Vintage Miscellany – April 22, 2018

I love old photos showing people playing croquet because I get a good look at what was thought to be appropriate for a very casual setting. By the standards of the era, (1905 ish) The women above are casually attired. And look at how the older girls are still wearing their skirts “short”. Photos are like little time capsules, and it is amazing how we can learn so much from them.

And now for some news…

• •   The Cornell Costume Collection blog has an interesting article about riding attire. I like it because it’s written by someone who actually loves horses.
  •    The Met’s bronze sculpture, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer was given a new tutu. Watch the very interesting video.
  •    Samuel Barsky prepares for his vacations by knitting those places onto sweaters.
  •    Clothing company Patagonia continues its crusade against the anti-environmental policies of the current administration.
  •    And speaking of Patagonia, here’s a good look inside the company archive.
  •    Here’s a taste of  Kate Strasdin’s new book on the fashion of Queen Alexandra.
  •    The V & A site has a beautiful article on how the Arts and Crafts Movement influenced fashion.
  •    “Research as a form of making, and making as a form of research.” Dr. Kat Jungnickel studied technology in Victorian women’s biking garments by studying the patents for cycling clothing and then re-creating the clothing. Fascinating! And watch this video as well.
  •    Stella McCartney continues her commitment to the ethical making of clothing.
  •    Dressing mannequins in historic clothing is an often difficult task.
  • 

At Hood Rubber Company, Circa 1905

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Back in the winter I wrote about Hood Rubber. The company made all sorts of products that incorporated rubber, but the most interesting to me were the canvas and rubber leisure shoes.  After making the post, my friend Lynn of AmericanAgeFashion wrote to remind me that she had also written about the company because she had a wonderful old photo that showed some workers in one of the Hood factories. When I met Lynn in Charlotte a few weeks ago, she gave the photo to me to add to my archive.

The only person identified in the photo is the older woman who is standing between two men. She was identified as Grandmother King. In another pen was added “Hood Rubber Watertown”, and in pencil someone wrote “c 1910”. These identifications were added much later, as the pens used were ballpoints, which did not come into common use until the 1940s. My point is that the circa 1910 seems to be a bit off, as I’d put this at least five years earlier.

My guess is this is a cutting room. At the time, athletic shoes were either black or white, and that’s what we can see in the bolts stacked behind the workers. Even though this area has electric lights, the factory still makes use of the natural light by placing the work tables near the windows. And look carefully at the tables. They appear to be spread with the canvas, and you can see the bolts on the floor on the backs of the tables.

Old industrial photos of this sort provide a lot of information about everything from the types of clothing workers wore to the way factories were set up. They are hard to find, so I’m really happy to have this one and to add it to my records. Thanks Lynn!

Empire Sporting Goods, Spring & Summer 1942 Catalog.

I added this 1942 Empire catalog to my collection for several reasons. First, I have an Empire piece in my collection, and I wanted documentation for it. But I was also interested to see how women’s sports clothing, especially softball uniforms were marketed in the very earliest days of WWII. This was a full year before the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that we all know of from the movie A League of Their Own.

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Before 1943, women were expected to play softball rather than baseball (something that for the most part is true today). As you can see from this page, the softball uniforms were very much like traditional baseball uniforms worn by boys and men. If you have seen A League of Their Own, you know that the women in that league did not wear traditional baseball uniforms. The Smithsonian has one of the women’s baseball uniforms that belonged to  Betsy Jochum, a player for the South Bend Blue Sox. I want, no I need, one of these uniforms in my life.

Looking through this catalog, it’s interesting to see how subtly fashion appears in the clothing. Often sports clothing is not thought of as being fashionable at all, but fashion is reflected in even an object as mundane as basketball shorts. Remember the good old days when Tom Selleck wore his shorts very short on Magnum, P.I.? It was the same on basketball courts across the country. When shorts lengthened and became baggy in the 1990s, the change was also seen in basketball uniforms.

In addition to the active sportswear, Empire also offered school jackets for both men and women. By the 1940s the standard raglan sleeve “letter jacket” was already available for men, but they also had more stylish offerings for both men and women.

And because this catalog must have gone to press just as the USA was entering WWII, there were all sorts of military logoed items available. I’ve got to wonder if these were actually ordered by the military, or if they were available to just anyone.

Currently Reading: The Hidden History of American Fashion

One of the things I love about fashion history studies right now is that historians seem to have moved beyond writing about Chanel and Dior. I said some time ago that I didn’t know what else could be said about the great and familiar names of fashion. It appears that lots of others are in agreement.

The Hidden History of American Fashion: Rediscovering 20th Century Women Designers is a book after my own heart. Edited by Nancy Deihl, the lives and careers of sixteen designers are explored. Some, like Tina Leser, are familiar to me, but others, like Pauline Fracchia and Catherine Scott were not. All are important to the story of American fashion.

Each chapter features a different designer, and each is written by a different historian or team of two. I like this type of book because it is easy to pick up and read one chapter when time (or attention) is short. Each chapter is well-documented with the sources given.

One of my favorite chapters is about designer Libby Payne. Payne was one of the hundreds of designers who worked without ever having their names on the label. Though her career spanned from 1937 to 1987, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that her name was on the label of a line she worked on. She designed for some very big names, among them Bobbie Brooks, Jonathan Logan, and Saks fifth Avenue. It’s great that now her name is a part of the historical records of the companies she helped make successful.

I was really surprised and pleased to spot my own name in the bibliography of one of the chapters, that on Fira Benenson. I was familiar with Benenson because I had seen the sewing patterns adapted by the Spadea company. Author Michael Mamp referred to the patterns, and referenced and quoted the article I wrote concerning how Spadea cut their patterns directly from the designers’ garments. This was information I got from Anne Spadea Combs, the daughter of the owners of Spadea Patterns.

