The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
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Gingham is the fabric of simple summer dresses, school uniforms and, just occasionally, Hollywood stars, says Jacqueline Wake Young
Brigitte Bardot has become a controversial figure in recent years, which tends to overshadow her many achievements. With 47 films under her belt, she has given much to cinema,w and since retiring from acting in 1973, she has dedicated her life to fighting for animal rights. She has also had a limited but no less lasting impact upon the world of fashion, even having a garment named after her – the Bardot top.
She also did much for the bikini, the beehive and, perhaps most impressively, opaque black tights. And then there’s her contribution to gingham.
In 1959, she wore a pink gingham dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, to wed second husband Jacques Charrier – prompting a trend that led to a nationwide shortage of the fabric in France.
Thirty years earlier, Judy Garland wore a similarly influential blue gingham pinafore as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
In 2021, now the schools have gone back, the shops are again full of gingham for little girls’ uniforms.
And although some big-name designers have played around with gingham, it remains a fabric associated with youth, country life and plainness.
So humble a material is it that designers use it as a test fabric while experimenting rather than cutting up something more expensive.
Gingham’s origin as a striped material goes back centuries, but it took on its familiar checked pattern when Manchester’s mills started to manufacture it in the mid-18th Century.
For dressmaking it is easy to work with and, apart from when there’s a Brigitte Bardot-inspired shortage in France, it is readily available.