On the Sunporch, 1959

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Lynn
Midcentury in Color

Sunporches—a glassed in or screened in patio—are something I associate with the South.  When I lived briefly in Florida as a child, the family TV was on the sunporch.  My in-laws in North Carolina had one that wrapped halfway around the house.  This one is fitted up like a comfortable room, with rattan furniture and a wall-to-wall carpet.

These two women look like they are dressed up for a special occasion. Maybe there was a party going on.  The one on the left wears a necklace and earrings.  Her dress is low cut enough that it might have been set aside for evenings out.  The woman on the right also wears a fancy dress, decorated with clips on the bodice.  The only one in an everyday outfit is the collie.

By 1959, dress styles were changing.  Waistless designs like the chemise and the trapeze shape were coming out of Paris, marking a shift to the boxier looks of the sixties.  These two women, however, stuck to the fit and flare silhouette of the fifties, although the dress on the right seems to have a lot less flare.  I wonder what they would be wearing a decade later.   

Posted in 1950s | 2 Comments

Sonia Delaunay, My Textile Muse

Posted on June 3, 2026 by Lynn
Victoria and Albert Museum

I’ve written about Sonia Delaunay before, a Ukrainian born French artist who made magic from color and geometric forms.  Although she had many artistic talents, the one I admire most was her skill at fabric design.

Victoria and Albert Museum

I am a serious seamstress, making most of my own clothes.  However, it is only recently that I have thought of designing fabric as well.  It is very easy to do these days, with sites like Spoonflower offering sophisticated tools.  Instead of the perfection of computer created designs, I’m drawn to the handmade look of Delaunay’s creations. 

Here’s an early effort. It’s harder than it looks and I can’t claim any native artistic ability. 

Vogue Adria

But perhaps one day you will see me in a Delaunay inspired Mally creation—although certainly not a dress!  I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in 1920s, 2020s | Tagged | 2 Comments

Vera’s Scarves

Posted on May 29, 2026 by Lynn

My husband and I are watching the long-running (14 seasons!) show Vera on BritBox. If you haven’t seen it, the star is a curmudgeonly older detective, no longer svelt, with a brusque style and an unusual wardrobe.  Out in the field she wears a mackintosh with a green hat.  (You can buy a copy here.) 

But it is her indoor outfits that interest me.  The clothes have no particular style and she makes no effort to “show off her best features,” standard advice given to the older set.  Instead, she wears frumpy looking dresses or skirts and long-sleeved blouses, almost always with an LL Bean style quilted vest over them. Occasionally she appears in baggy pants. With skirts and dresses she wears tights or knee socks.  She always has on flat slip on shoes, all the easier to change to boots when the outside weather is rough.

Her clothes are completely practical, and you have the sense that she wears whatever is clean, maybe reaching into her closet when it is still dark.  However, one element fascinates me—her long scarves that she has on indoors and out.  Why the scarves indoors?  Some older women wear scarves to cover their wrinkled necks, but Vera doesn’t always do this.  (I couldn’t find a picture on line to document this, so you will have to believe me.)  The scarves rarely compliment the rest of her outfit. 

I have decided that the scarves are Vera’s one source of beauty in her dress.  She knows that she will need them outdoors to protect against the wind, so she doesn’t bother taking them off inside. Although some look ordinary, I imagine they are the softest cashmere.  And the one she wears above is extraordinary. Don’t we all need beauty in our lives?

Posted in 2010s, 2020s | Tagged , | 5 Comments

The Fashion Lag in the 1920s

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Lynn
Found photo

When I first looked at this photo, I focused on the older woman on the right—I’m assuming the mother of at least some of these young people.  Her dress, a waistless smock shape, is surely from the 1910s, maybe even with some of the arty decoration from that era.  The dresses of the younger women are quite a bit shorter and feature the dropped waist of the 1920s.  Given their length, I would guess they come from the middle of the decade.  And is the young woman front left wearing a divided skirt? 

The contrast between the daughter and mother on the right is a clear example of the fashion lag.  While the daughter has most likely kept up with current fashion, the mother didn’t bother.  Why should she?  Her dress looks supremely comfortable.

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At the Overlook, late 1930s

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Lynn
Found photo

Since we can’t really see the background in this photo, it could have been taken just about anywhere.  Maybe it was snapped on some Sunday afternoon drive after church where these two women stopped to enjoy the view.

Two factors make me guess that the photo comes from the late 1930s. The puffed sleeves and pintucks, evident in the lighter dress, were common features in the late thirties.  Even the sleeves on the dark dress have a little puff.

More telling is the difference in the skirt lengths.  Skirts were rising throughout the 1930s.  The woman on the left wears a dress to the mid-calf, more common in the middle of the decade.  However, the dress on the right comes to just below the knee, a look from the end of the decade or even the start of the 1940s.

The tilted hats are very much in style. But what decorates the hat on the right? Doesn’t it look like a bundle of twigs?

