Mary Roberts Rinehart as Outdoorswoman

When she was in her mid-thirties, the famous author Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) experienced a radical break in her domestic life.   She discovered the American West.  She made the contact through a former Pittsburgh friend, Howard Eaton, who had started ranches in various spots in the West. From 1915 onward, she led a bifurcated life.  During most of the year, she was a busy author, wife, and mother in her luxurious houses first outside Pittsburgh and then in Washington DC.  But in the summer she went to Wyoming to live on one of Eaton’s ranches and take long horse packing trips through the mountains.  The picture above shows her in her mid-forties, proudly posing in her Western gear. 

She kept this up for decades, documenting her adventures in popular booklets such as Tenting Tonight.  It was a somewhat luxurious form of camping, including a horse train, cooks, guides, and trunks of clothing.  Nonetheless, she slept in tents on the ground and took dangerous adventures, like a four day trip shooting the rapids on the Flathead River.

She even became an advocate for the Blackfeet Indian Tribe. Above you see her in a more common outfit, working for their interests in Washington DC.

One wonders what she would have been like if she had started her life in Wyoming, instead of in Pittsburgh.  In women’s magazines, she presented herself as a conservative, suspicious of many of the changes for women in the 1920s.  But in the summer, she lived for adventure–and dressed for it too.

Posted in General | 2 Comments

A Family Thanksgiving

Family photo

My mother loved Thanksgiving.  She died in February, at the ripe old age of 99, so this will be my first holiday without her for as long as I can remember.  The ones in recent years weren’t elaborate.  My uncles and stepfather had died and eventually my mother had to move to a care home.  Although my siblings and I did our best to make it a special day, with pies and champagne, it was no match for the celebrations she used to host at her house.

The photo above is a typical scene from one of my mother’s Thanksgiving feasts. She is on the left, her two sisters on the right.  It must have been in the early 1990s, judging by one of my aunt’s eyeglass frames. You can see the special china, rarely used, and the silver polished just for this event.  She always served cranberry relish (recipe on the Ocean Spray bag) in that fancy glass serving dish.  One of my uncles brought the wine and champagne and my youngest aunt made the pies. Everyone pitched in for kitchen duty.

It was a dress up affair for my aunts, who came in nice outfits and special jewelry.  My mother had a simpler style in general.  Everything must have been ready by the time this picture was taken because she already holds a glass of champagne.

This is how I remember her best—smiling and happy in her kitchen with her family all around her.  We were there to mark the holiday but also to celebrate her favorite day.

Posted in 1980s, 1990, 2000s | Tagged | 2 Comments

A Tale Told Through Shoes

This ad for Enna Jetticks shoes from 1965 reminded me of a section of the book The Thoughtful Dresser by novelist and fashion writer, Linda Grant. “I can think of nothing worse than to have been a middle aged woman who loved fashion in the 1960s, because fashion hated middle-aged women.” (146) If the middle-aged felt left out, then what about the elderly?

The message in this ad was (I think) supposed to be positive: If you are older, all you have to do is change your shoes (and your outfit, your stockings, and the size of your ankles and calves) and you would look up to date.  But there is a more sinister undertone as well. If you aren’t with the fashion program, somehow you aren’t a woman anymore. 

All of us know the transformative power of fashion, but there is a limit to the magic new shoes can perform.  Older women wore sensible lace up shoes for a reason; they provided stability and protected them from falling. Would any older woman have been inspired to change her footwear after seeing the ad?  Or would she have assumed that the current styles had passed her by?

Posted in 1960s | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Miss Grundy’s Evolution

My outstanding tipster, Davie Caro, alerted me to the Archie Comics character, Miss Grundy.   An older teacher/administrator at Archie’s high school, she went through many changes in her long career.  According to one chronicler of the comic strip, she had about five different first names and as many different jobs.  What interests me most is her style evolution.

Cleverly named after Mrs. Grundy, a British character embodying priggishness and conventionality, the American Miss Grundy was originally an unsympathetic character when she first appeared in the 1940s. 

She embodied many stereotypes of a grumpy old lady, with a skinny body, a high-neck collar, out of fashion clothes and a sour face.

