Souvenir of Southern California

I usually don’t collect souvenir scarves, as they are so common, and the quality is usually quite bad.  But I could not resist this great cotton scarf that shows scenes of how to spend a Southern California vacation. There’s golf and wine and sunbathing and the desert.  So how to place a date on something like this?

There are plenty of clues, starting with the place names.  Some, like Arrowhead (Lake) and (Hotel de) Coronado were not very helpful as their lifespans cover many decades.   But then there is the (Cafe) Trocadero, which opened in 1934 and closed in 1946.  That gave me the best timeframe from just the places named.

There is also the evidence within the illustrations.

The two women in sunhats above are straight from the 1930s, while the swimsuits in the drawing below looks more like the 1950s.  But remember, this a Southern California.  People wanted it to look more movie star, more glamorous.

Horse racing became a big draw in 1934 with the opening of the Santa Anita race track.

Al Levy Died in 1941, but his famous tavern continued in business after his death.

My best guess is mid to late 1930s.  Is there anything I’ve missed?

 

Modern Ballroom Dancing and Fashion, 1930

One of the biggest delights of my local Goodwill Outlet Center is the book bin.  Or rather, bins, as there are usually three or more, all full of books and magazines of every sort for book lovers like myself to dig through.  I never fail to find something of interest, and my latest trip produced a 1974 copy of The Great Gatsby, complete with photos of Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, Roy Rogers and the Outlaws of Sundown Valley, a 1950 Whitman book, and the nondescript looking book pictured above, Modern Ballroom Dancing by Lillian Ray.

Published in 1930, the illustrations show that transitional period of clothing between what people think of the Roaring Twenties and the Depression Thirties.   Some skirts are still short, but others have moved downward to the calf, and still others are a combination of the two lengths.

People who study fashion history know that styles don’t abruptly end at the ending of a decade.  For matters of simplicity, it is often convenient to call a dress “1920s style” or “1930s style”  but in the real world of clothes it is not always that easy.  I’ve seen a lot of confusing clothes from the late 1920s and early 1930s.  It’s not always a cut and dried science.

I was intrigued to read the words of Catherine Martin (in interview with Fashionista), the costume designer of the soon to be released  The Great Gatsby film from her husband Baz Luhrmann:

One of the other rules Baz made at the very beginning of the project was that, because the book is set in the summer of ’22, published in ’25, and foreshadows the crash of ’29, we were actually allowed to use the whole decade as a reference base.

People are already talking about how the clothes in the film sure don’t look like the 1920s, and it occurred to me several weeks ago that it looked more like 1929 or 1930.  It’s interesting to note that was, in part, intentional.  Martin took the range of ten years and pulled what fit into what she wanted the character to portray.

I’ve already said this here, but I’m not in any way going to go to The Great Gatsby thinking it is an historical depiction of 1925.  It would drive me crazy.  Instead, like the life with Daisy that Gatsby has formed in his mind, this is a fantasy.

Looks easy, no?

All illustrations from Modern Ballroom Dancing by Lillian Ray, Franklin Publishing Company, 1930, illustrator not credited.

Fashion Correspondence, 1940s

 

One thing I’m always on the lookout for is old paper that pertains to the textile or fashion industry.  Here in North Carolina, I usually find things about cotton mills or denim manufacturing or hosiery production, but last week I found a nice collection of letters from sportswear and dress makers.  All the letters were to a Mr. William Teague of Greensboro, NC, and all were dated between 1943 and early 1947.

Standing in the flea market, shuffling through the letters, I was amazed at the letterheads, many of them from companies with which I’m familiar.  It was too good a find to pass up, and the seller just seemed pleased that someone actually wanted the things.

Yesterday was cold and rainy, so I got out the box of letters and began reading and sorting.  As it turns out, Teague was working as a sales representative for clothing manufacturers.  He would receive samples which he took to stores, hoping they would place an order with the company.  From the commissions he made his living.

It was a tough time to be in that business.  Many of the letters refer to wartime fabric shortages, and how the makers couldn’t expand into new territory because they simply did not have the goods.    The shortages did not stop with the end of the war.  It took several years for manufacturing to return to normal.

Teague was evidently a real go-getter.  There are dozens of rejection letters, often three or four from the same company written over a period of as many years.  It seemed that he would represent several companies at a time, tailoring his merchandise to the type of store, being careful not to sell the same dress to every store in a small town.

At least once this practice of representing more than one company  got him into trouble.  In 1946 the Debby-Lou Sportswear company of Boston terminated his services because he:

“…violated the terms of your understanding with this company.  As you well know, it is the policy of this company, and you agreed to adhere to this policy, that no other lines were to be carried by you without first obtaining the express consent of this company.”

I’ve got to wonder how they found out, them being in Boston and him in North Carolina.  Could it have been a jealous competitor, or maybe it was a store owner who was unhappy with his style of salesmanship?

The letterheads are quite interesting.  Many of them feature the same logos that were found on their labels.  And there is a lot of information about where companies were located, the official name of the company, and often, the name of the owner.