I can’t help but think of how the internet has allowed this book to be written. So many of the sources are primary ones that are easily accessible due to back issues of newspapers and trade materials being available online. Material that used to be buried deep in microfilm is now easily found.

It is gratifying to know that even blogs like this one are now contributing to the written record and are useful to others doing research.

Shopping with the Vintage Traveler, Spring 2018

I really think of April as the beginning of Shopping Season, because that’s when all the outdoor markets start up. I have managed to do a bit of antique malling recently. Here are the things I liked but did not, for the most part, buy.

I have a theory that you can tell if the proprietor of a mall booth is male or female just by examining the merchandise. Of course that’s not always true, but I’d bet money on the fact that this booth is stocked by a guy. I love booths like this one with all the sports stuff. I even found a pair of red and white saddle shoes for my collection.

This door stop is not as old as the era that the golfer portrays. It is a great example of how nostalgia-driven the 1960s and 70s were. For some reason I have it in my head that in the 1960s reproduction and fake door stops became a big problem in the antiques markets. People were after an “old” look, in home decor as well as in clothing.

I have a few cheerleading dresses so I probably should have bought this megaphone.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Google books archive of Life magazines, looking for one particular ad. What is striking about the ads before the mid 1960s is how few persons of color are represented. This early to mid 1960s advertising poster is a sign of change.

I spotted this wonderful 1920s dress in my favorite vintage store, Design Archives in Winston-Salem, NC. So beautiful, and the condition was exceptional.

And here’s a close-up of the embroidery. Wouldn’t this be a peachy wedding dress?

This little suitcase or hatbox is made of heavy cardboard, was was meant for a child. I see these on occasion, and they are almost always battered from play.

I have no idea what is going on in this illustration.

I was all ready to buy these when I realized the envelopes felt a bit thin. A quick look inside revealed multiple missing pieces. It’s a common problem with buying used sewing patterns, so I always take a look at the contents before spending much money on one.

 

A Visit from the Fashion History Museum Guys

The best thing about the internet is that I’ve met some very awesome people because of connections made online. I can now add Kenn Norman and Jonathan Walford to that list of awesome friends. I’ve been communicating with these guys so long that it was like having old friends roll up last week when I met them on their trip down to install a Lucile dress at the Titanic attraction in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I’m so glad they decided to swing through Western North Carolina so I could finally meet them.

Jonathan was nice enough to write about my collection on his blog, so I’ll let him tell the story.

William Ivey Long: Costume Designs 2007 – 2016

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I’m always up for a good surprise, and that’s what I got when visiting The Mint Museum recently. I was going to meet a long-time online friend, Lynn Mally, who writes AmericanAgeFashion, and I hadn’t really thought too much about the exhibitions. I knew they were showing theater costumes from William Ivey Long, but since the show wasn’t “historical” I wasn’t too enthused about seeing it.  I was wrong.

One of my first thoughts about this show is it is a fantastic example of just how much clothing exhibitions have changed from just a few years ago. This is not a bunch of costumes lined up to show how pretty or extraordinary they are. Instead, the visitor is treated to mood boards, sketches, fabric swatches, historical inspirations, and, yes, some pretty spectacular costumes.

Long is best known for his work on Broadway, but he also did the costumes for a famous North Carolina play, The Lost Colony. This drama has been presented during summers since 1937 at Manteo, NC, and as a youngster, Long’s family all worked on the play. In 2007 the theater’s costume shop was destroyed by fire, and William Ivey Long was called on to design new ones.

For each play featured in the exhibition, there were tables set in front of the display to show Long’s design process. One of the first steps is to establish a color palette, which Long does using watercolors.

Using historical references, and in this case, photos of the costumes that were destroyed in the fire, Long made detailed sketches for each character. Swatches of potential fabric choices were obtained, and studied until narrowed down to the ones that would be used to make the costumes.

It’s a bit jarring to see theatrical costumes so close up, as they are designed to be seen at a distance. So close one can see that Queen Elizabeth’s fine gown is not silk and gilt, but polyester and metallic trim. Her strings of pearls are obviously fake. But it is how the costume translates to the audience that counts.

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This costumes are from Little Dancer, a play about artist Edgar Degas, and the girl who inspired his famous sculpture.

Here you see the material that gave further meaning to the costumes. Long’s sketch is surrounded by the material he used to develop each costume.

You can tell that these dresses are representing the 1930s, right? While these are not faithful representations of what women wore in the 1930s, to me it was obvious what period of fashion they represented. These are from On the Twentieth Century.

And here are some of the swatches Long worked with in his design process. I love how he used the plaid, but cut it on the bias.

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These costumes are from an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

This costume was designed for Laverne Cox for her role in the remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I can only imagine how amazing this show was!

Long put thought into the smallest detail, including the accessories for Cox’s role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

In 2015, Fox presented Grease Live! with  Julianne Hough and Aaron Tveit in the starring roles. And while it may be hard to image Grease without Travolta, Hough was a superb Sandy. There were several of Long’s costumes on exhibit, including these from the Hand Jive sequence.

A real strength of this exhibition was the use of video to show the costumes as they were seen in the shows.

And here’s Lynn, standing proudly beside the costume we “draped”. Another strength was the hands-on activities like this one. There was also the opportunity to design a costume using a clever set of drawing templates. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get a photo of our efforts.

How do costumes help develop the character on stage? The Mint gives visitors an opportunity to think about how the costumes relate to the character.

My thanks to The Mint for such a beautifully presented exhibition. You can see William Ivey Long: Costume Designs 2007 – 2016 in Charlotte through June 3, 2018.