An Early History of the Bathing Suit 1900 - 1950

Hello Paper Dolls!

Summer is finally upon us! Here is an early history of the bathing suit:

1900:

By the end of the 19th century people were flocking to the oceanside beaches for popular seaside activities such as swimming, surf bathing, and diving. The clumsy Victorian-style bathing costumes were becoming burdensome. A need for a new style bathing suits that retained modesty but was free enough to allow the young lady to engage in swimming was obvious.


1910:

By 1910 bathing suits no longer camouflaged the contours of the female body. The yards of fabric used in Victorian bathing skirts and bloomers were reduced to show a little more of the figure and to allow for exposure to the sun.


1915:

Up until the first decades of the 20th century, the only activity for women in the ocean involved jumping through the waves while holding on to a rope attached to an off-shore bouy. By 1915, women athletes started to share the actual sport of swimming with men and thus began to reduce the amount of heavy fabric used in their billowing swimsuits.


1920s-30s:

By the early 1920s women’s bathing suits were reduced to a one piece garment with a long top that covered shorts. Though matching stockings were still worn, vintage swimwear began to shrink and more and more flesh was exposed from the bottom of the trunks to the tops of the stockings. By the mid-1920s Vogue magazine was telling its readers that “the newest thing for the sea is a jersey bathing suit as near a maillot as the unwritten law will permit.”


1940s: 

With elements like sweetheart necklines and ruching, bathing suits began to echo the era's dress styles — and become more flattering.


1946:


The first official bikini was introduced at a poolside fashion event in Paris. Rumor has it that inventor Louis Réard couldn't find a fashion model to wear it, so he hired a stripper, Micheline Bernardini. The skimpy suit was originally banned in Italy and Spain for indecency.



1950s: 

French actress Brigitte Bardot played a huge role in popularizing the bikini when she wore one to the 1953 Cannes Festival, and in some of her movies.

Stay tuned for part two of our history of the bathing suit that will cover the 1950's until today! Come to the shop to check out the retro style bathing suits and bikini's we carry so you can get sun in style this summer!

Sources:
http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/beauty/fashion/tips/g202/evolution-bathing-suit/?slide=10

http://www.victoriana.com/library/Beach/FashionableBathingSuits.htm

Celebrating Sideshow Sketch with a history of Burlesque and Sideshow!

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In celebration of the amazing Sideshow Sketch event we are blogging about the history of burlesque and sideshow. Sideshow Sketch will return to Brickhouse Brewery on March 4th and April 15th. Keep checking our Facebook page for updates! The drawings made during these events will be in our May art show so please be sure to make it out for that the first Friday of May!

Burlesque

American burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860's and evolved to feature ribald comedy

(lewd jokes) and female striptease. By the early 20th century, burlesque in America was presented as a populist blend of satire, performance art, music hall and adult entertainment, featuring striptease and broad comedy acts.

Today, Neo-Burlesque has taken many forms, but all have the common trait of honoring one or more of burlesque's previous incarnations, with acts including striptease, expensive costumes, bawdy humor, cabaret, and comedy/variety acts.There are modern burlesque performers and shows all over the world, and annual conventions such as the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival, the New York Burlesque Festival created by burlesque star Angie Pontani and Jen Gapay, and the Miss Exotic World Pageant are held. In 2008, The New York Times noted that burlesque had made a comeback in the city's art performance scene.

1868—Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes come to the United States. The group’s sexy variety show is believed to be the first American stage performance in which both featured performers as well as chorus girls appear in “nude” tights. The combination of underdressed females and satirical comedy makes for a hit. Thompson's first New York season grosses more than $370,000.

1898—Gold is discovered in the Yukon and Alaska. Burlesque dancers make their way to Dawson to work in the saloons. Performers like Diamond Lil, Nellie the Pig, Diamond-Tooth Gertie and Big Annie become legendary saloon girls.

