Not Included in the Lecture

Last night I gave a lecture at MOHAI called "In Search of Seattle Style" in which I combed through Seattle's past to try to unravel the history behind the city's complicated relationship with fashion. But that is not what this post is about. This post is about how distracted I get when I do historical research because old-timey magazines are hilarious.

1) Is this or is this not an ad for cocaine?

2) Were people using cocaine to heat their houses? 

3) Or is it like "fuel your furnace" *wink *wink?

4) I have never been in the market for cocaine, but 200 lbs for $1.00 does sound like a good deal

95 YEARS OLD YES THANK YOU FOR ASKING

Something about the minimalism of this ad just gets me. It isn't actually clear what happens when call Peggy. It sort of sounds like "Are you overweight? Then call Peggy because she loves to talk about that kind of stuff." Actually, I hope that Peggy Eckford is actually an amazing listener and empowering speaker and just tells you that you are already wonderful, strong, powerful, and beautiful. And when you hang up you are just like: 

Wow Peggy. No wonder your results are guaranteed. 

I also enjoyed this image caption: 

The caption says:

MARION B. BAXTER

Who Has Just Closed Her Life of Eminent Usefulness

When I first read it I didn't get that she had recently DIED and that it was trying to applaud her for a life well lived. What it sounds like is that she is still alive but someone is just publicly announcing that the useful period of her life is over. Like that feeling you get when you are in a meeting or with a big group of people and at first everything is great and people are listening to what you are saying, but then you say something incredibly stupid and everyone just goes quiet for a moment? And you are just sitting there thinking "Clara E. Berg has just closed her life of eminent usefulness."

Did you know that before the famous gossip column "Page Six," Seattle had it's own less-successful version on page five:

The author of this column later became a historian and wrote a book called Things That Happened In Various Places.

I also had a giggle over the photos in a feature about the charity work of local society matrons. My goal is to be this woman:

But some days I feel more like this woman:

Designer Label Freakout

As a Seattle-based fashion historian I try not to be too elitist and couture-focused when discussing clothing. Fashion is not just for the rich! Practical clothing can be stylish! Plaid shirts are sexy!

But today I'm going to tell you the story about how I nearly had an excitement-induced heart attack when discovering a famous Paris designer label on something in the museum collection.

A volunteer and I were preparing a dress for display and something was funny about how the hemline was hanging. So I decided to steam it a little bit. It was a 1920s evening dress with sequins, and I knew that sometimes sequins from that period can be made of gelatin and can literally melt. So I decided to turn the dress inside-out and be extremely cautious. As soon as I had it inside-out I spotted it:

I was basically like:

Jean Patou was an innovative couture designer in the 1920s and early 1930s (he died in 1936). In his time he was on par with Chanel in influence and success. If you google image search him you will also discover that he was dapper AF: 

Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection, PD-US

via perfumesociety.org

After calming down a little...

(It took a while)

...I spent a little time researching the donor.  Her name was Edana Collins Ruhm, and this is what she looked like on her wedding day in 1906:

MOHAI collection

Her father was the fourth mayor of Seattle, and she grew up in luxury in the Collins mansion. Her husband died young, and so she spent the next 50 years of her life as a widow. She travelled, she gave lectures, and generally appeared to live it up. The travel included frequent trips to Paris, and she was described in the Seattle society news as wearing Patou, so it isn't some weird coincidence that she donated this dress. This was her dress.

Ok, ok, enough background. Here it is:

 BAM

This is some HIGH LEVEL HARDCORE MUSEUM QUALITY FASHION

Also, look again at the wedding photo and then look at this dress (c. 1925-26). What better illustration of the seismic shift in women's fashion between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s? She was in her twenties on her wedding day-- all frothy and demure in ruffles -- and in her forties when she purchased the dress above. 

DAMN GIRL.

GET IT.

also can we just recap the fact that THIS DRESS IS IN THE COLLECTION I MANAGE AND HAS A LEGIT MISSION-RELATED STORY

(It is on display now if you want to see it in person)

Things I Learned While Preparing My 1920s Talk

Two weekends ago I was scrambling to get my "Seattle Fashion in the Roaring Twenties" talk finished and last weekend I was basking in the triumph of presenting it and feeling awesome about it.

Now that I have recovered (although I am giving it again in August, get tickets here) I want to share some of the exciting things that I came across during my research.

