Vintage Miscellany – May 21, 2017

Here’s a little something for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. It looks like these little flag-wavers are off to a patriotic parade or party, but they don’t look too happy about it, do they? I’m guessing they are too hot with the stockings, and on the older girl, long sleeves. Still, how could one not be happy with a fantastic hat like that?

And now for some news…

•   Will innovation carry the future? Well, of course it will. All nationalistic desires aside, it’s time to face the future without the rose-colored glasses.
•   For one thing, life was not always great in the past.  We need to study all material culture, not just the cheery ads showing the prosperous middle class White family enjoying the pleasures of the postwar boom.
•   And yes, we are appalled at the working conditions and low pay in Asian factories, but we tend to forget that these conditions were once common in American factories.
• As companies refuse to do the right thing to increase pay, we as consumers are spoiled rotten by the low cost of imported clothing and textile products.
• Yes, clothing production can return to the USA, but do we really want people working in factories like the ones in which my aunts labored in the 1940s through the 1970s, getting paid minimum wage and risking brown lung disease and other dangers? The answer on so many levels is that we are going to have to buy less, but pay more for what we buy. 
• Lecture over.
• On the lighter side, maybe what the guys of the world need is a good $95 romper.
• Or the women can spring for a jumpsuit repurposed from cast-off Ivanka duds.
•  Can every woman or man expect respectful treatment in a designer emporium? What about a celebrity?
•  The Atkinson Galleries in Southport, UK, have a great-sounding exhibition going through August 28, 2017, Golf and Glamour: Fashion on the Fairway from the Nineteenth Century to Today. Thanks Christina for the link.