1907—Florenz Ziegfeld, who just happened to be managing a strongman at the 1893 World's Fair, opens

Ziegfeld’s Follies in New York. The revue’s bevy of elaborately yet scantily clad showgirls ensures that the show runs until 1931.

1925—Under New York law, it is permissible for girls in shows staged by Ziegfeld, the Minsky brothers, George White and Earl Carroll to appear topless as long as they remain immobile. In a Minsky show at the National Winter Garden, Madamoiselle Fifi (née Mary Dawson from Pennsylvania) strips to the waist and then moves. The subsequent police raid inspires the book and film The Night They Raided Minsky’s.

1932—Thanks to the rise in “talkie” films, the historic Palace Theater in New York converts to a full-time movie house in November, marking for many the official death of the vaudeville circuit. Its raunchier cousin burlesque lives on—thanks in no small part to its endless parade of risqué striptease dancers.

1935—Fourteen major Broadway theaters are now burlesque houses.

1941—America's entry into World War II sparks another growth in burlesque popularity. Lonely soldiers energize the pinup industry and popularize overseas burlesque houses like London’s storied Windmill Theatre.

1955—Jennie Lee (“The Bazoom Girl”) and eight other dancers form the League of Exotic Dancers in Los

Angeles. According to a Los Angeles Times article, the girls “mildly threatened” to strike over the low minimum pay that striptease dancers received in the L.A. area. The dancers claimed L.A. was the chintziest of all the large cities at $85 a week; whereas other large cities paid a minimum of $125 a week. The nine dancers present at the initial meeting include: Jennie Lee, “Novita,” Betty Rowland, Rusty Lane, Virginia Valentine, Daurene Dare, Denise Dunbar, Peggy Stuart and “Champagne.”

1972—Fueled by the growth in all-nude strip clubs and the sudden mainstream popularity of X-rated films (Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door), burlesque goes into a prolonged hybernation.

1995—Ami Goodheart's “Dutch Weismann’s Follies” in New York and Michelle Carr’s Velvet Hammer Burlesque troupe in Los Angeles spur a revival called “Neo-Burlesque”—combining classic “pasties and a G-string” burly-q,

swing music, rockabilly, punk rock, tattoos, grrl power, lingerie, fetishism and a healthy dose of humor.

Alongside hundreds of other events and shows, this all brings us up to this year. Midnite Martini was crowned Miss Exotic World 2014. Dita Von Teese has also announced her semi-retirement. Now, the next generation are taking to the stage and teasing patrons, particularly across the US.

The Sideshow
1837: Waring, Raymond and Co. becomes the first circus to also advertise as a menagerie and museum of freaks.

1841: P. T. Barnum becomes the proprietor of the American Museum in New York City, at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street. He purchases and exhibits his first attraction: Joice Heth, the suposidly 161-year-old nurse of George Washington. The museum brings the “freak show” to prominence in the American popular amusement industry.

1880: Coney Island starts its own freak show. As of 2013, the act is still ongoing.

1903: Letter of complaint published by the New York World signed by representatives of the Barnum and Bailey Sideshow, addressed to James A. Bailey. It protested the use of the word “Freak” used in the advertisements of the slideshow hall.

1908: “Circus and Museum Freaks, Curiosities of Pathology,” the first scientific publication to condemn freak shows, appears in the journal,Scientific American.

1931 (September 18): Michigan bans the exhibition of “deformed human beings” in the act: 750.347 Deformed human beings; exhibition. Michigan is only one of a small handful of states that have outright banned freak shows, most states in the US still permit them.

1932: Tod Browning’s film Freaks was released. Using real-life “freaks” as many of its principle actors, this film was notable for presenting them in a sympathetic light. Though it failed at the box office and received many vehemently negative reviews, its revival in 1962 has since turned it into a cult classic.

