I really like the first color combo, but I am also a sucker for purple, so... and it's a nice jewel-y tone, so it will be flattering with lots of other garments! And light grey is always lovely. The dusty green is nice, too, but you'd have to be sure that the green isn't too dusty. I feel like it'd be easy for that one to look ratty even though it isn't. If you use more modern color schemes, I bet that'd help keep it more in the realm of "inspired by" instead of "I stole this from great-grandma's closet"... which is not to say that you should go one way or the other, but I feel like you shouldn't limit yourself to certain colors if you really like another, you know? You're the one that's going to be wearing it, after all! And if you're going to be rocking something as awesome as a stripey sailor collar, then you should absolutely make it your own,

Have you checked to see if the historical knitting writer from Knitty has ever covered a similar sweater? He might be able to offer some insight at least into modern yarn weight equivalents and such. The picture, at least, doesn't really make it look like the model was wearing a heavy corset, so I can't imagine it'd be all that different, and, as you said, there's no waist shaping so it really doesn't matter anyway! The pattern looks pretty straightforward, too, so one would think that using your judgement and doing extensive swatching would take care of a lot of the sizing problems as you go.