Friday Video: Food Shopping Tips for 1950

Interior, Marden-Abbott Store
Strawbery Banke Museum

Loretta reports:

Today's video called to me because I grew up living behind the shop, that is to say, behind a small Mom and Pop store. In those days, what today we’d call a convenience store was "the corner store," which Worcesterites called a spa—and no, I have no idea why.

The main articles on offer at our place were canned goods, bread, milk, soda, cigarettes, and penny candy—and then, a few years after the store opened, there was a snack bar, too, which became very popular. In any case, neither our shop nor even the supermarkets, as they were then, were anything like today's mega-super-duper-supermarkets. A tangerine was about as exotic as things got in the produce aisle.

Though my parents set up shop a decade or so later than today’s video, we girls learned these same shopping principles, at home and in Home Economics classes. No, the boys weren’t taught, although, if the video offers a clue, they could have used the lessons.

Image: Interior of Marden-Abbott Store (WWII era)  at Strawbery Bank Museum, courtesy me.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Fashions for September 1880

View at source here

Loretta reports:

September is the month of the fashion magazines’ gigantic issues.  In keeping with that tradition, I present not one, not two, but a whole bunch of fashions, for the late Victorian era.  While I’m learning to appreciate the mid-19th century fashions, I find the last quarter of the Victorian era more alluring, very likely because of the narrower, form-fitting line and the emphasis on booty.

You may want to compare and contrast today’s image with those I posted for June 1877 to note the change in shape.  You might find it interesting as well to compare the plates with actual dresses, from the 1870s (here) and 1880 (here), which I photographed at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH.

Read at source here

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the captions will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed—this month’s lengthy fashion description really needs enlarging.

Return Engagement: A 1954 Prom Dress

Loretta reporting,

Continuing my report on the Strawbery Banke Museum exhibition, Thread: Stories of Fashion at Strawbery Banke, 1740-2012:*

Another delight was this pink prom dress from 1954.  The dress is described as a “pink synthetic lace creation with its strapless flounced dress and bolero-style jacket.”

According to the museum guides, the living room was furnished from Sears Roebuck.  In other words, the room and dress represent a style not of lords and ladies or celebrities, but everyday people.  The display included a wedding portrait of Pat Brackett, the woman who wore this dress to her high school prom.  Unfortunately, my camera was feeling ill that day, and my close-up photo of that part of the room was not in focus—a fact I failed to notice until I saw it full size on my computer.  (But there’s still time to see the exhibit for yourself if you’re in the area.)

This style of décor might be familiar to some of our readers.  Can you tell what that thing is between the two photographs behind the dress?  Do you know what piece of furniture the photographs are sitting on?

*Previous posts are here and here.

A Silk Dress for 1880

Loretta reports:

While late Victorian fashion is definitely unfamiliar territory for me, I’m drawn to its silhouette and complex construction—as in this 1880 dress.  Part of the Strawbery Banke Museum exhibition, Thread: Stories of Fashion at Strawbery Banke, 1740-2012,* it appears in a house interpreted for the time period.  I wasn’t able to get a profile photograph, but it's safe to assume a bustle was in use.

A farmer’s daughter married in June 1880 to the Assistant Post Master of Portsmouth wore this on the day after the wedding.  “Her complicated ensemble is made from silk, including a removable gathered train.”

The 1880 day ensembles in my 80 Godey’s full-Color Fashion Plates 1828-1880 show a tightly encased upper body and hips.  Jackets fasten snugly from hips up to neck, and the neckline is high, with either a mandarin style collar like this one or ruffles above a fold-over collar. 

