside.

The back neckline has a 7 cm wide elastic inserted in the fold. All seams are 0.7 cm, except for the shoulder seam which is 0.5 cm.

The main fabric is used in single layer for pattern pieces 5 and 6, and for all pieces with medium and heavy fusing.

Apply medium weight fusing reinforcement on pattern piece 4, and heavy weight fusing on pieces 1, 2, and 3.

Cut around pattern and join pieces where necessary.

Edges are indicated with scissor icon, match using corresponding reference points. Construct following the numerical steps of the pattern.

SHOWstudio has posted this animated 3D rendering “for inspiration on how your Rick Owens TEC T might look”:

The pattern download comes in A4 sheets and includes the numbered Front and Back technical drawings shown above.

Download the TEC T shrug pattern (12 pieces)

Notes: Prints on 18 A4 sheets. The pattern refers to ‘dome’ sleeves.

Recommended fabrics: Stretchy jersey such as cupro knit.

Seam allowances: 0.7 cm (0.3″ approx.), except 0.5 cm (0.2″ approx.) for shoulder seams.

Notions: 7 cm (2.75″) elastic, medium- and heavy-weight fusible interfacing.