Freak shows were popular attractions during the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries until changes in societal attitudes towards handicapped persons and tightening of local laws prohibiting “exhibition of deformed human beings” led to the decline of the freak show as a form of entertainment. Featuring attractions such as deformed humans and animals, unusual physical performers, “pickled punks” (abnormal fetuses preserved in glass jars), and occasional hoaxes (e.g. “bouncers” – fake pickled punks made from rubber), the freak show has captivated audiences since as early as the 16th century.

New Year's Eve in NYC: A Brief History of Bringing in the New Year!

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With the creation of standard time, time balls were invented so that sailors could adjust their chronometers, or timepieces, while at sea. With a telescope, they would scope the harbor and watch for a time ball to drop at a specific time, usually noon or 1 p.m. The first time ball was installed in 1829 in Portsmouth, England. The U.S. Naval Observatory followed suit and began dropping a time ball in 1845 in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood. Soon many port towns and cities adopted the practice.

The New York Times building in midtown Manhattan was completed in 1904. Photo by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y./Library of Congress

It was one of these time balls that became the inspiration for Walter Palmer, The New York Times’ chief electrician, who re-imagined the maritime timekeeping ritual as a unique finale to the city’s end-of-the-year party.

In 1904, New York City’s New Year’s Eve celebrations moved up to the New York Times building at 46th St and Broadway. Crowds had previously gathered at Trinity Church in downtown Manhattan, near Wall Street, to hear the bells ring at midnight. In lieu of chimes, The New York Times company produced a midnight fireworks spectacle to lure more New Yorkers north. That proved effective but also disastrous when hot ashes, the remnants of the fireworks, rained down onto the streets.

When the New York Police Department banned fireworks, New York Times publisher and owner Adolph Ochs approached Palmer to find a new light display. He sought to combine the time ball tradition with electricity for an unforgettable welcome to 1908.

Upon Palmer’s design, Ochs commissioned the Artkraft Strauss sign company to create a 700-pound ball made of iron and wood with 100 25-watt light bulbs attached to its surface. At midnight, the ball descended down the repurposed mainmast of the battleship USS New Mexico, with a system of pulleys.

What distinguishes the current ball from earlier predecessors is the multitude of lights and crystals. At 11,875 pounds and 12 feet in diameter, the Big Ball has 2,688 Waterford Crystals that refracts the light of 32,256 Philips LEDs.

Come down to Paper Doll Vintage to and get dressed up to bring in the New Year in style!

Source:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/having-a-ball-the-history-behind-american-new-years-eve-celebrations/

Denim Through The Ages!

Hello Paper Dolls!

We put some awesome vintage denim pieces we put into the windows and wanted to give you some history about America's favorite fashion item: jeans. 


In 1853 Bavarian immigrant and entrepreneur Levi Strauss cashes in on the Gold Rush by moving from San Francisco to found a wholesale dry goods business, Levi Strauss & Co. He didn’t mine for gold—directly. The Gold Rush was at its peak. Men were going west in search of fortune and would spend months camping out in often inhospitable climates; pants made out of traditional fabric would be destroyed within a matter of weeks. Latvian émigré and tailor Jacob Davis and his fabric supplier, Strauss, patent and manufacture the “XX” pants, later dubbed the 501. The U.S. government grants the pair U.S. Patent No. 139,121 for rivet-reinforced pants under the heading, “IMPROVEMENT IN FASTENING POCKET-OPENINGS.”


Henry David Lee was another kind of merchant. He started out in Ohio selling kerosene and moved west to Salina, Kansas, with a small bundle of venture capital. The H. D. Lee Mercantile Company sold fancy canned goods and offered

a line of Eastern work clothes. In the 1920's, about the time Lee was introducing the first zipper fly, Levi Strauss was deleting the crotch rivet. 

In 1930, Vogue magazine ran an advertisement depicting two society women in tight fitting jeans, a look that they called “Western chic.” By the mid-1930's, department stores were stocking Levis jeans and western boots in the women’s section. In the 1940's U.S. soldiers and sailors serving overseas act as inadvertent ambassadors for jeans, introducing them as casual wear around the globe.

