Old Fashioned

 Take my word for it, you can't find a synonym for old fashioned that makes it sound any better. I know, I tried. There's stodgy, musty, passé and worse. The best I could come up with was timeless.

I'm not talking about the cocktail but did find it interesting that the Old Fashioned remains the top selling classic cocktail internationally. No, I'm talking about myself.

Every year during high school Prom season I think about posting this picture of me before my senior prom. This is the year I do it.

 

Taken in 1961 in my parents' living room, here I am in the dress I begged my mother to make after not finding one I loved as much as I had loved the one bought for my junior prom. Prom dress styles were becoming less bouffant but I still wanted an old fashioned one. 

I asked Beth, a talented girlfriend, to draw the one I dreamed of and she nailed it.

 

My 23 inch waist (up an inch since my junior prom) didn't do justice to Beth's design but Mama did her best and combined two Vogue patterns and yards of material. My curly hair didn't do well in a french twist so Mama's hair stylist pulled it to the side in the best Southern Belle style she could. RH had the florist make up a pink rose wrist corsage and one for my hair.

I  adored it and thought Mama was a genius but it has to be said, none of my three younger sisters ever wore it to their proms.

If you need proof that I am even more old fashioned now, here's a picture that proves it.

 

That's right, I collect Vera Bradley purses. Hey, they used to be popular with women other than grandmothers. High school girls even carried them!

I bought the black and purple one on the bottom years ago in Dillard's because my shoulder was hurting and I couldn't take the weight of a leather handbag. And it wasn't cheap!

By the way, that's our dear Otis and Milo there beside the purses, in heaven since 2017.

Last year I found the green and black one, shown on top, at the Goodwill and decided it was just right for spring, and retired the black and purple one for winter's use. And then last summer I found the white and blue one at Goodwill and it became my summer purse. It has a few worn spots but then so do I.

Next came the purse that would complete my seasonal collection, an autumnal olive green and brown Vera Bradley, brand new and found at Goodwill.

Notice the pretty birds in the pattern and the cute tortoiseshell-like toggle?

 Life was complete. I now had a Vera Bradley purse for each season. There was no reason to go by the handbag section at Goodwill. Until they moved it right by the checkout lane.

And there she was, a like new gorgeous purse that surely had to be a Vera.

Oh, it was lined with red cherries and poppies!

But where was the Vera Bradley tag?

 

There it was, my July and August Vera Bradley purse! Just when I thought my search for Vera purses was over, it occurred to me that there could possibly be a MONTHLY collection out there waiting for me.

Yes, I'm old fashioned--stodgy, musty, and passé. But I still go weak-kneed when I look at pretty clothes and confess to following three or four YouTube fashion influencers.

Do you do that? It's not that I watch them for ideas of clothes to buy. I'm too stodgy for that but a girl can always dream.

Here's a dream dress I fell in love with last fall when it was shown in a Garden & Gun November issue (from Lela Rose in Dallas).

 

Who knows why a particular dress wins the heart of a woman just about to leave behind the seventh decade of her life, but this dress won mine.

Notice how the neckline falls just below the collar bone (clavicle)? Once upon a time, for my senior prom, I had a pretty collar bone, one you could see, and a 23 inch waist. 

I may be old fashioned and have misplaced my waist and collar bone but I still love a pretty dress.

Wear one for me, will you?

 

Seattle, Washington Fall Fashions, 1955

 

Mrs. Hoge Sullivan wears a Ben Reig suit of salt and pepper tweed while she rides the miniature railroad at the Woodland Park Zoo with her daughter Mary Lou. 

This was about all that Town & Country wrote about this beautiful woman in their 1955 August issue but the internet yielded much more. 

1) The fashion designer Ben Reig was called dean of the New York Couture Group. 

2) Her husband served in Africa and Italy during WW II. And he was the first manager of Seattle's Space Needle! 

3) I found an earlier picture on eBay that was no longer for sale of Mrs. J. Hoge Sullivan and her daughter Mary Lou! 

I love her swimsuit!

 

Mrs. Gordon Ingham wears a B. H. Wragg jumper ensemble of Shamokin wool at the Seattle Yacht Club. 

