The Latest Fashions for Ladies---100 Years Ago

I found a partial catalog from the National Cloak and Suit Company, Seventh Ave,, 24th and 25th Sts., New York City. The covers and many pages were missing. Snooping around the Internet I found photos from the catalog uploaded to Flickr and discovered it was from 1917.

16145 Sheer Voile--$7.50 was a summer dress "sheer and cool". The color was trimmed with Venise pattern lace. Shown in tan. 16146 Embroidered Net--$12.98 "ideal for formal or semi-formal occasions". 16148 Linene--$5.75 was a "practical dress" in a new and smart fashion.

16150 Voile--$8.98 of imported embroidered voile. 16151 Gabardine--$6.98 in popular solid & striped materials shown in tan and Copenhagen blue. 16152 Embroidered Organdie--$7.50 "Do you want a truly beautiful summer dress that expresses daintiness and refined taste in every detail?" White crocheted buttons. Shown in pink.

In the late 1890s The National Cloak and Suit Company was one of the biggest manufacturers of tailor made 'to order' ladies suits and skirts.

9227-- $12.98 Smart Coat of Handsome All-Wool Worsted Poplin came in burgundy "the new, rich dark wine color", navy blue, mustard, and black. 

4301 A skirt of Latest New York Style "3.98 "here is one of the newest skirts of the season--a smart and graceful model" in wool serges with "fashionable burgundy color satin facing for the shirred frills which finish waist-line and pouch pockets."

National coats cost less. 9201 $8.98 coat in all-wool worsted serge "of a quality ordinarily seen only in coats sold at higher prices" came in Copenhagen blue, navy blue, and black.

9202 $18.98 All Wool Worsted Poplin in "real Parisian style" came in mustard or green trimmed with navy blue peau de cygne (highly finished silk); also Copenhagen blue trimmed in mustard color peau de cygne. 

"

"Yes, beauty does indeed reign supreme here. But second in power is Big Value." 23401 $6.98 for spring and summer wear, dress of figured silk and cotton Foulard in rose, Copenhagen blue, or navy. 23402 $9.89 Silk taffeta dress came in medium green, Copenhagen blue, navy blue, or black.

"Not merely small sizes" they are "especially proportioned to fit". 21314 $7.50 fine Voile dress with lace trim. 21315 $10.75 fashionable bretelle style draped bodice has net ruffles and plain net underskirt.21316 $5.49 dress with large collar with dainty embroidered voile. 21317 $3.98 "simplicity of style" dress of embroidered voile.

Sizes 32 to 38 bust. 38301 $6.98  in "serviceable" wool and cotton fabric. 38301 all wool poplin "serviceable" coat is unlined and came in mustard, navy blue, and apple green. 38303 white Chinchilla cloth coat.

 

24328 $18.50 smart belted suit came in navy blue or black. Skirt length was 36 to 43 inches with wide based hem. 24329 $6.98 Linene suit in rose, medium green, or Copenhagen blue  had a sailor collar. 24330 $14.98 Silk and wool poplin suite in medium green, navy blue, or black.

 24301 $14.98 "chic New York Style" suit in Copenhagen blue, navy blue, or tan.

 They also made clothing for children.

And infants clothing.

Hats, shoes, and other things ladies need.

Testimonials regarding their quality.

1916 National Cloak and Suite Company photo 'ladies choosing books'
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-e307-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

1857 Album Quilt

Here are the 1857 Album quilt blocks so far. I was feeling I was pretty boring compared to the great original takes I see on the Facebook 1857 group. But I see that using colors similar to the original quilt will work out just fine! Thanks to Gay Boomers of Sentimental Stitches for offering the patter of her historic quilt!

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Eric Larson

On a beautiful morning with a calm sea, it took eighteen minutes for the Lusitania to sink.

Of all the stories of the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, it is the image of a woman giving birth in the frigid waters that haunts me. And how one surviving passenger, a child, always carried the fear that the woman was his pregnant mother. I am angry to think how nothing was done to protect this family. Instead, information was withheld with secret hopes that American deaths would bring the United States into WWI.

There are certain synopsis of history that we hear over and over again, easily memorized history in one sentence. People who lived the history didn't need more to conjure up stories and memories about it. The one-line history gets passed on through the media or in books or in the classroom to following generations who have no further information. Part of my reading life is finding out the story behind these snippets.