James Dean popularized blue jeans in the movie Rebel Without a Cause in 1955. He wore a T-shirt, a leather jacket, and jeans, a uniform men began copying immediately. Since people didn’t have access to the internet or even television in many cases, movies and the actors in them held sway over the public imagination even more than they do now. Moreover, Rebel Without a Cause was a film where the clothing stood out. While it was originally supposed to be a black and white picture, the studio decided to make the film in color; Dean’s Lee 101 Riders were dip-dyed to make the blue especially eye-catching.

In the 1960's, blue jeans were rare among adults and had not as yet been accepted in conventional places such as schools, restaurants, theaters, and offices.  There have been a number of notable jeans styles since the 1960's such as bell-bottom jeans, baggy jeans, distressed looking jeans, skin-tight jeans, and low-rise and peek-a-boo jeans, to name a few.


In 1970, Calvin Klein promoted his designer jeans as refined sportswear. In the 1980's, designers such as Gloria Vanderbilt, Ralph Lauren, and Jean-Paul Gaultier marketed their brands. Guess Inc., Jordache, and others would also cash in on the designer jeans boom. Some designer jeans could be quite fanciful. For instance, in the late 1990's, the Milanese house of Gucci presented feather-trim and feather embroidered jeans.

Come down to Paper Doll Vintage and check out our amazing vintage denim collection and denim inspired windows! 

Sources:
http://www.fashionintime.org
http://goodhoodstore.com
Motherearthnews.com
Fortune.com
Racked.com

A History of the Yard Sale!

Hello Paper Dolls!

In honor of our Vintage Yard Sale and fill a bag for $25 event here is a little history of the yard sale!

As early as the 16th century people have been unloading their wares. In the 1500's ships were sailing all over the globe to deliver goods. The word, “romage” was a nautical term that described how cargo was packed into the hold of the ship. Later it referred to the search for cargo and the odds and ends packed into the ship. “Rummage” sales developed as captains sold excess and unclaimed cargo at the ports they were docked in.

By the 1890's the rummage sale was held in a communal location like a church and used to make money. People would donate their hand-me-downs or warehouses would sweep out unclaimed goods in clearance sales, according to Oxford in 1858. 

The concept spread as more and more people would use it as way to sell excess items. After World War II people moved to the suburbs and into homes with yards and so was born the "yard sale". Before then, having too many belongs wasn’t a common problem because of the wars and the “want not, waste not” mentality of the Great Depression. After World War II, people across North America found themselves with a greater amount of money to buy more and more of the new consumer goods and gadgets that were flooding the market throughout the 1950's and into the 1960's. In the 1970's garage sales became very popular as the idea of homes became the center of socializing within the community.

Nowadays you can just take a leisurely drive through your neighborhood on a sunny weekend and find treasures in other people's yards. 

Don't forget to come down to Paper Doll Vintage and fill a bag for $25 with our yard sale items!

Sources:

http://blog.krrb.com/the-history-of-garage-sales/

https://www.garagesalecow.com/learn-more-about-garage-sales.aspx

We're never over overalls: A brief history of overalls.

Hello Paper Dolls!

We recently got some great overalls in at the shop including the coveted Landlubber bell bottom version. Here's a little history on the overall:

 Overalls evolved from thigh-high gaiters known as "spatterdashes" or "kneecaps"; side-buttoning canvas or leather gaiters that covered almost all of the shoe in addition to most of the leg, that came into use about 1650. With the availability of cheap cotton in the 1800's, cotton canvas, duck, and denim replaced the linen canvas used in the overalls of the 1700's. Many, many local tailors and bulk manufacturers produced overalls and jumpers for working men all across America. The next development in the history of overalls would be the invention of "Levis" by adding copper rivets to the stress points of cotton duck overalls.

