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To contribute to this collective history project, send pictures and stories about the older women in your life to americanagefashion@gmail.com. The more information you can include (date, place, etc.), the better.-
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- Juliana @ Urban Simplicity on The Cheerful Granny Takes Flight, 1953
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- At Hood Rubber Company, Circa 1905 | The Vintage Traveler on Grandmother King, Hood Rubber, Watertown Massachusetts
- Lizzie Bramlett on Harford Frocks, 1947
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Tag Archives: California
Who Said Halloween is Only for Kids?
Here is proof that the Halloween has been a multi-generational event for quite some time. This posed photo was published under the title above in 1961. It documents planning for a party by the “Fun after Forty Club” in Burbank, … Continue reading
What to Wear on a California Vacation, 1914
Although this group had hiked up a small hill for the photograph, the chauffer-looking fellow in the background makes me think that they were probably traveling by car. Some had dressed for exercise more than others. The youngest woman, second … Continue reading
On the Ferry, 1943
On a recent visit to relatives in the San Francisco Bay area, I went to the Oakland Museum’s exhibit, Dorothea Lange–The Politics of Seeing. The museum is the depository of Lange’s archive, so it was a chance to see some … Continue reading
Older Women in Pants—Photos from the Teens and Twenties
My favorite topic of all time is tracing the history of older American women in pants. It was only in the 1970s that older women adopted pants in great numbers, but that does not mean that some didn’t try the … Continue reading
Gertrude Atherton’s Fountain of Youth
What lengths would you go to in order to stay young? In 1922, the then famous California novelist Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) underwent an experimental x-ray treatment to her ovaries that was believed to stimulate estrogen production. She pronounced the process … Continue reading
Migrant Grandmother, 1938
Dorothea Lange’s most famous photo is of the migrant mother, a young Oklahoma woman and her children in a farm laborer camp in California. The migrant mother has become the iconic expression of hardship during the Great Depression. But it … Continue reading
Documenting the Department Store, 1961
What a wonderful contrast between the shopper and the worker in this 1961 photo by Ruth-Marion Baruch. I discovered it in the alumni magazine of my undergraduate alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. The university was gifted the archive of Baruch … Continue reading
Visiting the Texollini Factory
One of the members of my American Sewing Guild group organized a field trip to a local textile mill specializing in knits called Texollini. According to our guide, Merchandizing Director Sherry Wood, the plant is one of the few vertically … Continue reading
An Evening in India
Charity balls have always confused me. If everyone donated the time and money that it takes to plan and participate, wouldn’t that benefit the charity more? But then we wouldn’t have photographs like the one above. This staged shot was … Continue reading
On the Street in Chinatown, ca. 1900
When did women in the United States start wearing pants on the street? It depends on where you look. This picture from San Francisco’s Chinatown shows that pants were common attire for women of Chinese descent at the turn of … Continue reading