While trying to learn about this fashion development, I came upon an interesting comment regarding the tiny waists of the 19th century.  The author of Victorian and Edwardian Fashion quotes Doris Langley Moore’s The Woman in Fashion:  “‘A distinction should be made between actual and corset measurements, because stays, as ordinarily worn, do not meet at the back.  Young girls, especially, derive intense satisfaction from proclaiming the diminutive size of their corset.  Many purchase 18 and 19 inch stays, who must leave them open 2, 3, and 4 inches.’”  Moore is quoted again in Valerie Steele’s** more recent The Corset: A Cultural History, which adds:  “‘Fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen inch waists are glibly chattered about, as though they were common enough . . . [yet] we question whether it is a physical possibility for women to reduce their natural waist measure below seventeen or eighteen inches.’”  Ms. Steele notes that a Guiness Book of Records winner proved it’s physically possible—but it’s not necessarily common, except among fetishists.  Since I can’t do justice to the topic in a short post, interested Nerdy History Persons might want to peruse Chapter 4 of Ms. Steele’s book.

*Previous posts are here, here, and here.
**Late-breaking news:  Ms Steele will be speaking at the Designers and Books Fair at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC on 27 October.

An 1870s silk dress

Loretta reports:

As promised previously, here’s more from my visit to the Strawbery Banke Museum exhibition, Thread: Stories of Fashion at Strawbery Banke, 1740-2012.

The descriptions in the show are not nearly so detailed as those I’ve presented from La Belle Assemblée and Ackermann’s Repository.  This beautiful dress—perhaps my favorite item in the show—is simply described as an “off-white silk brocade dress with a square neckline, and a bodice boned with eleven stays.  The look is sweetly decorated with a leaf and ferns patterns [sic] and heart shaped leaves.”  Dated at about 1875, the dress belonged to a Portsmouth lady.

Cunnington* describes the 1870s change in style thus:  “Woman seems to have stepped out of her dress and to be standing in front of it, clothed in corset and petticoat.  The device imparted to the ballroom the intimate charm of the bedroom, ‘suggesting that the wearer has forgotten some portion of her toilette.  Few husbands or fathers would allow their wives or daughters to appear in public thus undressed.’”

“Undressed?!!!” you say.  One could understand some people being shocked by the thin, slim muslin dresses of the early 1800s.  But this?  Yet the style met with disapproval, and even the ladies admitted it was a little strange.  One critic said, “ ‘Fashion is now going from the ridiculous to the shameful . . . presenting [the female form’s] outlines almost as distinctly as those of an uncovered statue.’”

I was scratching my head for a time.  Then, it occurred to me that a woman’s natural hip dimensions had not been visible since the 1820s.  For fifty years—more than a generation—her bottom half was shaped like a bell, and her top half had been hidden under pelerines and shawls.  The lines of fashion had turned her into two triangles, more or less.  Now . . . woo, woo!  And lots of action in the booty.

*C. Willett Cunnington, English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century.


                                                                                                                                                     

The Corner Store in WWII

Loretta reports:

Last week two writer friends and I paid a visit to the Strawbery Banke Museum in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  We were there to check out an exhibit of historical clothing, Thread: Stories of Fashion at Strawbery Banke, 1740-2012, about which you will hear more anon.

The clothing, rather than being displayed in one space, as is usual in such exhibitions, appeared in different houses, depending on which historical period it belonged to.  At Strawbery Banke, that covers quite a stretch of time:

 “The 10-acre site, with its authentically restored houses and shops,* period gardens, and costumed role players, presents the daily lives of ordinary people who lived here - from Colonial times to World War II, from the mundane to the elegant, from economic boom to war time austerity.”

En route to the 1950s, we paused at the Marden-Abbott Store, whose era is WWII . . . and stayed for a while—yes, my friends are history nerds, too—studying the goods, the signs, the packaging.  It was interesting to see how many products we’d still find on grocery shelves today, and how many items have not changed their packaging at all.  Though it was before my time, the environment wasn’t unfamiliar.  It reminded me of the Mom & Pop stores that used to be much commoner than they are now.

*You can read more about the Heritage Houses at the Strawbery Bank Museum Heritage Houses blog.