Vintage Miscellany – March 29, 2021

The only caption for this late 1940s photo is “The Coveted Basketball suit”. I almost bought a coveted basketball suit recently, but I passed because I felt the price was too high, and because I couldn’t learn anything about the team it represented. The seller listed it as a woman’s baseball suit, and the members of some professional women’s teams did wear similar satin suits. So I couldn’t determine whether the suit was worn for basketball or baseball, or even softball. Now that the suit has sold I’m sitting here asking myself if it really mattered.

There will be other coveted suits.

And now for some news…

• Alex Trebek’s  fourteen suits, fifty-eight dress shirts, and three hundred neckties were donated by his family to a charity that helps formerly incarcerated men.
• Alfie Date, 109, knits sweaters for at-risk penguins.
• John Kennedy’s Harvard cardigan recently sold for $85,000.
• Martha Washington was more than the grandmother we always picture her as.
• And, learning from Martha’s purple dress.
• Historic Deerfield will present a virtual forum, “Invisible Makers: Textiles, Dress, and Marginalized People in 18th- and 19th-Century America,” on Saturday, April 10.
• Sealaska Heritage Institute and Neiman Marcus have settled a lawsuit over a coat the company sold, bears a striking resemblance to a copyrighted, Alaska Native Ravenstail pattern.
• Beatrice Behlen shows what we can learn from photographs of Suffragettes.
• Jessica McClintock, maker of Gunne Sax, has died at age 90.
• Elsa Peretti, designer of jewelry for Tiffany, has died at 81.