Vintage Miscellany – September 25, 2020

This photo of three women reminds me of my own good friends. After thirty-five years of friendship, we still have one another’s back. We still travel together and the bravest of us still wears a two-piece swimsuit. She looks just as fabulous as the unidentified style star in this 1940s photo.

It’s been a rough month, both personally and nationally. I’m still trying to mend my broken toes. They will get better. I hope our country is as lucky.

And now the news:

•   We lost an American hero last week. Ruth Bader Ginsburg made many important decisions in her life, and still shared the insight that clothing matters.
•  The Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.- is in danger of being eliminated. There’s a petition. 
•    The Brooklyn Museum has plans to sell twelve works in order to fund up-keep of the museum.  This is being allowed due to loosened regulations because of budget shortfalls caused by the pandemic.
•    Eleanor Cohen Jacobs, who was responsible for bringing the Earth Shoe to the USA, has died.
•    The inventor of Gore-Tex fabric, Robert Gore, has died.
•    ” Fashion’s never-ending hamster wheel getting a good, hard look.” Los Angeles Times
•    What do Kamala Harris’s Converse sneakers say about her? What do her Timberland boots say?
•    “How the humble blouse got women out to work and revolutionised a city’s manufacturing industry in the process.”
•    Melania’s “I Don’t Care” jacket? She wore it because she needed some attention.
•    Talking about the historic city of Charleston, SC, “Not everything is pretty here.”
•    Museums are slowly reopening. Visit the Royal Ontario Museum before February 15 to see Florals: Design and Desire, and take in The Cloth that Changed the World: India’s Painted and Printed Cottons while you are there.
•    Ghana’s textile designers tell stories in their cloth.