Over time, their baggy silhouette served as an emblem worn by railroaders and Depression-era farmers — as recalled in Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Later, they became emblematic of 1960s’ hippies, college students of the ‘70s, and even hip-hop and other recording artists, who wore them with one shoulder unfastened.

Landlubber was a jeans and denim label, started in 1964 by the Hoffman Corporation of Boston. During the early 1970s, they were THE cool jeans to wear, both their bellbottom jeans and cute jean dresses and skirts. The label was briefly relaunched in the early 1990s. Landlubbers, which were originally distributed to Army-Navy retail stores in unisex sizes, have been redesigned. They are no longer as low-rise and as hip-hugging. They are also not as wide at the bottom or the knee; none of that ''elephant bell'' look that represented the last evolution of the bell bottom in the late 1970's. Some styles even have pleated fronts.

Since the 1960s, different colors and patterns of bib overalls have been increasingly worn by young people of both sexes, often with one of the straps worn loose or unfastened along the side and under the arm. The bib overalls fashion trend among American youth culture peaked in the latter half of the 1970s, and again for females in the late 1990s.

Come down to the shop and grab a pair for yourself!

Charm Bracelets - We've always loved them (and I mean always)

Hello Paper Dolls,

Recently we've gotten some really neat charm bracelets in the shop and thought we'd make a blog post about the history of the once again popular accessory.

The wearing of charms may have begun as a form of amulet to ward off evil spirits or bad luck.

During the pre-historic period, jewelry charms would be made from shells, animal-bones and clay. Later charms were made out of gems, rocks, and wood.

For instance, there is evidence from Africa that shells were used for adornments around 75,000 years ago. In Germany intricately carved mammoth tusk charms have been found from around 30,000 years ago. In ancient Egypt charms were used for identification and as symbols of faith and luck. Charms also served to identify an individual to the gods in the afterlife.

During the Roman Empire, Christians would use tiny fish charms hidden in their clothing to identify themselves to other Christians. Jewish scholars of the same period would write tiny passages of Jewish law and put them in amulets round their necks to keep the law close to their heart at all times. Medieval knights wore charms for protection in battle. Charms also were worn in the Dark Ages to denote family origin and religious and political convictions.

Charm bracelets have been the subject of several waves of trends. The first charm bracelets were worn by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Hittites and began appearing from 600 – 400 BC.

For example, Queen Victoria wore charm bracelets that started a fashion among the European noble classes. She was instrumental to the popularity of charm bracelets, as she “loved to wear and give charm bracelets. When her beloved Prince Albert died, she even made “mourning” charms popular; lockets of hair from the deceased, miniature portraits of the deceased, charm bracelets carved in jet.”

In 1889, Tiffany and Co. introduced their first charm bracelet — a link bracelet with a single heart dangling from it, a bracelet which is an iconic symbol for Tiffany today.

Despite the Great Depression, during the 1920's and 1930's platinum and diamonds were introduced to charm bracelet manufacturing.

Soldiers returning home after World War II brought home trinkets made by craftsmen local to the area where they were fighting to give to loved ones. American teenagers in the 1950's and early 1960's collected charms to record the events in their lives. Screen icons like Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Crawford helped to fuel the interest and popularity of charm bracelets.

Although interest and production waned through the latter part of the 20th century, there was a resurgence of popularity after 2000 and collectors eagerly sought out vintage charms.

As the year 2001 opened, the fashion industry once again discovered the lure of the charm bracelet, flooding the market with new charm styles in all price ranges. Fashion giants like Louis Vuitton have brought the glamour back to charm bracelets, declaring them the must-have accessory for any occasion. And if the past is any indication, charm bracelets will be in style for quite sometime.

So come down to Paper Doll Vintage Boutique and check out our charm bracelets!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charm_bracelet#History

http://www.mymotherscharms.com/history.htm