Sheila Hicks–A Life in Textiles

Posted on October 14, 2026 by Lynn
Photo by Christobal Zanartu

Sheila Hicks is a major global artist, one of the women who moved textiles from the world of craft to the world of art.  Born in Nebraska in 1934, she started art school as a painter but became fascinated with weaving on a trip to Peru. In the course of her life, she has collaborated with weavers in India, Japan, Sweden, and other areas known for their distinctive weaving techniques. Her art is held by major museums and adorns public spaces, such as the famous textile wall at the Ford Foundation in New York City.   

Pictures of Hicks show her wearing interesting, hand-loomed textiles.  She has even made her own outfits from cloth she wove herself.  Her work has included textile designs for Knoll Fabrics, and recently she created textile accessories for a clothing collection by Stella McCartney.

Photo by Antoine Doyen

Time magazine just named Sheila Hicks one of the most important artists of 2026, calling her a “textile pioneer.”  She’s had that role since the 1960s.  You wonder what took them so long. 

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Family Get Together, 1910s

Posted on October 7, 2026 by Lynn
Found photo

No one looks particularly happy in this photo.  I’ve made up a story in which the wealthy maiden aunt on the left, who organized the outing, has just told her relatives that she is leaving her fortune to a women’s college rather than to them.  That cuts everyone else out of their dreams of riches.  It was a big disappointment to the rakish uncle with a cigar on the right.

What fascinates me here is the difference between the two older women’s figures.  The oldest woman in the lightest dress has a typical figure for an aging matron.  Her menopot has extended upward and outward so that she doesn’t really have a waist left.  The dress is drawn up close under her breasts.  There is extra fabric around her chest because the bodice was meant to go down further.   Her formidable looking companion to the left still has a waist, but I suspect a rigid corset is responsible for the shape.  Everything looks tightly bound. We don’t need to wonder which one is more comfortable.

Do you think the young woman on the right is trying to show off her skirt or distance herself from the family?  Her hat and black gloves make her look a bit like a chauffeur.

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Sewing Contest Winner, 1959

Posted on September 30, 2026 by Lynn
Life magazine, July 27, 1959, p. 10

Mrs. Fred Dalone Jr. was the grand prize winner of a sewing contest for members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1959.  The challenge was to create an outfit suitable for a women’s club meeting.  The only requirement was to use a Vogue pattern, generally considered the most sophisticated of American pattern companies.  Her outfit was chosen from a pool of over 200,000 entries.

I think her creation is quite dull compared to others featured in the magazine.  Perhaps it was exquisitely made.  Or perhaps a beige ensemble was considered more appropriate for women’s club meeting than a turquoise suit.

The article raised a lot of questions for me.  All the women are identified by their husband’s first and last name, their own names never mentioned.  When did this practice die out?  They all wear hats and gloves, apparently part of the women’s club dress code.  The small print indicates that some of the hats were also handmade.  Most fit closely to the head, some even described as “pill boxes.”  I thought Jackie Kennedy had made that style popular, but this contest was finished well before Kennedy became president.  The silhouettes are strikingly similar, with slim skirts on the bottom.  None of these winners made a full-skirted fit and flare dress, a fifties standard.  Was such a shape considered too frivolous for meetings?

Note the entry from California, bottom right.  Am I biased in favor of my home state, or do you also think that it’s the most interesting?

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Marie Dressler Dresses

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Lynn
Virginia Pilot, May 19, 1935

Canadian born actor Marie Dressler (ca. 1868-1934), was a big star in the 1920s and 1930s. She got her start in vaudeville, moving to the stage and finally to film.  There she played both comic and serious roles as the older woman. 

Time magazine, August 7, 1933

Her big busted, large body didn’t stand in the way of her popularity.  She was so revered that she even appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1933.

Dresses bearing the Marie Dressler name were already produced in the 1920s.  After her death, the Gottlieb dress company of Ohio took advantage of her renown to create a widely distributed dress line named after her.  By choosing the larger, older actor as their muse, the company found a way to popularize clothing for the no longer young and slim. Similar to the Molly Goldberg line, the dresses were sold at department stores. Women could also find them in Sears catalogs.  As is true in all plus size advertising, the models selling the clothing were much slimmer than the target audience.

Sears catalog,, 1940

Today we are used to seeing celebrity names on just about everything.  But can you think of an older woman of size who might be on the cover of Time? And can you imagine a clothing line selling under her name?

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Visions of Eldercare, 1932

Posted on September 18, 2026 by Lynn
All images from the film “If I Had a Million,” 1932

Super sleuth Davrie Caro sent me a link to the 1932 film “If I Had a Million,” a collective work by different writers and directors. It tells the story of a very rich man, apparently on death’s door, who realizes that he doesn’t want to give away his money to his family or his employees.  Instead, he picks random people out of the phone book and gives them each a million dollars (worth about twenty-four million today.)  A series of vignettes shows what each recipient does, and not all have happy endings.  However, the final story illustrates what money and imagination can do to improve the lives of old people. 

Mary Walker, the final recipient of the windfall, lives in a glum “rest place for elderly women.”  Above on the right you see the strict director chiding women for playing cards against the rules.  It is a bleak place.  The furniture is institutional, pets are not allowed, the women must wear uniforms, and the food is bad.

Mary had tried to rebel with little success until she gets the big check, delivered by the rich old man himself.  She uses the money to change everything about the facility, beginning with the name.  It’s now a club, not a rest place. 

The women can now wear their own clothes and play cards.  They bring in furniture and flowers.  They take over the kitchen.  They hold dance parties with men. Instead of firing the old workers, they let them stay only if they agree to sit in rocking chairs doing nothing all day long.

