If you look for information online about the fashions of the 1950s, you will be bombarded with blog posts and photographs about Dior’s iconic “New Look” and black and white images from high fashion magazines. What is harder to locate is information about what I consider to be a jewel of fashion history: clothing worn [...]
Last weekend I picked up the April copy of Real Simple. The theme for the issue is naturally, spring cleaning. It got me thinking about how this tradition has been around for so long and wondering how much I could find in Victorian household manuals on the topic. I am also striving to use more [...]
I think that I could look at old copies of The Farmer’s Wife Magazine all day long. They are an idyllic time capsule of the past, and of a yearning on behalf of so many Americans to hold onto a way of life that was slowly becoming obsolete. It is also fascinating to see the [...]
Part Two How are your Thanksgiving dinner plans coming along? Are you planning to do things differently this year? I am looking forward to a cozy solo holiday weekend of gluten-free pumpkin pie, books, and some nice red wine. I will also be having a virtual cook-off of sorts with a couple of friends in [...]
I am a big fan of the 1950s. The clothing, the decor, the many things we would now consider kitschy. I LOVE poodle skirts and have a goal to create a new tradition of wearing one each Christmas (the first poodle skirts had Christmas designs on them). It was fun for me to read about [...]
"To the unrefined or unbred, the visiting card is but a trifling and insignificant bit of paper; but to the cultured disciple of social law, it conveys a subtle and unmistakable intelligence. Its texture, style of engraving, and even the hour of leaving it combine to place the stranger, whose name it bears, in a [...]
Christmas on the Frontier must have been a very special time. Daily life for the entire family was a grind and a struggle. Scarce resources meant that everyone was used to life without frills and pretty low expectations about material goods. Living off of the land meant that a strict routine must be followed day [...]
Last week I wrote about Edwardian depictions of women and the threat that many men felt about women claiming more and more independence in the early 1900s. One of the common depictions was of a wife heading out of the house with the husband forced to stay at home and attend to the laundry. This, [...]
There are starting to be some warm days mixed in here and there with those that are still too chilly to enjoy being outdoors. Spring is upon us and the end of the frigid temperatures is in sight. In Victorian times, the end of winter meant that garden parties and picnics would soon be following, [...]