1) B. H. Wragg was famous at that time for its separates to be mixed and matched, the fabrics often designed by famous artists.

2) Upon the passing of our model above at the age of 77, The Seattle Times wrote about how she (then Annette Ingham Lobb) and Gordon Ingham met. Her father took her abroad "to discourage an undesirable suitor." 

The plot twisted: Young Gordon Ingham, a fellow passenger, proposed on Dal Lake in the Vale of Kashmir. She accepted. They stayed married until his death in 1988.

Gordon and Annette raised four sons and were active in many charitable causes. But what really intrigued me was that she was a prolific although unpublished poet. I love what Annette said:

I would like to have been a really good writer, but I know I am not. But I like to write, and so I do...it's good therapy.

And amen!

 

 Mrs. Thomas A. Davies is the great-granddaughter of one of Seattle's founders and is program director of the Seattle Art Museum Guild.  She's wearing a dressmaker suit of Lesur wool (one of the best quality fabrics of the 1960s).

I couldn't find anything else out about Mrs. Davies but there is plenty about her great-grandfather, David Thomas Denny, a member of the Denny Party that traveled by covered wagon to Oregon, and then by ship to Seattle, landing September 25, 1851.

 

 

Mrs. William L. Green is shown at the Seattle Flower Mart wearing a box-pleated suit of red wool by Henry Frechtel. I came to a dead end with Mrs. Green but Oh, how I would love to go to the Seattle Flower Mart! And Pinterest is full of models wearing beautiful Henry Frechtel designs.

 

I love the photo above! First of all that automobile. Look at all the leg room! Next, that suit!

Mrs. Lawrence H. Arnold arrives at Canlis Charcoal Broiler with her husband in a Packard Patrician. She wears British worsted by Irene. 

1) There was hardly a leading lady in Hollywood in the 1930s who was not dressed by Irene! And in the early 1960s Doris Day film Midnight Lace, that gorgeous black lace outfit was designed by Irene.

2) Canlis is Seattle's landmark fine dining destination, the most upscale dining experience there. It is still owned by the same family, in a midcentury-modern house. The "old-school posh" restaurant is temporarily closed of course but I got hungry just looking at pictures of the food plates on their website. 

3) Mr. Arnold died in 1962 of cancer and a library was donated in his memory, and that of his mother, to the Hutch, world known institute for cancer research. 

 

Mrs. Charles Callahan is at the Seattle Tennis Club wearing a casual tweed dress by Mollie Parnis. Parnis dressed two presidents' wives, Mamie Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson. 

 

 

Mrs. Walter P. Shiel, Jr., the former Barbara Jean Harlow, is watching the Kalakala Ferry at Coleman Dock. She is wearing a coat of Anglo tweed by Frank Gallant who designed coats and suits for Saks, Lord and Taylor, etc. I found Barbara Jean as a 12 year old in the 1940 census. 

 

Not a very good picture but I love the neckline of Mrs. Peter Barrett's cocktail dress of silk and rayon satin by Ceil Chapman that she is wearing at the Seattle Yacht Club. 

Ceil Chapman designed glamorous cocktail and party dresses in the 1940s to 1960s. She was Marilyn Monroe's favorite designer. She designed Elizabeth Taylor's trousseau in 1950 for her wedding to Conrad Hilton.

 

I'll end my three 1955 fashion posts from Town & Country with a dress for the young. Miss Sally Jensen and Mr. George Philip Koon are at the Olympic Hotel. Her ballgown is white lace over ombré shades of tulle by Howard Greer who designed for Katharine Hepburn. I found plenty of Koon family members in Seattle but nothing specifically for George. I did find a Sally Jensen in the 1940 census, which would have made her 18 in 1955. That sounds about right.

The magazine said this about Seattle in 1955:

It is a sleeves-up city which enjoys meeting new challenges and takes a fierce pride in solving its own problems without government assistance.

 I didn't make that up, folks. I promise. 

 

Going to Princeton, 1955

 

I can't even imagine this era.

