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Search Results for: half sizes
The End of Half Sizes
The special category of half sizes, designed for shorter women with a “mature figure,” had about a seventy year history in American retail. Although I’ve seen references in earlier years, it became an established concept in 1910s. By the 1920s, … Continue reading
Vogue Patterns and Half Sizes
Vogue Patterns came late to the half size dress business. I’ve found offerings from McCall’s, Simplicity, and Butterick from the early fifties, but Vogue only decided to take this step at the beginning of 1960. Moreover, it was a very … Continue reading
Me and Molly–A Play about Half Sizes
Gertrude Berg (1899-1966) made a career out of bringing the Jewish-American experience to the nation. In 1929, she wrote, produced and performed in the radio drama The Rise of the Goldbergs, later renamed simply The Goldbergs. It stayed on the … Continue reading
Half Sizes Part 5: The Record in Montgomery Ward Catalogs
I’ve long been fascinated by the category of “half-sizes,” a term now associated with clothing for shorter and wider women. But until the US government issued standardized sizing guidelines in the 1950s, the term “half size” could mean just about … Continue reading
Half Sizes, Part 4: What Not to Wear
Evelyn Veronica Mason had a low opinion of ready to wear clothing for shorter, wider women. In her Master’s thesis “A Study of the Clothing Needs of Women who Wear Half-Size Dresses,” (University of Rhode Island, 1964), she chided clothing … Continue reading
Half Sizes, Part 3–The Martha Manning Brand
Although I don’t yet know when or how half sizes were invented, by the 1940s there were a number of clothing lines devoted to the older, shorter, wider woman. One of the best known was Martha Manning, a clothing company … Continue reading
Hunting for Half Sizes, Part One
When I started writing this blog I didn’t know anything about half sizes, a special size range for women who were a little shorter than average with a wider and shorter waist. But while tracking down Mrs. Exeter in Vogue, … Continue reading
Lissmode Half-Size Dresses, 1931
In my search for the origins of half sizes, I happened upon a pamphlet called “How to Sell and Service the Half-Size Customer.” Published in 1931, it was put out by the Jack Liss Dress Corporation. Part a basic guide … Continue reading
The Half Size Brand Leslie Pomer
Regular blog readers know my fascination with half sizes, a category designed specifically for shorter and wider women. Although half size clothing existed before World War Two (and part of my quest is to discover the origins), business boomed after … Continue reading
On the Road with Gloria Swanson for Forever Young
In the 1951 contract that Gloria Swanson signed with Puritan Dress was a clause promising that she would make a month long promotional trip every year to promote her line of Forever Young dresses. Her archive is filled with documents … Continue reading