Time Tunnel to January 1969 Burda

When I turned 50 a couple of years ago, I had it in my head that I wanted a copy of a Burda magazine from the month that I was born- February 1963.  I searched Ebay, to no avail.  At that time, I couldn't find anything from 1963.  But, I did find someone in Minnesota who was selling entire years of the magazine from the later years of the 60's and all of the 70's.  I ended up bidding on a couple of years, and I won 1969 and 1976!

I absolutely love them, and I thought you might like to see a few pictures from the the magazines, so these are all from the January 1969 issue.
 

Can you imagine how exciting it must of been for this Minnesota seamstress to get this European fashion/sewing magazine in the mail back in 1969?  

I can just imagine her waiting for the mail everyday, anticipating all those wonderful patterns and big gorgeous pictures.  I wish I could have met her and talked with her about it.  I would have been that annoying kid next door constantly wanting to hang out.

These days, you can go online and see what the issue has, so when it arrives, it's much less of a big deal when you actually get the magazine.  You've already had time to decide what you like and don't like.

The models were more mature- I love the fact that they included a model who was probably in her 40's!  Oh, I wish that they did that these days! Ottobre Magazine does.  Kudos to Ottobre!

In this issue, the only models that looked like they were teenagers were actually in the teen section, not modelling the misses sizes.

These magazines are MUCH larger than the Burda Style magazines of today.  Here is a comparison between today's size magazine and this issue. 

It was more like I remember LIFE magazines- just huge!  They include quite a few knitting pages, tons of advertisements and recipes. 

But the general scope of the magazine hasn't changed.  It had a pull out pattern sheet that was even more cryptic than the ones today. 

And it had a pull out instruction sheet.  This one is in French, which makes me wonder if perhaps she picked up this issue while on a European vacation, or a visiting relative brought it to her.

And they of course had the obligatory traditional German Dirndl designs.

And what we've all come to love about Burda, the downright insane- here featuring a hairdo section.

 In some of them, Aenne Burda, writes a commentary that has nothing to do with sewing or fashion.  This particular issue doesn't have one, but the later issues do.  And the topics resonate today.  It's been a while since I read them, but one that stood out was a column that she wrote about either suicide or depression.  I mean, wow!  That had to take real guts back in that time.  She was really opinionated, and probably would have loved blogging! 

Even though I didn't get a 1963 issue for my birthday that year, I did get this awesome Bernina Birthday Cake!

Stay tuned and I'll snap some photos of the 1976 January issue next.  You'll be amazed at how much difference 7 years makes.
 

-Ann