If my son was going to Princeton in 1955, I would send him off in a Cadillac Eldorado? Perhaps a prop, perhaps not. And he and his fellow classmates would wear a tie with shirt and sports coat? And of course there were no women matriculating with them, not until fourteen years later. 

This time I'm not going to give the name of the young man on the left with his face turned away from the camera because my research into him ended on a sad note. Just eight years later in 1963 he died. His mother helped an art museum's acquisition fund in memorial of her son. I couldn't help wondering if he lost his life in the Vietnam War.

But he certainly looks handsome in his Jackman & Sons all-wool bouclé sports coat, $90. 

His friend on the right is George Sumter Schreyer, wearing a hound's-tooth-check sports coat of fine cashmere, $135, also by Jackman & Sons. His hat is a Jaguar by Knox, $15. I remember that Knox label inside my father's hats. You would think that a name like Mr. Schreyer's would have brought some results on the internet but there was nothing I could connect with him.

The young man on the left above is Thomas C. Murray wearing an oxford-gray cheviot Chesterfield with velvet collar, $89. There were far too many Thomas C. Murrays on the internet to discover what this Thomas did after college.

But I think I can safely guess that the Princeton student in the center, Daniel C. Rebhun, Jr., may be the man of the same name who wed a Miss Carruthers on December 30, 1956. He "wears a British warm in classic woolen, $125.

I didn't even attempt trying to research the remaining young man, not with a name like Charles E. Moore. He wears a Shetland tweed sports coat, $65. All of the above men's fashions were from Rogers Peet, New York. Rogers Peet was bought by Arrow in 1962. 

 

 These three young men above are wearing Shetland jackets by Grieco, $75 and up. The first one is Thomas W. Pettus, Jr. in a deep gray flannel with Lovat stripe. I think he possibly was married to Miss Diana Brewster, of Barnard, in May of 1961 at St. Bartholomews but the marriage must not have lasted as she seems to have remarried later.

The man in the center is C. Carter Walker, Jr. wearing a gray herringbone worsted suit. I found his obituary online and he seemed to have lived a long and worthwhile life. Member of Class of 1956 of Princeton, serving three years in the Navy, an athlete all his life. 

I loved this sentence in his obituary: "Carter and Julia took New York by storm." He and Julia were married 50 years until she died nearly a decade earlier than him, philanthropists all their marriage. And then this nice tribute: "Carter was a charitable, charming southern gentleman, who always put his family first." 

What a nice man!

Maybe it was just as well I couldn't find anything definite on the Princeton student on the right in the picture. I mean, who could top what I found for Carter! But James C. Crimmins is wearing a brown-black herringbone cheviot. I'm not sure what a cheviot is other than the fabric is from Cheviot sheep? 

All of these photographs are from the August 1955 issue of Town & Country, as were those from the previous post. 

I have one more fashion post from this issue that I'll share next. I'll go back to the women of 1955...the women of Seattle, Washington. And I've just begun researching them, already finding fascinating information on the internet about the real life models of the article.

I don't know if these 1955 fashion posts are of real interest to anyone else but it has made for some happy moments for me.

What an era! 

 

 

wrote about here...

New York Fall Fashions, 1955

 Some of my favorite magazines from my collection of vintage women's magazines are the fashion mags...Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Town & Country. 

And now that I can only fantasize about dressing up and going somewhere, I love paging through the old magazines that showed the fashions of my mother and grandmother's past. 

When I looked through my 1955 Town & Country I was reminded of the wool suits my mother made, beautifully tailored.

These two young women are posed on the George Washington Bridge. Mrs. Serge Sarasin, on the left,  wears a tunic suit in City Tweed by Davidow. I found there are still beautiful vintage Davidow suits for sale online.

I have to admit to snooping on the internet when I find the names of the models in my old magazines. Partly because I love researching for its own sake and partly because I'm nosy curious. 

1955 was a time when women were introduced by their husband's name with a Mrs. in the front. I learned that Mrs. Sarasin was Sue C. Nelms before her marriage in 1952. I love her tunic suit and her pretty red purse and gloves.