1950s

By the 1950s, she had taken on her most common image—hair in a tight bun behind her head, a high-neck frilly collar, a cameo at her throat, and a polka dot dress.  When the cartoons were in color, she favored purple.

1970

In the late sixties and early seventies, artists decided to have a little fun with Miss Grundy’s clothes, putting her in hipper outfits.  Note she still wears a purple dress with the same brooch at the neck.  This time, however, she has on a very short miniskirt, striped stockings, and boots.

Although her period of high fashion was brief, it marked the end of her polka dots dresses.  She didn’t change her hair, though.  And she kept her sour face.

Posted in 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990, 2000s | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Donna Karan Imagines a Woman President, 1992

In 1992, clothing designer Donna Karan ran a series of ads featuring a beautiful young model (Rosemany McGrotha, then just 34) in the role of recently elected president.  I can’t remember if I noticed the ads at the time. However, since we have failed to elect a woman president twice in recent years I thought they were worth revisiting.

The Karan ads showed the imaginary president in all kinds of situations—her inaugural parade, working in the Oval Office, getting out of an airplane, and holding court with her all male staff. 

Perhaps she does look a little bit like Kamala Harris, with her dark hair and signature pearls.  However, this woman president isn’t afraid to sex it up a little.  Her shirts are opened wide, her dresses have long slits, and she favors bare shoulders in her off-duty hours.

She even has an adorable baby! No childless cat lady here.

“Fashion only ever becomes significant—more than just passing clothes—when it transcends itself to capture exactly what swathes of women feel about their lives,” wrote fashion critic Sarah Mower with reference to the ad campaign.  “Donna crystallized, idealized, expressed, and pushed further all the aspirations of her generation, as well as the next one in line.”

Well, certainly most of us hope for a female president one day.  But is it ungenerous to note that there will never be a 34-year-old woman president?  Particularly one with a young child? Wouldn’t it be more liberating to imagine an older woman in that role?  It gives “age appropriate” a whole new meaning.

Posted in 1990 | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Why Was the Old Maid Thin?

Old maids had a tough time in the early twentieth century.  Not only were they laughable figures in the game of Old Maid, they also appeared on satirical postcards beginning in the Victorian period and continuing well into the new century.  The Special Collections Library at Western Kentucky University has a large collection of such cards, all featuring sad looking women and often cruel messages.  This one says: For you the summer’s gone/And the winter’s coming on/No paint nor powder can erase/The wrinkles on your face./What use are girlish ways and girlish dress,/We know you’re ancient nonetheless.

“Gee, I Wish I Had a Beau”, Kentucky Museum Library Special Collections

What amazed me in these images was that ALL of the old maids were very thin, showing that preferences in body shapes have changed a lot in the last 100 years.  According to the historian Lois Banner in her book American Beauty, older women in the nineteenth century were expected to be plump.  Plumpness implied children, warmth, and family.  The skinny old maid depicted in these early twentieth century images appeared to be following the same rules. The fact that she carried her skinny frame into old age made her into a freak.

Who thought up such cards?  Apparently many were a kind of “Vinegar Valentine,” sent to women as a warning of what might happen to them if they didn’t marry. 

Others were Leap Year cards when, according to an old Irish custom, women had permission to ask men to marry them. 

And some were sent unsigned just to be mean, proving that there were plenty of trolls long before the internet age.

Posted in 1900s, 1910s | 1 Comment

Christmas Party at the Beautee-fit Company, 1947

Los Angeles Public Library

What a diverse group of women employees at Beautee-Fit Company in Los Angeles.  Most look to be Asian- or Mexican-American, with a few Anglos here and there. I wonder if some of the Asian-Americans were of Japanese origin, just out of the internment camps. We don’t get the full effect of their holiday fashions since almost everyone is sitting down. 

I found ads for the Beautee-Fit Company beginning in the 1930s. It made all kinds of underwear but was best known for its bras, which you can guess by the pin up style pictures on the back wall. There appear to be only four or five men in the room standing far in the back. Only one woman, maybe one of the bosses, wears a hat.

