![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tomorrow's parties, and a uniform
Apparently there's another Halloween party tomorrow - a bit of Halloween overload, I say, but I suppose it'll be fun, and A wants to go. It's just that awesome local band Agent Side Grinder (seriously good, go have a listen) are playing at an awesomely geeky local industrial club, too, and I'm not going to miss that either, so it seems we'll end up doing both. How to dress for that combination? I don't have a serious costume yet, and even if the Fru Draake thing was finished I'd save it for next Friday, so I'm going for safe and boring and wearing my vintage SKBR uniform. It hasn't been out and about in years, it deserves a night on the town.
SKBR stands for Svenska Kvinnliga Bilkårers Riksförbund, which is a women's civil defense organization started by a group of women who were trained as chauffeurs by a more general female civil defense organization at the beginning of WWII. They had no financial backing during the first years, but still managed to do quite a lot of social work; transporting Home Guard troops, evacuating children, driving refugee transports and ambulances. The organization received backing from the state first after the war, and continued to grow with the increased demand of competent drivers and mechanics for the army in the 50's.
My uniform is 50's, judging from the logotype with three triangles featured on one sleeve, which was created in the 50's; not much later, going by the cut of the garments. It's almost complete, consisting of a belted tunic, calf-length skirt with an inverted box pleat at center front and jodhpurs, all in grey wool, but it lacked a cap when I bought it. I later found the right vintage cap for it. I'll be wearing the tunic, cap and skirt tomorrow, not the jodhpurs, sadly; they are very hot - that great, curvy classic fit, you know - but sadly I have neither riding boots nor high lace-up combat boots to wear with them, so that'll have to wait until I do. I don't like the way they look with jodhpur boots, although I know that's a classic way of wearing them, too (besides, I don't have any of those either).
I made a grey shirt with the usual tailored puff sleeves and inverted pleat breast pockets with buttoned flaps a while back - I feel sure that there must be a shorter way of putting that. In Swedish I'd write bälgficka, which pretty much includes all that information in a single word. Anyway, will be wearing that with the skirt, possibly a black tie, the cap and the tunic. I'll try to keep my hands off the black eyeliner and go for minimal make-up and fresh-faced instead; once again, I can't think of an English word that quite covers all the implications of äppelkäck, but it'll have to do. Also a period updo, and probably not seam-backs - I just can't imagine that any sensible girl would waste expensive and fragile nylons on a frumpy uniform. I love it and in my eyes it's sexy as all that, but the skirt is the worst length possible, and the zippers pinch, and I just don't think that's how the original wearer thought of it.
So. Rant over, will try really hard to produce photos, I want some.
SKBR stands for Svenska Kvinnliga Bilkårers Riksförbund, which is a women's civil defense organization started by a group of women who were trained as chauffeurs by a more general female civil defense organization at the beginning of WWII. They had no financial backing during the first years, but still managed to do quite a lot of social work; transporting Home Guard troops, evacuating children, driving refugee transports and ambulances. The organization received backing from the state first after the war, and continued to grow with the increased demand of competent drivers and mechanics for the army in the 50's.
My uniform is 50's, judging from the logotype with three triangles featured on one sleeve, which was created in the 50's; not much later, going by the cut of the garments. It's almost complete, consisting of a belted tunic, calf-length skirt with an inverted box pleat at center front and jodhpurs, all in grey wool, but it lacked a cap when I bought it. I later found the right vintage cap for it. I'll be wearing the tunic, cap and skirt tomorrow, not the jodhpurs, sadly; they are very hot - that great, curvy classic fit, you know - but sadly I have neither riding boots nor high lace-up combat boots to wear with them, so that'll have to wait until I do. I don't like the way they look with jodhpur boots, although I know that's a classic way of wearing them, too (besides, I don't have any of those either).
I made a grey shirt with the usual tailored puff sleeves and inverted pleat breast pockets with buttoned flaps a while back - I feel sure that there must be a shorter way of putting that. In Swedish I'd write bälgficka, which pretty much includes all that information in a single word. Anyway, will be wearing that with the skirt, possibly a black tie, the cap and the tunic. I'll try to keep my hands off the black eyeliner and go for minimal make-up and fresh-faced instead; once again, I can't think of an English word that quite covers all the implications of äppelkäck, but it'll have to do. Also a period updo, and probably not seam-backs - I just can't imagine that any sensible girl would waste expensive and fragile nylons on a frumpy uniform. I love it and in my eyes it's sexy as all that, but the skirt is the worst length possible, and the zippers pinch, and I just don't think that's how the original wearer thought of it.
So. Rant over, will try really hard to produce photos, I want some.