Vintage Miscellany – June 4, 2017

In case you think “fat shaming” is a new thing, here’s proof that it’s over 100 years old.

The interesting thing about this photo is the woman on the left.  Yes, I think she looks like a man too, but I’m sure that is due to the low quality of this print.  In any case, she is not wearing stockings, which at the time this photo was taken, the late nineteenth century, was a big no-no, at least in the USA. Such a rebel!

And now for some news. Since I was gone most of the past two weeks, I’m most grateful to reader Nann for supplying me with quite a few very interesting articles.

•  Knitting as spy tool?  It’s a real thing.
•  The Association of Dress Historians has put the first issue of The Journal of Dress History online and it is free to view.
•  When I visited Ash Lawn-Highland, the home of President James Monroe, nine years ago, I was struck by how un-presidential the house was.  As it turns out, I was right.
• Here’s another story about how museums can use social media to help find answers to questions about artifacts.
• I somehow thought that Mister Rogers wore the same sweater over and over. Was I ever wrong!
•  Can the Anne Klein label be revived? 
•  How should cultural appropriation be addressed in fashion exhibitions?
•  The School of Historical Dress is organizing and cataloging the extensive archive of fashion historian Janet Arnold.
•  The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has doubled the reward to $10 million for return of art works stolen in 1990. I think it is a lost cause.
•  Here’s a great new spin on the night at the museum idea. 

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.

Vintage Miscellany – May 8, 2017

April, 1946, Lansing, Michigan. Sailor boyfriend/brother/husband’s cap duly appropriated. Fun ensues.

And now for the news…

•   There were two overwhelming themes in the past two weeks in fashion news.  One was the opening of Rei Kawakubo: Art of the In-Between at the Met.  The best of the dozens of articles: The Atlantic, Freize.com, and for a look at the work behind the exhibition, Vogue.
•  Another common theme was the complexity of the manufacturing system, and how it allows all kinds of problems to be masked.  First, we need to completely lay to rest the idea that production in the USA means that workers are safe. Yes, we do have laws and protections, but this article at Racked shows just how easily these laws are circumvented.
• “How can brand-name clothing companies, highly valued in the market for their ability to control all manner of production challenges, not know where their products are being made?” The problems intensify as the sewing factories are further removed from the brand.
•  And if there are marketing problems with a brand, the parent company merely replaces labels with something less problematic, as in the case of Ivanka Trump clothing being relabeled as Adrienne Vittadini.
• The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has opened an exhibition on Yves Saint Laurent.
•  Tim Gunn talks Disco.
•   Is nostalgia dangerous?
•  This last article has nothing to do with clothing, but as a collector, I found the story of this looter and destroyer of history to be highly disturbing.

Vintage Miscellany – April 23, 2017

The woman in today’s photograph is not identified, but I can tell you the photo was developed in Keokuk, Iowa. It’s the early 1930s, and she is dressed in a slender dress, possibly knit.  Her gauntlets, handbag, and hat are all white, and while we can’t see them, I’d be willing to bet her shoes are as well. The only contrast is the dark bit on her wrist. I can’t tell if it is a handbag strap or a bracelet. She quite matchy, but I think she is quite chic.

And now for the news…

•   Is “fashion” running out of ideas?
•   Love art?  Have lots of money?  Then the Jeff Koons/Louis Vuitton bags might just be for you.
•   A fur coat worn by Mabel Bennett has sold for  £150,000.  Stewardess Bennett was wearing the coat when she escaped from the sinking Titanic.
•  A sewing needle that is at least 50,000 years old has been discovered in a cave in Siberia. thanks to Nann for the link
•   The new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia is now open. This is not your grandpa’s museum, as you can read in this great review.
•   Winterthur has a great sounding new exhibition, Treasures on Trial: The Art and Science of Detecting Fakes.
•   The Harris Tweed Authority has hired a monitoring service to keep an eye out for fakes.
•   The Secret Life of Textiles: Synthetic Materials at the Met, illustrates many of the problems one encounters in trying to preserve a collection of plastic materials.
•   Amazon has been awarded a patent for a manufacturing system designed to quickly produce clothing after a customer orders it.
•   Sensitivity readers are a thing.

Vintage Miscellany – April 9, 2017

I love Mary Fritschi’s shoes, but I love her little dog even more. My guess on the date is 1939 or 1940, but it could be earlier, or later.  My thanks to Lynn at American Age Fashion for the photo.  We have a little transcontinental photo exchange going that really makes me happy.