I knew the passenger ship Lusitania was sunk by the Germans, and there were Americans on board, and that people were appalled. I heard that the sinking brought America into WWI. I vaguely thought the ship was American with mostly American passengers. I had heard that Elbert Hubbard was among those who died in the shipwreck.

I chose to read Eric Larson's Dead Wake through Blogging for Books because I enjoyed his Devil in the White City and because I wanted to learn more about the Lusitania.

It was interesting, then tense, then harrowing, then enraging, and finally enlightening. Larson is a masterful story teller.

We get to know the passengers on that fatal voyage--the charming, the famous, the wealthy, the captain and crew. And we also get to know the U-20 commander, his dedication and skill, and how the horror of seeing the disaster he wrought upset him but did not deter him from doing his duty for his country. Meanwhile, President Wilson was a broken man after the loss of his wife, detached and depressed until he meets the vibrant and sympathetic widow who revives his hopes of love and companionship.

Larson exposes several myths of the sinking: the early belief that two torpedoes hit the ship, and that Capt. Turner was at fault.

Why wasn't Cunard warned about the U-20's previous hits and location? Why didn't Britain offer protection to the Lusitania? Why was Captain Turner not warned to take the safer northern route?

Churchill had written a letter to the Board of Trade commenting that it was important to attract "neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes of especially embroiling the United States with Germany." The British military were decoding every message sent by U-20 and knew where it was.
The Lusitania was in the right place at the right time, a sitting duck. And yet so many things could have prevented the tragedy.

As for the revision of my received history: The Lusitania was a British ship of the Cunard line, like the Titanic. Like the Titanic it was thought to be too big to sink, plus it was so fast it could outrun a sub. 114 American citizens lost their lives, including millionaire playboy Alfred Vanderbuilt who died a hero's death assisting other passengers to safety. The ship was carrying secret military cargo. It was sunk by a German submarine. It took two more years before America entered the war and meantime the Germans stepped back from attacking passenger ships for fear of involving America.

*****

A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.  Elbert Hubbard.

That quotation was in my Sixth grade English textbook. I memorized it and took it to heart. It was all I knew about Elbert Hubbard for a long while.

When my grandfather Lynne O. Ramer passed I was given his library. It included a complete set of Hubbard's Roycroft set Little Journeys into the Homes of the Great. The series was published in 1916 after Hubbard's death. I have carted it around for 40 years. My grandfather collected books in the 1920s, even though he had little money and was working in the kitchen to pay his way through Susquehanna College (now University). Hubbard was one of the most famous men in America when Gramps was growing up. When my grandfather was ten Hubbard set sail on the Lusitania.

There are only two respectable ways to die; One is of old age. the other is by accident. All disease is indecent. Elbert Hubbard

Elbert and his wife Alice retreated to a Boat Deck room and closed the door. He followed his own advice: "We are here now, some day we shall go. And when we go we would like to go gracefully." Their bodies were never identified.

Learn more about the Lusitania at

http://www.rmslusitania

https://wwionline.org/articles/complex-case-rms-lusitania/

Learn more about the book at

http://eriklarsonbooks.com/the-books/dead-wake/

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/98118/dead-wake-by-erik-larson/9780307408877/

http://www.npr.org/books/titles/390474945/dead-wake-the-last-crossing-of-the-lusitania

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Sinclair Antiques

We visited a new antique mall in Clawson. Sinclair Antiques is right next to our local bakery/bread/pizza/sub/shop, Julian Brothers.  The building dates to 1947 when it was a Sinclair gas station.

There is a couch and tv in the lobby for spouses or kids who get bored! But who will get bored--there is something for everyone.

 This Erector set has it's original Hudson's label marked $50.

Bring TR home for $400

There is a 1915 bust of Teddy Roosevelt! If I had room I'd bring TR home with me! What a marvelous conversation piece he would be!

There was a lot of vintage clothing, including shoes and fancy Edwardian white shirts, dresses, and skirts.

And several quilts.

this wonderful quilt top was used behind a display 

$95 hand made quilt

$125 kit quilt Little Red Riding Hood

 

 And dolls.

 The owners are lovely people. Coffee and a plate of cookies were provided.

I will be back.

Apple Wars: At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier is best known for her first historical fiction book The Girl With the Pearl Earring which imagines the subject of Vermeer's painting of the same name. I have read all of her books since.

Her new novel At the Edge of the Orchard includes historical figures Johnny 'Appleseed' Chapman  and William Lobb who collected seeds and seedlings for export to England. But its focus is on the Goodenough family's tumultuous history and battles over what kind of apples to grow.

