The early history of mail-order catalogs

By | June 11th, 2021|Categories: Fashion, History of the home, Old West, Victorian Era, Women's History|Tags: , , |

You might think that you can purchase any and all things you might be able to think of through your Amazon Prime app. A hundred a fifty years ago this is what people were thinking as they turned the pages of the recent Sears catalog. But instead of a few taps, sought-after items were requested [...]

Emilie Flöge: a woman to be remembered

By | April 8th, 2021|Categories: Fashion, Women's History|Tags: , |

When I met with Murdoch Mysteries costume designer Joanna Syrokomla earlier this year, I asked her about her favorite women from history and she mentioned Emilie Flöge, particularly for her fashion sense. Always curious about trendsetters from the early 1900s, I read up on Flöge and quickly became a fan. She was an early female [...]

As American as apple pie: The 1939 World's Fair World of Fashion

By | March 13th, 2021|Categories: Fashion, Women's History|Tags: , , |

Fashion today is largely presented to the public by showing how it looks on live humans. But it wasn’t always that way. Before the 1900s, mannequins, dolls, and drawings were used to give buyers an idea of what the final product would look like once on. The first fashion show is believed to have taken [...]

How straw hats became shabby chic

By | March 5th, 2021|Categories: Edwardian Era, Edwardian Fashion, Fashion, Hats, Regency Era, Victorian Fashions|Tags: , , |

Does anyone else feel that it has been a long winter? It really is great to have the sun shining and to know that warmer days are ahead. It has me thinking about afternoons in the sun and relaxing under wide-brimmed hats with Aperol spritzes without a care in the world. All of this daydreaming [...]

A short history of the hand muff, one of history's cutest accessories

By | December 15th, 2020|Categories: Accessories, Fashion, Victorian Era, Victorian Fashions, Women's History|Tags: , , , |

Last year I wrote about the various ways that women and families stayed warm during the cold months in Victorian times. I mentioned the little-known use of hot ceramic bottles sometimes placed in a hand muff and said that I’d love to come back to write more about this particular fashion accessory. Well, hand muffs [...]