Most of the workers are young, judging by this photo, but there are a few older faces in the crowd. Look at this pair, on the lower left.  The elegant gray haired woman wears a simple dark dress while her companion on the right has on a belted dress with designs that look like comets and stars. A festive outift for a festive occasion.

Posted in 1940s | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Merry Widow Hat in Iowa

Found photo

This photo post card from Sioux City, Iowa shows a women in a very big hat.  Known as a “Merry Widow Hat,” these wide chapeaux were named after a British musical launched in London in 1907.  Quickly the musical, and the style, traveled across the Atlantic.  By 1908, it was a fashion statement in the US, showing just how fast fashion trends could travel.

Found photo

The exaggerated size of the hat made it an object of fun, as seen in one of these well-known post cards.  I bought this one on eBay and was just able to make out the penciled note on the back.  It was a message from a traveling father to his daughter urging her to be a good girl, making no reference to fashion at all.

It took me awhile to find my own photo of a real person wearing a Merry Widow. Although it’s hardly as big as the one in the satirical photo, her hat piled with bows makes quite a statement.  With her fur trimmed coat, this woman looks very prosperous and quite determined to stay in style.

Posted in 1900s | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Book Review—When Women Ran Fifth Avenue by Julie Satow

Although women never really ran Fifth Avenue, three remarkable women did manage landmark department stores from the 1920s to the 1980s.  Satow’s book is a collective biography of each–Dorothy Shaver of Lord and Taylor, Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller, and Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel.  All of them were brought in to manage stores in crisis, and each figured her own way to make them profitable. Shaver sought out American designers and developed a unique style of advertising.  Odlum reconfigured the ground floor as a goldmine for impulse shoppers and introduced exciting shop windows.  Stutz made her smaller store successful by aiming at a niche clientele of thin, wealthy, and status conscious shoppers.

Dorothy Shaver is the best known of this trio.  She gained the reputation of being the best paid woman in America, even though she was still paid less than her male predecessors.  Only her death in 1957 removed from the job.  Hortense Odlum had her position thrust upon her in the mid 1930s when her Wall Street investor husband bought Bonwit Teller.  Although she made a success of it, her husband used it as an opportunity to leave her for his girlfriend.  After Oldum stepped down in the forties, she blamed her position for the demise of her marriage.  Stutz’s career is the most recent of the three, spanning the years from 1957 to 1986.  Her buyers toured the world for unique treasures and undiscovered designers, turning the store into a hub of innovation. However, she was eventually done in by the rise of suburban malls and discount stores. 

Read together, these biographies give life to the American department store in its heyday.  I wish Satow had paid more attention to the subtheme of the book—the dawn of American fashion.  She shows how the innovative Shaver promoted American designers in the thirties, and even includes a brief overview of Elizabeth Hawes, one of the women she discovered.  After this, however, American designers and the fashion industry fade into the background until the middle of Stutz’s career, which comes relatively late in the book.  In her search for the unique, Stutz discovered new American talent including Stephen Burrows and Ralph Lauren.

This is not only a collective biography, but also an elegy for great American department stores, which were once places for leisure and entertainment as much as shopping. Now we can buy what we want from home, but it’s hardly a sensual treat.  As someone who vividly remembers the Christmas windows in Chicago’s Marshall Fields from my childhood, it’s hard not to be sad for what was lost.

Posted in 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Playing Old Maid

Do you remember the Old Maid card game?  The goal was to match pairs of cards.  One had no match and the person left with it at the end was called the Old Maid.  It could be played with a regular deck, where players simply removed one queen.  However, special decks were made with all kinds of different pairs—men, women, children, even inanimate objects, often revealing stereotypes of the era.

This one, with its golf girl and typewriter, probably came from the early twentieth century. Its Old Maid looks particularly sour.

How did the old maid card evolve over time? The (usually) older woman is often a figure of fun, not always in a nice way.  She’s usually dressed up in old fashion clothes.   By the second half of the twentieth century, her image has solidified to stereotypical markers of the old lady of yesteryear—gray hair in an old fashioned updo, granny glasses, and a ruffled collar at her neck. Cats sometimes make an appearance.

2017

Sometimes they are all cats! I’m told that JD Vance uses the deck above to this day.

Posted in General | 2 Comments