I have a thing about gloves, wrote about them in a post here in "The Shorter the Sleeves, the Longer the Gloves."  

The woman on the right in the bridge photo is Mrs. John S. Radway, wearing a beautiful blue suit of British Linton tweed, carrying a matching coat. I wasn't able to find out more about her but Linton tweeds are still being produced in England.

The next two models are posed at The Cloisters in New York, home of Medieval art and the famous Unicorn tapestry. The Cloisters have been used for backdrop in many movies, including my friend Tammy's favorite, Portrait of Jennie.

 Jane B. Gillespie, above, wears a three-quarters length coat and matching skirt of Anglo tweed by William Devitz. I wish more of these fashion shots were in color because when I googled both Anglo fabrics and the designer William Devitz I found the most beautiful colors and vintage clothing for sale online. Alas, I could not find further news of Miss Gillespie online.

 

 I love the fitted look of this suit above of Pinehurst hand-woven fabric by Bellciano that Cynthia Brooks Towell wears. I couldn't trace Cynthia any further but I'm guessing she was petite as Bellciano was known for their Bellciette line for women under 5 foot, 5 inches.

Town & Country described this suit as a taileur, meaning a suit meant for town wear. I love that word!

 

Let me introduce you to Mrs. Charles A. Dana, Jr., shown at her New Canaan, CT home. She's wearing a John Barr tissue tweed suit. I couldn't find out what tissue tweed is but it sounds as if it would be very soft and comfortable. 

I drew a blank at the fashion designer but discovered that Mrs. Dana was the former Eleanor Waters Langhorne and she and Charles were married in 1951 at Park Avenue Methodist Church. And Mr. Dana was head of the Dana Foundation that contributed to many worthy causes including a cancer institute.

I wish the magazine had given the name of her beautiful dog!

 

Our last model is my favorite, look at that smile! 

She was described as being Mrs. Thomas Morgan Schriber, the former Holly Seelbach, chair of the New Canaan, Connecticut Junior Red Cross. 

She is wearing a coat of O'llegro by Claire McCardell. I found out that fashion designer Claire McCardell is credited with first creating American sportswear for women. She inspired many of today's top designers and believed that women's clothing should "be practical and sturdy as well as feminine."

I found Holly's obituary and her picture shows that beautiful smile.

 Evidently Hilde (Holly) Seelbach Henderson Schriber Rohde graduated from Wellesley, married a Mr. Henderson and had two children and then was widowed during WW II. In 1947 she married Thomas Morgan Schriber and they had two children, the youngest who must be the small son shown with her in the picture.

I was fascinated reading that Hilde (Holly) Rohde (her second husband had also passed away and she remarried a third time) co-owned The Yarn Tree in New Canaan "where she sold yarns, and designed and knit sweaters and needlepoint."

This lovely woman with the radiant smile passed away this past May 27, 2020, "quietly at her home in New Canaan."

Her story and her smile touched my heart.

There are two more main fall fashion stories in this 1955 issue of Town & Country that I want to post about this month, one about what young men wore to college then--oh, how the times have changed--and one about the women of a city that has been much in the news lately. 

Vintage Fall fashions are my favorite, that is until Christmas fashions come along. 

All Dressed Up

 

                                            [ad from Harper's Bazaar September 1942]

 

I'm all dressed up with no place to go.

      Even put on my favorite chapeau.

No church, no theater,

     No Frist Art Museum.

Can't visit Mamam and Papa,

     Not in this world, dear me.

So I'll fly away to Paris

     And join Armand and Reine-Marie.

I'm told they're wise as ever

     Via mon cher Louise.

Home sweet home is nice for PJs and jeans,

     But for really dressing up there's always Paree.

 

Wishing you all a good book and time to read it.

 

 

     

Furs Again, Princess Marina of Greece, Mama in Greece

On November 3, 2016, I wrote a post here called "The Shorter the Sleeves, the Longer the Gloves," and had a photo of myself wearing my mother's silver mink stole on my honeymoon many decades ago. 

When I found the photograph above, another one RH took of me on our honeymoon, it reminded me that I had intended to do a followup discussion of furs. With the move back to Tennessee not long after that it never got written.

