Vintage Miscellany – Jun 19, 2011

I rarely see photos of women in slacks before the mid 1930s.  From her borrowed-from-brother sweater to her oxford shoes, she’s every inch the tomboy.  It’s interesting how she would not look a bit out of place in today’s world, but dressed in a dress from the same time, she’d look costumy.

There is a genre of photo collecting where the subject is women dressed as men solely for the purpose of having the photo taken.  Some of these can be quite funny.

And on to the news…

*  You do not live under a rock so you know about the Debbie Reynolds auction, right?  Here’s an article of the highlights, and here are the prices realized.

*  The Department of special collections at FIT has been posting many of their design sketches on flickr, and now they have a set on facebook where they are matching garments to sketches.   It’s a work in progress and they welcome any additional garment photos that match up.

*   A look inside a late Victorian shoe shop.  (via 2nerdyhistgirls)

*   At last week’s Costume Society of America Symposium, the 2011 Richard Martin Exhibition Award was given jointly to Fit’s Eco Fashion: Going Green, and the Met’s American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity.   Sarah at Exhibiting Fashion voices her disappointment about the latter, and though I did not see the show, I heard a lot of negative things about it from my friends who did.

*   The hats of the recent royal wedding inspired this great blog post from Melody of Tangerine Boutique Vintage about fantastical historical hats.

*  For those of you in the UK,  Kerry Taylor’s next sale is this week.    I’ll take that 1960 Givenchy dress, lot 28, and throw in the Balenciaga, lot 25, please.

*  Speaking of Balenciaga, the  Cristóbal Balenciaga Museoa has opened in Spain, in the small coastal village of Getaria.

*  Sadly Fiberarts magazine has published their last issue.

*  And just for the beauty of it, women and their dogs. (via history_art on twitter)