Nellie Carman 

For those of you still wondering about the identity of "Mrs. X" I mentioned in an old post about diva ladies in the Seattle fashion business, her name was Nellie Martin Carman. If you don't feel like following the link to the previous post here is he short version: She worked as a buyer and head of ladies wear at J. Redelsheimer & Co. for a number of years in the early 20th century. Things weren't great in her marriage but when she tried to file for divorce from her husband (Mr. Carman) he turned around and accused her and her employer (Redelsheimer) of an inappropriate relationship.

The whole thing blew up in Mr. Carman's face though because it came out that a key witness (who said he saw the pair "embracing") turned out to have been bribed. Mr. Carman's case was immediately thrown out.

Soon after all that Nellie set out on her own and her "Carman" store enjoyed meteoric success. In 1921 her store took up an entire building downtown and the Seattle Times gushed: “The growth of the Carman Shop from a modest beginning six years ago to its present rank as one of the largest high-grade specialty shops for women on the Pacific Coast forms one of the most interesting annals of merchandising successes in Seattle’s history.”

When Nellie Carman died she left money for a local scholarship fund, which is still active today. 

A Seattle company takes credit for inventing the modern bathing suit

As you may know, I tend to be cautious about claims that someone "invented" this or that piece of clothing. Most of the time, when you look back at some iconic look like the little black dress or the mini-skirt, you find several designers working on similar ideas at the same time. They aren't copying each other, they are just all tuned into the same zeitgeist. So take this with a huge grain of salt, but the Saxony Knitting Company of Seattle (later Sportcraft) claims to have invented the one-piece knitted bathing suit. 

Click to enlarge

Before the one-piece, bathing costumes were multi-part and multi-layer. A two-piece didn't mean you were showing off your midriff, it meant that you had a pair of bloomers that went under a dress, or maybe you had a three-piece consisting of an under layer, a blouse, and bloomers. The knitted one-piece caused quite a stir because it did what women's bathing suits do today: cling to the body in a single, form fitting layer. 

So while I'll need to do a little more research into this claim, it seems like at the very least the Saxony Knitting Company was part of the first wave of designers and companies to make the knitted one-piece. And considering how revolutionary and influential the style was, and how far away Seattle was from everything else, the fact that they are even on the radar is pretty exciting. 

Eddie Bauer was hot

PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection / MOHAI

Seriously. Who saw that coming? Somehow he makes a bow tie with outdoor gear WERQ

American Spirits!

Only ONE DAY LEFT before American Spirits : The Rise and Fall of Prohibition opens at MOHAI!!!

I've been doing lots to prepare. First of all, I got a haircut.

A 1920s-inspired bob and it looks AWESOME.

I've also been dressing mannequins and putting new things on display. I added a fabulous Helen Igoe dress into the exhibit (it is a traveling show from the National Constitution Center but there was some spots to add in local stuff). And on Monday I updated the 1920s case in the core Seattle history exhibit. It also looks pretty great.

So for contrast, remember when that case looked like this?

The concept for this case was

"Getting Murdered By Two Thugs Outside the Speakeasy"

Well now it looks like this!

The alley is the same, but the label text is about clothing for 

"Drinking Out" vs. "Drinking at Home."

There is a lot of interesting stuff going on here, but here is a feature you won't read about in the label text-- There is an optical illusion that is almost as cool as that dress that broke the internet a few months ago. The gray fabric covering the necks of the mannequins (which appears light gray on the left and dark gray on the right) is THE SAME FABRIC I KID YOU NOT. I even held up a swatch of it to convince myself and it was like it magically changed color as I moved from mannequin to mannequin.

SO WIERD!!

This is not just how it looks through my crappy camera, that is how it looks IN PERSON.

So if you are in Seattle go see American Spirits, April 2 to Aug 23rd, and stop by the 1920s section in the Seattle history permanent exhibit and prepare to have your mind blown by swatches of gray fabric. 

Fashion and Independent Women

Next Saturday I will be reprising my lecture about Helen Igoe and Madame Thiry. If you missed it the first time, get your tickets now!!!

Revisiting this lecture has made me think about the interesting ways that fashion has opened the door for for women to forge their own path in the world. In eras where ladies of a certain social class were expected to marry and not to work outside the home, there were very few socially acceptable ways to be a businesswoman who called the shots. One of the ways was to do it in a "woman's interest" industry like fashion. I wish I could say that this thinking is completely behind us, but we know that married women who work still get asked crap questions about how they can "juggle it all" and there are still lots of jobs and roles that society still expects will be held by a man.

Anyway, if we go back to thinking of the positive, I like the way that fashion has historically offered an opportunity for women to be business owners and bosses. And because there were so many expectations about gender roles and what it meant to be a "good wife," not being married seemed to be an advantage. Nowadays it is much easier to build an healthy and mutually supportive marriage, but back then being unmarried/widowed/divorced seemed to be helpful in getting a patriarchal society to recognize a woman's accomplishments as her own.