The story begins in the Black Swamp of Ohio, just outside of Perrysburg, where James and Sadie Goodenough are trying to establish a homestead in mud and amongst mosquitoes. They left Connecticut to find land, traveling west until the good roads ended in the swamp.

James has brought his beloved Golden Pippin apple seeds, a legacy brought by his ancestor from England to Connecticut where his father raised apple trees. The apple's flavor recalls James home, a sweet apple with a sharpness and a finish of pineapple. To keep one's land claim James must have an orchard of 34 trees. He sets the goal higher to fifty.


James prefers the good eating Golden Pippin apples, but his wife Sarah has become dependent on the Apple Jack made from the sour 'spitter' apples. After years living in isolated wilderness, losing her children to the annual fever, and regretting her marriage to James instead of his brother Charlie, Sadie is bitter and angry. Only the Apple Jack offers respite.

A family tragedy drives the Goodenough son Robert to leave home, heading west. He becomes an eternal wanderer, alone and separate, but writing an annual letter home to the siblings he left behind. Robert's journey ends at the Pacific Ocean where he discovers the giant Sequoia trees and William Lobb, an English seed agent. Robert finds work collecting Sequoia seedlings for Lobb.

This Sequoia stump appears in At The Edge of the Orchard.
http://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/trees/giantsequoia/california/

Robert is enigmatic, a living ghost cut off from society and unsure of what 'family' really means. He makes few choices, just goes with where life leads him. Reaching the limits of America he finds himself going back East for the first time, to end up where his family began.

This novel begins with the Goodenoughs, jumps to a series of letters from Robert, to rejoining Robert in the West. The early section is violent and full of action, the characters powerfully drawn. The second part is quiet and internal. Robert is so shut down and uncommunicative that he almost fades from his own story, allowing stronger personalities to shine. There is no resolution to his story, but movement towards a possible new beginning brings hope.

Following the Goodenoughs is a badly used nine-patch quilt, with fabrics holding memories of home. But it is a home life Robert escaped from, at the behest of his mother, a hard life with a family at war. The quilt is torn and repaired, but makes the bedding for the next generation.

And that is perhaps what life is all about, each generation taking the tattered remnants of whatever good they can glean and use it to endeavor to cushion and ease the way for the generation to come.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hear an interview with the author at NPR here.

At the Edge of the Orchard
Tracy Chevalier
Penguin
Publication Date March 15, 2016
hard cover $27.00
ISBN 9780525953005

A Whimsical William Shakespeare

April 23 was the 400th anniversary of  the death of William Shakespeare. This quilt came to me and I rushed out to buy the fabric and supplies. I drew it out on freezer paper and cut out the shapes. I fused fabric for the face and pieced the doublet.

 His ruff print has love endearments.

I printed his sonnet 116 on fabric. And made 3-d folded flowers.

So much fun!

Modern Millinery & the Flapper Hat of Choice

The Michigan State University Museum dug into its collection and put together their current exhibit Up Cloche: Fashion, Feminism, Modernity. The cloche hat was a symbol of Flapper modernity. Women needed short hair to wear the bell shaped, helmet style hat. It was the antithesis of the ornate and decorated hats of their mother's age, simply constructed and some even foldable to carry in pockets.

 The cloche nodded to the helmets worn by early aviatrix.

The hats may share a shape but the details are wonderful including appliqué, embroidery, beading, folded fabric.

A display showed the earlier style of hats on the right and the cloche hat and hat form on the right.

 The cloche embellishments were Art Deco--flat, streamlined, geometric.

Previous hat embellishment was more ornate, three dimensional and naturalistic. Cloche hats could be made at home and mass produced cheaply. It brought an end to the millinery industry, which had been one of the few businesses a respectable woman could run.

1920s dresses were also on display.

 Sheer fabrics with amazing beading.

 Amazing silver Art Deco beading on what appeared to be panne velvet.

 A sheer dress with embellishment worn over a colored chemise. Brassieres were optional.

We watched a film showing fashion shows and Hollywood film influences on fashion.

tatted hats

The exhibit runs through August 30, 2016.

Rejecting tradition and embracing more body-conscious styles, the young American "flapper" wore her newly won freedom to vote, earn, and learn on her body: short dresses and clear stockings, bobbed hair, and a head-hugging cloche. The cloche - a bell-shaped hat considered "clever" and "smart" - framed the face with fashionable Art Deco panache. Explore how American women of the 1920s and '30s used consumer goods to become modern.