And now, for the news…

•   Debbie Reynolds sold much of her Hollywood costumes collection, but son Todd Fisher still has quite a bit of his mother’s costumes and is putting them on display.
•   This article about costume exhibitions is really interesting.
•   Operation Clothes Moth should provide needed information about how to protect textiles.
•    This CNN piece is about an Indian immigrant whose clothing manufacturing business is providing jobs in New Jersey, but it also shows how the use of technology is so important in maintaining a competitive edge in the  industry.
• “[Clothes] are not about what men want anymore, but about what women want.” 
•  Floundering in the Archives
•   Not only will a Chinese counterfeiter copy your product, he will also steal your photos.
•   A cache of nineteenth century workers’ clothing was found stuffed into the eaves of a house in Maryland.
•   Does it matter what people wear on planes? This was the clothing story of the hour last week, and it seems like everyone had an opinion.  Are leggings somehow indecent? Did it matter that the tickets were free? Should the young ages of the leggings wearers have been considered?  So many questions; so many opinions.
•   Who was England’s first Black and female footballer?
•  Last week there was a bit of a Twitter brewhaha over an article posted on Racked. The article was based heavily on information taken from Alison Matthews David’s research that she wrote about in her book, Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present. The issue taken with the article was that even though there were links to David’s research, nowhere in the article was she cited.  Racked did eventually cite David in the article, but not until after there was an unfortunately defensive back and forth between the writer of the offending article and David’s defenders.

This is not exactly a rare occurrence.  Not too long ago Vogue.com pulled a quote from an interview on my blog without citation. This is why I really do not like to link to big “fashion” sites. The articles on fashion history are rarely written by historians, and seem to be mined from the work of others.  To make the mess even worse, the leading image in the article is of a circa 1870 dress, and the caption has it labeled as 1778.  Quite a few people have pointed out the error in the comments and on Twitter, but the editor obviously trusts Getty Images more than the historians trying to set the record straight.

Vintage miscellany – March 26, 2017

Meet my new favorite couple, Hortense Ledogan and Frank McDonough, with photo-bomber Eleanor Ledogan in the foreground.  The year is 1940, the place is unknown.  But, a google search for Hortense McDonough seems to imply the couple was later married, and she is still alive and is 102 years old.

The photo gives an excellent look at how young women dressed for their casual outings.  Hortense is wearing cotton overalls with a print shirt.  This was to become almost a uniform for women who did outdoors and factory work during the impending war.

And now for some news…

• “The purpose of an archive is not just preservation but inspiration, a reminder that, while fashion moves ever forward, each house has a lineage.”  Here’s a look into several Italian fashion archives at The New Yorker.
• What does one do when your work uniform is making you sick?  American Airlines has thousands of employees that seem to be allergic to their newest uniforms.
• This link is to an article on fakes – not clothing fakes, but fakes in museums – and how curators can miss the obvious.  Are there clothing fakes in museums?  I’m betting there are many.
• And what makes for a good – or a rotten – museum experience? Mary Beard lets the Vatican Museum in on what it needs to do to improve.
• The Brooklyn Museum has a new exhibition on Georgia O’Keefe, but it’s not what you might expect.  This is about O’Keefe’s style, and by all accounts, it’s a fantastic show.
• So often when a long established clothing firm closes the records are simply discarded, so it is wonderful that the Bodleian acquired the ledgers of Oxford shoemakers, Ducker & Son, established in 1898.
• Just like me, you want to see another short video on the production of Harris Tweed.
• The REDress Project by Jamie Black symbolizes the missing Indigenous women of Canada. One hundred empty red dresses hang in trees, flutter in the wind.
• Bartlettyarns, in Harmony, Maine, has been making wool yarn for 196 years, and is still going strong.

Vintage Miscellany – March 12, 2017

Yes, it did snow here in the mountains last night.  After weeks of very warm and springlike weather, winter, it seems, has returned.

All I know for sure about today’s vintage photo is that it was developed in 1956.  It must have been a bit of a warm day, with the man’s sleeves rolled, and the woman’s having unzipped hers.  I think my favorite thing about this photo is the man seen between the pair, waiting his turn to slide while the camera hogs pose.

And now for some news…

•   We all know that the Garment District in New York City has been shrinking over the past few decades.  Now it looks as if it going to get even smaller.  The thinking is that garment product will be better placed in a new complex in Brooklyn.
•  The President addressed Congress, and the Democratic women wore white as a symbol of women’s rights, as white was a color of the women’s suffrage movement.  “Fashion expert”, Rep. Cramer of North Dakota laid it all on Mrs. Clinton: “There is no question, there is a disease associated with the notion that a bunch of women would wear bad-looking white pantsuits in solidarity with Hillary Clinton to celebrate her loss.”
• Margaret Hubl’s family honored her legacy as a quilter by draping them on the pews at her funeral.
• The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has resigned under pressure from the museum’s board of directors.  It has a lot to do with money, of course.
•  By contrast, I thought this article about the “de-growth” of museums was interesting, and very appropriate.
•  I know I’ve been talking a lot about Patagonia lately.  Take a listen to this great podcast about North Face and Patagonia.
•  Moving the production of Harris Tweed into the 21st century has been a challenge.
•  How did it all change in 1967?
• Canadian-Made Apparel continues to make shirts in  – you guessed it – Canada.
• The production line of a Chinese-owned factory in Myanmar, which makes clothing for Swedish-owned H & M, was destroyed in a violent workers’ dispute.
•  Swimsuit maker Anne Cole (Cole of California) died in January at age 90.
•  Here’s an interesting conversation with Converse sneakers archivist, Sam Smallidge.
• This has absolutely nothing to do with fashion, but I loved it and so will you.