What better time for it than now during the bitterly cold weather across much of the U.S. and Canada?

In comments at the old post, here, many friends wrote of still wearing fur coats or jackets in cold weather, especially ones from consignment stores even if they might not buy new ones now. 

One woman even wrote that she had once lived in the Yukon and wore fur, where I would guess it makes not just perfect sense to wear them but good plain horse sense also. I imagine there may have been many women in the Chicago area who wore theirs this week, if they ventured outside. 

Deborah of The Beautiful Matters wrote that she had some fur collars she loves found at consignment stores and I thought of her when I spotted this one at a local antique mall after Christmas that was 50% off and cost me a big $10.

I could not resist that bargain and it feels so soft and warm around my neck and reminds me of the mouton fur collars my girlfriends and I wore in high school with sweater sets and form-fitting wool skirts with kick-pleats. We really dressed up for school back then.

I don't know if I'll ever get up my nerve to wear it anywhere but if I do I think I'll buy a piece of soft lining satin to line it with. There's even a little hook and eye at the neckline that is broken so I need to replace that.

Before you ask where is a picture of me wearing it or my mother's mink stole now, here it is...

                                     Ha!

And that's all you're going to see of me in it for now because a jillion attempted selfies did nothing but show how frizzy my freshly shampooed hair was and that I badly needed to visit a professional makeup artist first.

I splurged on a good haircut in downtown Nashville a couple of weeks ago so I will show you pictures the stylist took of me afterwards, even though lipstick was all I'd taken time for that day.

Why can't I blow dry my hair that smoothly? I've decided that RH needs to go to hair salon school so he can do it every morning for me. And learn to be a makeup artist. Don't you think he should do that?

Then I could wear my mother's 60-year-old mink stole almost as elegantly as Princess Marina of Greece did in the picture below in 1934 in Vogue magazine when she was about to be married to H. R. H. Prince George of England.

Her fur is an ermine cape from Molyneux, who also designed her wedding gown. Isn't it gorgeous?

I treasure the old Vogue magazines in my collection and can spend hours reading every single word in them, even the advertisements, and swooning over the beautiful clothes and furs. 

After reading the article about the princess, I talked to Greek-Canadian girlfriend Poppy about her and she told me lots of interesting things about this princess of Greece and Denmark who after her marriage was a beloved member of the British Royal Family until she died in 1963. (Poppy, I could not find the notes I took that day and if you happen to read this, please add in what you remember!)

I wish so much that I had a photo of my mother wearing her mink stole but my sisters and I couldn't find a single one of her in it for this post. We still remember how exciting it was when our father surprised Mama with it and how perfectly elegant she looked in it, the silver fur lovely with her hair that was dark as a raven's breast.

Another surprise came to Mama much later in life when her sister invited her on a Mediterranean cruise. On it she had the joy of visiting Greece herself. I have a copy of her itinerary and read it again today.

She arrived in Athens in October of 1997 aboard the Orient Lines' the Ocean Majesty, which I understand is now operated by a German cruise line. 

She and her sister Marty toured Athens for two days and then went back to the ship for ports of call at Delos and Mykonos and then on to Santorini. They also traveled to Rhodes and to Kusadasi and then on to Istanbul.

Here is a photo of her at Santorini...

I'm so grateful that my dear mother, the first Dewena, who I was named for, was given the opportunity for this trip of a lifetime by her sister. What a great time they had with lots of stories to tell us!

My mother had four sisters and they were all very close, seeing each other as often as they could. That's when the fun really happened. Oh, those sister parties at Myrtle Beach! Only Mama, the oldest of the five girls, and June, the baby sister, are are here with us now, the three middle girls now in their heavenly home. 

Here is Mama sitting next to her mother, with three of her four sisters, celebrating my grandmother's birthday. 

I've thought a lot about these beautiful women while writing this post. I grew up in the elegant age of the 1940s, 1950s and early 60s and remember how beautiful my mother and aunts were, dressed up in their finest. 

Whatever our view of wearing fur is now, we all must admit that the early part of the 20th century was certainly a glamorous age, wasn't it?

