When this photo appeared in the Valley Times in 1961, the accompanying text read, “Five generations of the Prince family were on hand to help celebrate the 90th birthday of Mrs. Emma E. Prince, a woman who honeymooned to the San Fernando Valley in 1893 and decided to stay.”
I love the generational story told in the clothes. Emma Prince wears a shirtwaist style dress, and so does her daughter to her right. (She looks very much like my own grandmother, Madge.) Although I’ve been known to criticize polka dots, I love the crisp look of the daughter’s dress as well as the generous pockets.
While the older women stuck to the shirtwaist style so popular with their age group, the granddaughter and and her own daughter both chose sheath dresses, a more fashion forward look. The great granddaughter, in her simple black sheath, looks the most modern of all. She is also the only one without a necklace. Did she decided to go with simplicity, or did her kids tug her necklace too often to make it a practical choice?
That is one big cake!
It’s kind of wild to imagine all of the fashion changes the birthday girl witnessed in her lifetime. I wonder if the changes of the mid and late sixties would have shocked her, had she lived that long. Maybe it wouldn’t have been any more startling than the twenties, hmm.
I”m pretty sure my grandmother, born in 1907, never did give up her shirtwaist dresses. And she never wore a pair of pants, either.