Vintage Miscellany – February 18, 2018

Is winter ever going to end? Is it just me, or has this been a particularly depressing season? Maybe what I need is a good old-fashioned weenie roast. Thanks to Lynn at American Age Fashion for the photo.

And now I’ll try not to add to the depression with the news…

• • • • •   Finland’s Olympic Team is making news by knitting.
        •    At Ralph Lauren “Below the surface, the beautiful things are just not quite right.”
        •    Love them or hate them, the Obama official portraits are interesting. People have been reading all sorts of things into Michelle’s dress. 
        •    There will be a Gunne Sax Vintage Party March 3 in Berkeley, CA.
        •    “The American Folk Art Museum is digitizing the New York Quilt Project, an archive of over 6,000 quilts and their histories.”
        •    T-Shirt: Cult, Culture, Subversion is at Fashion and Textile Museum, London through May 6.
        •    The world is a dangerous place, even the walls of a Victorian house. Thanks to Nann for the link
        •     OK, I’ll Do It Myself: Narratives of Intrepid Women in the American Wilderness, Selections from the Caroline F. Schimmel Collection sounds like a fun exhibition. It’s currently at Southern Methodist University until March 29, 2018, and then will travel to the University of Pennsylvania in the fall. Thanks to Juliet for the link
        •    “Apparel has simply lost its appeal. And there doesn’t seem to be a savior in sight.”

      The last link comes with a bit of commentary. I’ve stated before that I have mixed feelings about the reporting fashion history gets in non-history websites.  On one hand I love that fashion history seems to be having a moment in the sun, but on the other I find it really hard to trust the telling of a fashion history story by a reporter who is not familiar with the subject. A new concern came up last week on twitter – that of non-history writers taking the information found in fashion history discussions and rewriting it for their more general audience.  Of course, this practice happens in all sorts of disciplines, not just history, but history is what I pay attention to and what I care about.

    • The article that started my thinking on this subject appeared on The Atlantic site. Being about pyjamas and WWI, it was just the sort of thing I’m always looking for, but the problem was that I’d already read this information. It wasn’t on The Atlantic site, but in a Twitter thread authored by fashion historian Lucie Whitmore. To be fair, the author of the article gave all the credit for the research to Ms. Whitmore, but it turns out, Whitmore had been contacted by the author and declined to participate in the article. So the author wrote it anyway.  Legally, there’s nothing wrong (that I know of anyway) but it made me sad that Whitmore lost control of her research because she shared it freely in a Twitter workshop.