I DID, ACTUALLY

Helen Igoe grew up in Minnesota, and left home as an unmarried, old maid at 35. She came to Seattle and started working in a department store, which eventually sent her to Europe as a buyer. In 1910 she opened her own store: the Helen Igoe Shop for Women. In 1912 she married a man from St. Louis. Rather than return "home" to the midwest to be a good little wife, he had to move to Seattle to be with her. While socially she was sometimes referred to as Mrs. George Stalker, her maiden name tied her to her business and she still continued to be professionally known as Helen Igoe. After only five years of marriage his name disappears from the city directories and a quiet divorce request is printed in the papers a year later. She continued to be known as Helen Igoe for the rest of her life. Well, that and an "Innovator," "Fashion Dictator" and "Seattle's Hattie Carnegie."

Louise Schwaebele became Madame Thiry when she married in 1903. She and her husband were from France, but after they married they moved to Nome, Alaska to see about this gold rush everyone was talking about. Frontier life maybe wasn't her favorite thing, so she travelled back to Paris with her young son and got the idea of bringing fashionable things back to sell in Nome and Seattle (at that time you basically couldn't get to Alaska without going through Seattle). That was going well as a little side business, but then her husband returned to France to fight in WWI and he didn't return. Devastated and on her own, expanding her business was one of the few options available to support herself and her son. She moved permanently to Seattle and had a successful shop in the 1920s which sold original designs and imported fashion from France.

There is also, of course, Josephine Nordhoff. She and her husband Edward founded The Bon Marché department store in Seattle. They met when they were both working at a store in Chicago, and married when he was 29 and she was just 16. Two years later they moved to Seattle and started The Bon Marché  They both worked hard to make the store a success, but here is a case where I think that if Josephine had died young, gender bias would have given Edward full credit for "founding" the store. As it happened, Edward died in 1899 and Josephine was the one who continued for the next twenty years. She did remarry and have help from both her new husband and a brother-in-law, but she was recognized as one of the founders of the store and one of the keys to its massive success. On the day of her funeral in 1920, all the downtown retailers closed to honor her.

Recently, I've uncovered yet another example, and this one is juicy. Since it is probably going to make its way into my fashion lecture next year I want to not give away everything, so for now I will just call her Ms. X. She was married at 17 and she and her husband came to Seattle right around the turn of the 20th century. In her 30s she gets a job as the head of ladies ready-to-wear at a large Seattle store. After a few years she files for divorce from her husband claiming non-support. The newspaper slyly remarks that "Mrs. X is a department manager for [store]. The directory gives no occupation for Mr. X."

Two years later, her husband attempts to take her employer to court for causing his wife to "leave her home" which "alienated her affections." He insinuates there may have been a romantic connection between his wife and her boss. The case is thrown out because it is discovered that the husband's lawyer hired a blackmailer to tamper with witnesses. I wasn't able to find confirmation that the divorce went through (it was really hard to get one back in the day) but the husband certainly seems to disappear from the picture. The year after the trial Ms. X opens her own shop.

One thing you should know about most fashion historians is that you can really push our buttons if you start dismissing what we do as "just frivolous fluff" that is "only interesting to women." Basically, we'll be like:

Look, I'm not saying everyone needs to be interested in fashion. If you feel awesome and confident in something that would make a Vogue editor gag SO WHAT. You be you. But when you say dismissively that fashion is "only interesting to women" it starts sounding a awful lot like "things that are interesting to women are automatically less important." And that is intolerable BS. For the women above, fashion was more than "frivolous fluff." It was independence, financial stability, a creative outlet, an opportunity build a business on their own terms, and a way to step outside the limiting roles that society had dictated.  It was life.

Don't Let Me Design Consumer Products

You guys. I just invented something awesome. Coming to an infomercial near you:

PantyStoles

Here is the mind-blowing invention story: We were switching up the dress on the 1920s mannequin and the new dress was looking pretty good. BUT we were having problems with the neckline. For one thing, the V in the front was going just a tiny bit too low and you could see the line where the hard upper torso transitions to the soft body lower torso. We also hadn't put in a barrier layer between the top of the mannequin (not made of an archival material) and the dress. As we contemplated quickly sewing a camisole and padding the shoulders to lift the neckline of the dress, we wondered if there was a faster, easier option. Then our eyes fell on a pair of pre-washed pantyhose. 

