1930s film star Madeleine Carroll Publicity Photo - Evening Gown by Edith Head


Photo Restored by Covet And Love It Vintage
I'm currently having a ball, going through my collection of fashion and gossip magazines from the 1930s and 1940s:  Personal Romances, Mirror, etc.  I hope to get more images scanned and onto this blog.
My scanner is very old (haven't had the time to search out a new one) and it moves very slow.  Sits there and has to think about it.

This photo of 1930s movie star Madeleine Carroll shows her in a simplified but elegant evening/dinner gown.
From the description:
'Printed wool is high fashion this fall and winter.  Edith Head has created this charming dinner dress of black imported wool covered with a pale blue bluebell print.
Following Madeleine's favorite "basic" silhouette for dinner clothes, the designer has used a high-waisted, Empire line with a V decolletage, short sleeves and graceful back fullness in the bias skirt.'


I just love running across a nice write-up along with one of these publicity photos so you know what the colors were in real life.  Now when I see a photo of Madeleine in this dress, I think of sweet little bluebells scattered across it.  Even though she was referred to as an 'Iceberg Maiden', I find this a very fitting look for a star who I always thought had a fresh and innocent look.

A friend ran across a stack of magazines from the 30s and 40s when she was helping a neighbor clean out a bunch of stuff to get rid of so she grabbed them for me.  She knows how crazy I am about vintage magazine ads and fashion photos of the movie stars during the Hollywood days of glamour.
This was another photo that had been extensively damaged over the years and there were parts of the page missing so it took a lot of time and patience in photo restoration, but I think t turned out rather well.  I hope I can get more images from these magazines onto digital so they'll live a long life.  It's amazing how paper images have survived as long as they have, but time is running out for a lot of them.  Just as the old movie films are starting to deteriorate.
Hopefully they'll still be around for many generations to enjoy them as much as we have.

Photo courtesy of

wolffian classics movies digest