Farm Girls

Women on farms did wear a kind of uniform in the 1930s, during the depression and before the War: print cotton dresses, heeled oxford shoes (Cuban heels, these were called) or sandals, flat little sturdy hats, and very little jewelry. Below are women at a 4H fair, so dressed up a bit "for town". But …

Mean girls

Grace's life is undone, dismantled, broken apart when her husband Robert declares his undying love for his law partner, Sol. With the loss of their life partners, their social position, and their homes, Frankie, Sol's soon-to-be ex-wife, and Grace create their own unique bond of female friendship. In the Netflix series Grace and Frankie starring Jane …

Soliderettes

Don't worry, said the Washington Daily News  in May 1943. A "Soldierette" was a Land Army Girl, and she did not need to wear overalls -- she could wear a wrap-around skirt and "go feminine for farmhouse work." This gem is nested within a basket of terrific details in the online article, "To the Rescue …

Game, Blouses (part 3)

That's Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) just hopping over the fence to visit. Lamarr started in Hollywood films in 1937 and also started inventing all kinds of stuff. A born tinkerer, inventor, and mathematics whiz, during WWII Hedy and her husband developed a frequency-hopping system that "hopped" frequencies across radio waves in order to …

At War in the World: Women’s suit jackets of the 1940s

This Katniss is from the Mockingjay sequence of the trilogy: This Katniss is openly and actively knocking down the state, "ruining" Panem and the Capitol. This is a Katniss bent on destruction and resurrection. She's dressed for war. Deliberate, planned war. The designers for the third and fourth Hunger Games installments, Kurt and Bart, come …

Katniss at the Reaping: defenseless until called

Katniss's faded blue rayon dress tells us of the dire straits District 12 residents are under. The fabric limp and sagging after too many wearings and hand-washings, a shade too tight on actress Lawrence's body, and cheaply made, the dress echoes American fashions in 1939-1940, when the Depression was still hurting household budgets, and British fashions …

Suiting up in the 1990s

In 1988 Candice Bergen, a former model whose parents were a Powers fashion model and the world-famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, began the long-lived comedy series Murphy Brown. Murphy was a hard-edged reporter, and famously the television show was criticized by Dan Quayle, vice-president at the time. In 1992, Bergen, up for one of the many Emmys …