I was happy to see several letters from Lady Alice since I had written about this company recently.  There were also two promotional posters from Lady Alice.

Some of the letterheads are simply cute.

It’s an interesting look at one  little aspect of how the fashion industry operated in the 1940s.

Anne Taylor’s Beatles Shirt

Beatlemania did some strange things to the minds of its victims.  For instance, it made one of them, Anne Taylor (no relation to the store Ann Taylor) ,  think that she could actually take one of her dad’s old shirts and cover it with Beatles embroidery.  And Anne really made a good try of it, but the project was overly ambitious, and so the project was abandoned.

Maybe she transferred her affection to another group, or maybe she found a real life boy to admire.  I guess we’ll never know what interrupted this labor of love.

Unfinished and stained and holey, this is still a clear testament to the power of the Fab Four.  Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

I know the maker was named Anne Taylor because she signed it.  Those are her initials on the postcard as well.

Roadtrip Double-take

I thought I had my entire week planned out, thanks to a letter from the court system inviting me to sit for a week of jury duty.  But as it turned out, I was graciously thanked for showing up, but told my services would not be needed after all.

So what to do?  I settled on a trip to a flea market in South Carolina that I’ve heard so much about, but have never had the chance to visit.  It is held every Wednesday through the year, and it is too cold in winter and much too hot in summer, but as it turned out, yesterday was just right.  I’ll tell more about the market later in the week.

I’m fairly familiar with the northwestern corner of South Carolina, so after the flea market I drove to a few antique and junk shops in the area.  While driving down the road I did a double-take.  High on a hill was a Jantzen sign.

Over the years, there have been many garment and textile companies in the South, but Jantzen was founded in Portland, Oregon.  Founded in 1910, the company originally made knit woolens, and by 1918, they were making wool knit bathing suits.  The famous diving girl logo was added in 1920.

So how was it that I encountered a Jantzen facility in South Carolina?  As it turns out, this is a distribution center.  The Jantzen name and logo are now owned by Perry Ellis, International, and they still make bathing suits (but not in Portland, unfortunately).

The sign has neon lights, and I’d really love to see it at night.  Is there anyone in the Clemson, SC area who can tell us if they light it?

A Winter’s Tale Retold

If you are expecting a rehashing of the old Shakespearean tale, I’m happy to disappoint you.  No, this is A Winter’s Tale from 1964, published by Glen of Michigan.

You might already know that Glen of Michigan a maker of sportswear, and from 1950 through 1970 they made the designs of architect  Bill Atkinson.  Atkinson accidentally found he had a talent for fashion after he designed a square dance skirt for his wife.  Made from eight bandannas, the skirt was a big hit.  Atkinson decided to make them to sell, and found a firm willing to take on his order, Glen Manufacturing, which was a maker of women’s housedresses.  In 1951 he released his first full line of sportswear separates.

This is a promotional piece, probably sent to store buyers in anticipation of the up-coming season.  They rewrote the final scene of A Winter’s Tale, and used illustrations of the clothing line to illustrate it.  It was a very clever idea, and I can’t imagine that many of these little “catalogs” went into the trash.  I do bet that many of them ended up in the homes of buyers, especially those who had little girls.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

In the back of the booklet there is a listing of the garments in the collection, and swatches of the fabrics used.  Note how they named the pieces, in keeping with the theme of the story.  Such a charming idea!

And I found reference to another Bill Atkinson storybook catalog - A Tale of Two Collections, in 1955.  I’m betting there are even more.

Here is a close-up shot of the velveteens used.  And here is a link to the Lady Anne dress, model 536, on sale now at eBay:

The seller, MidMod14, has kindly given his permission to post a photo of the Lady Anne dress.

Anyone know something about the illustrator,  Juliet McKellen?

Marimekko by Dan River

I’m not going to pretend to know who came up with the idea of designer bed linens, but my guess it was in the late 1960s.  It was the era of the uber-licensees and everyone from Oleg Cassini to Laura Ashley was putting his or her name on sheets and pillowcases.  As Cassini put it in his book, In My Own Fashion, the licensing company would come up with the designs and he would approve them.  You can see examples of these today, and you’d never guess that a designer’s name would be attached.

On the other hand, there were textile designers who also had agreements with bedding companies, and it is immediately apparent that there is a real connection between their work and the finished product.  A good example of this is Vera Neumann.  Her original art was adapted by her design team to that it would work on the large scale of a bed sheet.

I was surprised to find  a set of pillowcases by the Finnish design house of Marimekko.  In 1959 their work was brought to the US by Design Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  In 1975 or so Marimekko and Dan River, a linen producer in Danville, Virginia, entered into a licensing agreement where Dan River made bedding with Marimekko designed fabric.  To me this is interesting because, whereas you’d never in a million years instinctively know an “Oleg Cassini” sheet without his signature, the second I spotted these pillowcases in the Goodwill bin, I immediately thought “Marimekko.”

These were dated 1983.