The revamp is so successful that it even transforms the rich old man. Brought back to health, at the end of film he is heading off to one of the club’s dance evenings. 

Take a look—it might raise your spirits.

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Sarasota Trailer Park, 1941

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Lynn
Library of Congress

This photo by the important Depression Era photographer Marion Wolcott is one of a large series that documents life at a trailer park in Sarasota Florida in 1941.  As the pictures show, these camps became much more than winter havens for snowbirds.  During the Depression, trailer parks were a refuge for families who had lost their houses due to financial troubles.  As is true today, older people retired there, drawn to the warmer weather.

Wolcott was employed by the Office of War Information (earlier the Farm Security Administration) to document everyday life in the US.  As always in these photos, I wonder whether or not they were posed.  Most likely the simple dresses were part of the women’s daily wardrobes, but did they really wear shoes with heels all day long? And on the grass?

Two of them meet all the stereotypes for older women of that era, with their hair in tight buns and granny glasses.  The one facing us shows, once again, the popularity of polka dots.

Library of Congress

Another shot reveals the details of her lace collar.  From a distance, the lace flowers give the appearance of stripes, an interesting contrast to the polka dots.  Maybe this was a fancy occasion dress after all.

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Experiments in Hat Design, 1940

Posted on September 2, 2026 by Lynn
Bella Hess Catalog, 1940

Is it really part of fashion history if no one ever wore it?  I have seen a lot of pictures from the 1940s, but nowhere have I seen a pie plate turban.  Nonetheless, it is my sense that clothing catalogs generally followed current trends rather than trying to invent something new. I wonder who came with the idea this strange combo of turban and hat that “perches over one eye in the most becoming way!”  And the bow in the middle, as if the pie plate weren’t enough on its own.

I’ll keep my eye out for a photo and hope you will do the same.

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Three Generations in Florida, 1952

Posted on August 28, 2026 by Lynn
From the collection of James Zurek

Such vibrant colors in this photo, and such a clear delineation between generations.  The daughter looks quite stylish in her plaid shirtdress.  I love the creative use of the plaids—some skillful pattern matching went into the stitching of the dress.  I was reminded of some of the outfits of Claire McCardell, who also loved to manipulate plaids.

The mother/grandmother wears shirtdress in a much more expected, old lady style.  The lavender color had been recommended to the older set for decades and the faint flower pattern fades into the background.  It does have pockets, though, something missing from a lot of modern women’s clothing.

The happy red headed child is in a Taylor Tot stroller—quite valuable if you happen to have one in good condition in your garage.  It looks like it’s made entirely of wood and metal.  The age of all plastic had not yet arrived.

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Helena Modjeska of Poland and California

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Lynn
Santa Ana Public Library via Calisphere

One of America’s leading Shakespearean actresses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was born in Poland and spoke English with a pronounced Polish accent.  Helena Modjeska (1840-1909) was famous on Polish stages when she immigrated to California with her husband in 1876. After a false start as would-be farmers in Anaheim, they bought a ranch in nearby Santiago Canyon. Since the ranch made no money either, Modjeska took to the American stage to support her family.  Eventually she founded her own traveling troupe, introducing cities and towns in the United States to an elevated repertoire of Shakespeare, other classics, and contemporary plays. The Los Angeles Herald called her “the queen of Shakespearean tragedy” in 1905.

Fashion is an important subject in a recent biography, Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and America. “Like other stars of her era,” writes the author Beth Holmgren, “she chose costumes to suit her role, flatter her figure, and show off the latest fashion” (156). Once Modjeska took total control of her acting company, she changed her approach to stage costumes.  She did detailed historical research and designed all the costumes herself.  To engage her fashion obsessed audiences, she always included one contemporary element in her designs. “The Renaissance garb she designed for her 1895 Viola sported the puffy leg o’ mutton sleeves popular in the 1890s.”(192)

In 1905, at the age of sixty-five, Modjeska began to slow down.  She launched a national “farewell tour” starting at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Printed interviews always included a description of her clothes. As one enthusiastic New York reporter noted, “She wore a wonderful creation of a tea gown in which changeable pink and gray taffeta was combined with pale blue velvet, butter colored lace and storks in Oriental embroidery.” Too bad I couldn’t find a picture of that creation.

When she died in 1909, Modjeska’s body made its way across the United States and met with respectful grieving crowds. By this time she was so famous that she had inspired china patterns, perfumes, and specialty candies.  There are still many traces of Modjeska’s vibrant life here in Southern California, including Modjeska Canyon, where her house “Arden” is now a museum. 

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Betye Saar’s Jeweled Eye, 2019

Posted on August 13, 2026 by Lynn
Betye Saar and Neil Lane at LACMA, November 2, 2019. All images from Lets Get it On

Celebrated Los Angeles artist Betye Saar died recently just before her 100th birthday.  In addition to her work as an assemblage artist, she also had a long career as a costume designer and maker of original clothes.  This aspect of her life in art is documented in the new book Let’s Get it on: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar.  To my disappointment, there wasn’t much about the clothes she made for herself and it was short on pictures of her as an older woman. 

However, one short article was worth a blog post.  She and her friend, the jewelry designer Neil Lane, decided to make a signature jewelry piece for her to wear at the opening of her 2019 show at LACMA.  To adorn the turban she planned to wear, they collaborated on a piece that would evoke the Eye of Horus. 

This symbol, which for Saar signified protection, restoration, and insight, appeared in many of her assemblages.  Together Saar and Neil planned every element of the jeweled eye, including the size and color of the stones.  Did she wear it again before she died?

This story made me think once again of signature jewelry pieces. What should mine be? A charm bracelet with a sewing machine and a computer? A pin made of fabric covered with writing? And what about yours?

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