Pantyhose + Padding + Draped Like a Stole = PantyStoles

Business in the Front

Panties in the Back

RESULT:

All Day Padded Neckline Hotness

You may now start throwing money at me. 

The Great Mannequin Switcheroo

I can't believe it but it is almost June, which means it has been six months since Grand Opening, which means it is time to rotate all the mannequins. 

Textiles are particularly susceptible to damage from light and some can become weak from holding their own weight on a form for long periods of time (they weren't built to be on a body 24-7 for months on end). It is therefore a general museum standard that textile pieces should not be on permanent display, and instead be rotated out every 3-6 months. 

Dressing the mannequins for the new museum was a big part of my job last year, and so I think I'm sort of in denial that I'm going to be doing it all over again in just a few short weeks, squeaking it in in the middle of everything else. 

But I've actually rotated one item out already: the 1920s evening dress. I decided to put it on a 3 month rotation because evening dresses from that period are notorious for falling apart while on display. They tend to be made of light fabric and then beaded heavily, so you can imagine why that quickly turns in to a conservation nightmare. 

Anyway, let me take you on a magical, blurry iPhone photo journey through that process.

Ok, so here is how our speakeasy-sneaking couple looked at Grand Opening. I'm not going to deny that these mannequins are kind of weird looking. She has swimmer shoulders, and he can't stand up straight and so looks like he either shuffles around with back pain or is leaning down to slap her ass. Good times. Also, longtime readers may remember him and this same creepo. 

Here is what our lady looks like when undressed, unwigged, and de-armed. I think she looks kind of cool this way, like some sort of robot with fab shoes. 

Re-dressing this mannequin actually took two attempts. I have some extra mannequins, so for most of the costumes we can do the dressing off site and then just bring the new one to replace the old. But we only have one 1920s lady with the torso and the legs. So I have to bring a dress and do all the work on-site while the museum is closed. 

This photo is of the first attempt at re-dressing. We put this red dress on and then realized that it was a bad choice. It was gorgeous and eye-catching but the fit was way too tight and the fabric was much weaker than I realized. If we left this thing on display it was only going to get weaker and would probably start ripping. I took this photo before we reluctantly removed the dress from the mannequin, so the public never got to see it. 

A couple weeks later I came back with two options (in the meantime we put the dress from Grand Opening back on because it was actually holding up quite well). This one won both categories of the competition: fit and strength. It is an early 1920s pink figured velvet dress that is basically made of two big drapey rectangles held together at the top. Extra bonus: the cut of the dress hides her man-shoulders. 

Team MOHAI

Today we had an all staff meeting where the main topic was GRAND OPENING which is now a mere MONTH away. We got multiple explanatory handouts, printed spreadsheets of daily assignments, and early reminders about taking breaks and eating so we don't pass out. As stressful as it sounds I'm looking forward to it. The only serious bad news was confirmation that the V.I.P. opening is cocktail attire rather than black tie as I was previously told. Ugh. Now I have to re-think my whole dressing concept for the night.

We also got an update on press coverage, and it was announced that our director, creative director, and historian have been co-named on a Seattle Magazine list of the most influential people of 2012.  We all applauded but then the director cut in with "Well, actually we are just stand-ins representing the whole MOHAI team. So really it is the whole team that made the list--that means you!" Aw. Thanks Leonard. Now I can proudly say that it was implied that I was part of a group of people who made a list of the most influential Seattle people of 2012.

Speaking of teams, here is a previously untapped font of historical delight I just discovered: old photos of sports teams. I was searching for some photos of athletic clothing in MOHAI's online photo database, and started coming across images like this:

Ice Hockey Team for the University of Washington, c. 1921. PEMCO Webster  & Stevens Collection,  MOHAI

All I'm saying is that if the NHL made pomade hair mandatory and switched from oversized polyester jerseys to tight, long sleeve, black shirts, then maybe that is a sport I would watch.

University of Washington Football Team, c. 1903. William Jennings "Wee" Coyle Photograph Collection, MOHAI

I don't even know where to start with this. Very awkward guy with the substantial wavy hair in the middle row? Pop-out-the-hip model poser on the upper right? Those weird things around their necks? Some comment about padded, pillowy thighs?

And my absolute favorite: 

Crescent Manufacturing Company Bowling Team, c. 1923. Crescent Manufacturing Collection, MOHAI

How nerdily dapper is this crew? Can you read their sweaters? Crescent was a local spice manufacturing company, and their most famous product was a maple flavor substitute called Mapleine. The team was called "The Mapleines" and they were the Commercial Bowling League Champions of 1922-1923. I realize these are grown men who probably had very complex lives and personalities but all I have to say is ADORABLE.