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Jessie Franklin Turner, an American Original

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Lynn
Fortune magazine, December 1930

In her book American Beauty, author Patricia Mears calls Jessie Franklin Turner (1888-1956) “arguably the first important American couturier of the twentieth century.” Her dresses usually had simple shapes but original fabrics that were inspired by non-Western styles and textiles.  She frequented museums for her inspiration and had textiles copied for her original designs.  As the caption for this 1933 photo states, “Miss Turner proceeds directly to new and exquisite material for an inspiration.”

Although she ran a very successful shop on Park Avenue, Jessie Franklin Turner was shy about putting herself in the public eye—and this Fortune photo is one of the few I found online (and according to the caption, the first ever published). I love the contrast between the models in their fancy dresses and the designer all in black, including a black hat. She looks to be from another time and place entirely.

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The Hat in the Time Capsule

Posted on April 29, 2026 by Lynn
Wikipedia Commons

As a sign of how important hats were to women in the 1930s, the creators of the time capsule at the 1939 New York World’s Fair included a hat by celebrity milliner Lilly Dachẻ.  The above picture shows her placing the hat, packed in cotton, in the cylinder.  It was one of thousands of items, including a Mickey Mouse cup, a copy of Gone with the Wind, and Spalding’s Rules of Baseball, all meant to give humans of the future an idea of American life in the late 1930s.  See a list here.

Vogue magazine via Getty Images

What did the hat look like?  As far as I can tell, there is no extant picture online.  I think the Wikipedia image shows a shovel-like tool rather than a hat.  One millinery site says it was turban made of deep green and purple silk jersey.  Another Dachẻ fan posted a striking photo, but gave no indication that it was the actual hat.  Perhaps the 1936 picture above of a Dache turban gives some idea.

Unless you are a better sleuth than I am, we will have to wait until the year 6939 to see the hat itself.

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House Dress or Street Dress, 1950s

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Lynn
Found photo

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the “house dress” was a literal description.  It was a garment meant to be worn inside the home.  Usually made of cotton, it had an uncomplicated design with few frills and was intended to be easy to wash. (Sometimes they were even called “wash dresses.”)  Although the category has now disappeared, in the fifties when this photo was taken it was still a common descriptor for a kind of woman’s dress. 

As clothing in general became simpler in design, it was harder to distinguish dresses made for inside and those fit for public viewing.  Looking at this threesome here, perhaps three generations in the same family, it is possible that the oldest woman on the left bought her dress as a house dress, something usually sold in the bargain basement of department stores.  It has a very simple design and plain fabric.  The other two dresses have more detail.  The one in the middle has a contrasting belt and the one on the right even includes a matching bolero jacket. 

I’m guessing that the younger women had come to visit and dressed up for the occasion.  No one would catch them at a special event wearing a house dress.

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Signing the Equal Pay Act, 1963

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Lynn

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

Signed into law by President John F. Kennedy on June 10, 1963, the Equal Pay Act legislated that women receive equal pay to men for equal work. Too bad it couldn’t happen with the stroke of a pen. Sixty years later we still aren’t there yet, but there has been progress. In 1963, women’s pay was 60% of men’s; today it is estimated to be around 83%.

But politics aside, it was the fashion that caught my eye in this photo.  In the early sixties, styles were changing from the shirtwaists and slim suits of the fifties to the boxier sixties shape.  You can see that transition at work here. I’m primarily interested in the four older women on the left.  Certainly the one with the most “fifties” look is Dorothy Height (born 1912), far left, president of the National Council of Negro Women.  She wears a dressy flowered shirtwaist, a flowered hat, pearls, and gloves. Next to her, barely visible, is Mary Anderson (born 1872), former Director of the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor. Her flowered hat, gloves, and matching handbag also could have fit into an earlier decade.

Third from the left is Representative Elizabeth Kee of West Virginia (born 1895), wearing what might be a transitional style.  It is hard to see the shape of her dark suit, but the jacket might follow the curve of her waist, a more fifties silhouette. But Representative Edith Green of Oregon (born 1910), in the light colored suit, leaves the earlier decade behind. She is hatless and her jacket has the straight lines and big buttons of the early sixties.

As we move from left to right, you can really see fashion shifting—more geometric prints, fewer hats, boxier cuts. But look at all the gloves! Apparently, they were still de rigueur for a special event at the White House.

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Hemlines in the 1920s

Posted on April 8, 2026 by Lynn
Found photo

It is easy to think of fashion in the 1920s as defined by short skirts and dropped waists.  While the latter was certainly true, stylish skirt lengths went up and down during the decade, surely to the great annoyance of some thrifty women

Fascination Street Vintage

This handy chart from Fascination Street Vintage gives a good sense of the changes.  We can use it to find an approximate date for the photo above, and also to reflect on how older women frequently stuck to older styles.

The youngest (although not young) looking woman on the left wears the shortest dress.  If we compare it to the chart, it was a fashionable length for around 1926—not the shortest of the decade, but close.  The two on the right show their ankles and their lower calves, so most likely their dresses come from the earlier twenties.  And the oldest looking woman, second from the left, wears the longest dress.  Obviously she had no intention of following the trends.  She is also the only one who doesn’t have on those wonderful strappy shoes so popular in the decade.

This photo is also even more proof that the dropped waist, straight up and down style of the twenties did no favors to the older body.   They do look comfortable, though.

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