Yesterday’s post opened with a White Stag ad from 1955. I didn’t deliberately pick a White Stag ad, I only needed one that clearly showed the idea of sportswear separates. When reader April, owner of NeatBikVintage, opened my blog yesterday she did a double-take.
Without me knowing about it, the day before she had dropped in the mail a White Stag jacket, in a very similar style to the ones in the ad. She thought surely the mail had not gotten to be that efficient and that I was posting about the jacket! Pretty quickly she realized it was just a nice coincidence, an occurrence of vintage serendipity.
Back when the internet was relatively new, and eBay was the only selling game on it, quite a few vintage sellers and collectors gathered on the chat board that eBay was hosting. It got to be a bit of a joke that “finds” went in bunches – one person would excitedly post about finding a Shaheen sundress, and then another and then another… It got to where I was almost expecting to find the latest lucky designer whenever I was out shopping. And once when the lucky designer was Bonnie Cashin, I found a super green leather tent dress designed by her.
I have another friend, Susan, who is all the time emailing me to tell me that I posted about something that she had been looking at just that day. After I posted part one of the sportswear series, she emailed an illustration from a 1917 Delineator showing the work bloomers I’d written about. I replaced my 1919 illustration with the 1917 one she had scanned.
It is just amazing, the subtle ways we influence one another!
But back to my new jacket. It is made from the typical White Stag sail cloth, or Topsail as it was called by the fabric maker, Wellington Sears. The edges are bound with white cotton braid and it has nice shell buttons and that cute little button tab. In thinking about a date, I knew it was late 1950s, or early 60s.
The label is one I’ve seen only on early 1960s garments, but I don’t know exactly when White stag changed from a medium blue with white print label to this one, white with gold print. But there was another important clue.
The moment I looked closely at the zipper I knew that this had to be from the 1960s. The zipper was a nylon coil one, and Talon released their nylon zipper in March, 1960.
So many, many thanks to you, April. This is a very nice addition to my sportswear collection.
What an uncanny coincidence and how nice to have this jacket in your collection now. If we didn’t have the internet there wouldn’t be as many occasions for serendipity.
I totally agree, does anyone know where we can get some clothes like this though. Website suggestions would be great