Some people like to dress up, and some people don’t. Personally, nothing makes me feel more regal and confident than a full skirt with a petticoat underneath. Besides this, most of the fashion trends that I have studied involve women’s clothing that required a petticoat to wear properly, yet I have never done much reading [...]
We recently heard from a customer who wrote in to let the Recollections team know how much she was enjoying her new jacket. We always love hearing from happy customers, but when we learned that the jacket had been purchased to wear at the Port Townsend Victorian festival that she was helping to organize, we [...]
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, readers! This is an extra special year for this holiday as many local celebrations are being held for the first time in two years. We would like to celebrate along with you and have put together a fun roundup of articles, historical images, videos, and vintage recipes for you to browse [...]
I thought a post on the early history of bookmobiles would be of interest to our readers. I quickly found when beginning my research a couple of weeks ago, however, that it is a longer and more complex history than I ever thought. After digging and digging (and digging!) I decided that my favorite aspect [...]
Well - each time I think I have gone down my favorite rabbit hole researching a blog post for Recollections I quickly find myself tearing myself out of another one. I have planned to do a post this week on Easter bonnets for about a year now, and when I began, it sure was hard [...]
I love parasols. They are dainty, delicate, and automatically find you feeling demure when using one. While still in use today, they very much peaked in popularity in the Victorian era, when they were seen as status symbols, indications of a sense of style, and yet another flirting tool. I have been looking forward to [...]
The travel bug has bitten me once again! I have been a world traveler my entire adult life and found it challenging to stay put the last two years, though I did gain a lot from doing so. My first trip since the beginning of the pandemic was my glorious Christmas holiday to Tombstone Monument [...]
The Gilded Age included dynamics that had never been seen before in American society. The combination of enormous amounts of new wealth and rapid industrial advancements created a brand new way of life for many families. One of these new ways of life was an international lifestyle and more American families living a life of [...]
When many of us think about Gilded Age fashions we think of over-the-top evening gowns, bustles, and pure opulence. While these types of styles may have dominated the fashion world of the early Gilded Age, by the end of the century an entirely new look was trending: tailored suits. Made for everything from walking to [...]