I never could see why women could be seduced with jewels, but, oh, I'm sorry for those who are tempted too far by furs! I should like to be swathed in them.

Agnes Sligh Turnbull (1941)

I don't care what they say: I love fur; I read National Enquirer; I rarely recycle; I think Prince Charles and Camilla deserve to be happy.

Julia Reed in an interview on

wowowow.com

Those Were the Days

On a lovely September day of 1963 at 12 noon, I turn off my IBM Selectric typewriter in the Research and Statistics Department, put away the papers I've typed that morning for the latest questionnaire that will go to the printing department, take my purse out of the lower drawer of my desk and stand up to leave for my lunch hour.

I stop by the ladies room first and tell the other girls that I'm skipping lunch in the cafeteria to shop at Cain-Sloan for stockings as I'm wearing my last pair with no runs. I borrow some Aqua Net and then brush off the shoulders of the black sheath my mother made for me out of polished black cotton.

It is warm enough outside for a sleeveless dress but against the rules for me to wear one at the religious publishing house where I work. Needless to say, pants are not allowed either. 

I go to the elevator and soon am out on the sidewalk hurrying along. Five or six blocks later I am at Cain-Sloan and hurry inside to the stocking counter as I plan to go downstairs for a tuna fish stuffed tomato before returning to work.

There is one saleslady available and I tell her my size and she pulls out four thin boxes, opens the lids and spreads apart crisp tissue paper. I point to the tan, darker than what I wear, and she carefully slides her hand inside a sheer pair.

I envy her manicure, shake my head and say I'll have three pairs of the nude, knowing tan is too dark for my pale legs. I present my charge card and we conclude our transaction, smiling at each other, one lady dressed in black to another.

I wish I have time for lunch in the Iris Room--and my mother there to pay for it--but instead hurry to the basement lunch counter. As I walk back to work on this September day, a hint of fall in the air, I know I look slim in my black sheath dress, my Maidenform panty girdle not really needed except that it is proper and expected, and its fasteners hold my stockings in place better than the garter belt I wore in high school days. 

I fairly fly along Church Street in my black leather high heels. And my feet don't hurt even the least bit when I push open the doors to go inside, five minutes before I'm due back at my typewriter.

Think of that!

You might ask why I didn't wear pantyhose instead of stockings?

It took me years to switch to pantyhose. Why?

Picture this day:

I am excited to be wearing pantyhose for the first time. I swing up out of my new red MG Midget after parking on the roof at work, feeling very sophisticated and free of a hot panty girdle. 

I hurry along to the roof elevator when the dreaded thing happens. My hose begin to creep down. By the time I enter the elevator they are around my thighs. Off the elevator I take mincing steps, pressing my knees together. 

I pass the cafeteria and realize I am not going to make it much further without them puddling around my ankles. I go into the nurse's office and tell her my predicament. She solves the problem and for the rest of the day I carefully maneuver around the office with four safety pins holding my new pantyhose to my slip.

And so I threw the pantyhose out and returned to my panty girdle and stockings until pantyhose was much improved, probably about the time they came in white plastic eggs and were sold in grocery stores.

But what I wouldn't give for just one more day of shopping in Cain-Sloan in downtown Nashville at 5th and Church, my mother along to whip out her charge card and my father there to take me and my little sisters into the record department where we would pick out new records and go into a booth to listen to them.

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end......

A Violet Easter

I adore violets!

Usually in full bloom by the end of March here,

this year they're just beginning.

R.H. snapped these last year,

getting close as a grasshopper.

His pictures make me want to paint a room violet.

They make me long for an Easter corsage of violets.

Why did corsages go out of fashion?

When I was growing up they were de regieur

for every special occasion.

My mother would have looked stunning in this

gray silk shantung taffeta suit in 1951.

She would have easily made it from the 

Vogue Design No. 7310.

The green hat by Irene would have been

perfect on her soft black hair.

And my father might have ordered
a violet corsage for her
instead of the usual orchid.

This photograph was taken c. 1959
of my beautiful mother.
She still is beautiful at 90.