On the back of this photo, someone has written in green ink “July ’62. Celi’s party. Camp.” At first I thought it might be some kind of amateur theatrical event, with a painted background and the fans as props. But on closer look, those must be real trees (hence “camp”) and the meaning of the fans remains obscure.
These older women are dressed in a range of clothing styles–the ubiquitous house dress/street dress at the center, a shirtwaist dress, skirt and blouse variations, a cardigan style jacket, and even a younger looking one in pants. However, there isn’t a very big color range. It is mainly light blues, whites, and beiges, with one dark red dress and wild purple pants thrown in for contrast. Despite what appears to be a fairly broad age spectrum (from the seventies to the forties?), they all have very similar hair dos—tight curls close to the head. I’ll bet that many of these were the product of permanent waves. At least one of them dyed her hair—look at that wild red head on the right (a woman after my own heart).
I wonder if this was a summer retreat associated with some women’s club or organization. The fans perhaps were party favors—or maybe they were gearing up for a production of the Mikado.
The woman in the purple plaid pants looks hauntingly like an aunt of mine who would have been in her late ’30s/early’40s in 1962, how fun. It isn’t her….not quite, just a real resemblance, and she would have been being the life and soul of the party.
Ceci