That’s just one tip from the new book The Lost Art of Dress by Linda Przybyszewski.  Each day I read another chapter of the book, I was enthralled.  It was better than a visit to the FIT Museum in NYC, even better than the couple hours each month I gorge on Vogue.  It is a history of fashion from the lips of a remarkable group of women who advised other women in the early to mid-20th century on how to dress.

A few juicy tips

• All good dress design moves the eye upward on a garment so that it can come to rest on the face. 
• It is just as stupid to dress your body in ugly clothes as it is to fill your mind with cheap and ugly literature. 
• Ask yourself always, Am I harmoniously put together, am I appropriately clad for the deed at hand, and am I free of nonessentials?  If you can truthfully answer yes, you are a well-dressed woman.

Not an instruction manual

This is not a step-by-step style guide.  You won’t learn how to dress from this book but you’ll maybe pause the next time you are standing in your closet or at Boston Store trying to decide on an outfit.  And you’ll remember some nugget of wisdom. 

In 1913 when the Secretary of Agriculture sent a survey to farmwomen, he was surprised at some of the results.  Of course they wanted to know about how to deal with the ins and outs of rural life.  But, according to author Linda Przybyszewski, “more than that, they hungered for beauty in dress.” 

Birth of the Dress Doctors

And the Dress Doctors were born.  They came from MIT, the University of Kansas, the University of Illinois, the University of Texas, fashion design schools and their own sewing nooks to advise women across the country.  They were scientists, professors, home economists and homemakers with enormous expertise in dressing and they provide advice on how to dress all ages of men and women in the most cost-effective and stylish ways.  And according Przybyszewski, sewing rooms became the largest WPA projects outside of construction work. 

To write her book, Przybyszewski, who is a University of Notre Dame history professor and lifetime dress maker, read more than 700 books and magazines from the early to mid-20th century on dress and sewing.  Her bibliography alone is a treasure trove of future books I want to read.  

But I wanted even more so I wrote to the author to request additional information.  She graciously responded and hooked me up to some new wonderful resources.  

Hello library!

My grandma did not own a pair of slacks until her husband died.  She wore dresses to picnics, dresses for car rides, dresses to clean the house.   

The only slacks I own are yoga pants.  Tights in the winter, bare legs in the summer, I wear skirts and dresses all year long – camping, hiking, bike riding even to scrub the toilet.  In the 1970s, I remember fighting my dad to wear slacks to high school and then wore skirts at college. 

Rachel Kramer Bussel, a fashion blogger, also owns no slacks.   I agree with her reasons: 

·         Skirts and dresses make me feel good.

·         They’re comfortable.

·         They work with the shape of my body.

·         They’re forgiving.

·         They’re versatile.

·         I travel frequently, and dresses pack easily.

Of course, women have worn slacks for hundreds of years.  According to the website History and Women, “The Wigan pit brow girls scandalized Victorian society by wearing trousers for their dangerous work in the coal mines. They wore skirts over their trousers and rolled them up to their waist to keep them out of the way.”

But slacks on women were still scandalous when Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn began wearing trousers.  According to the Fashion Encyclopedia, it wasn’t until 1939 when slacks were finally embraced by the fashion police. 

“By 1939 Vogue, the respected fashion magazine, pictured women in trousers for the first time, and many women wore pants for playing golf or tennis and riding or bicycling.”

The tides certainly have turned.  Walk any busy pedestrian byway and you’ll see many more slacks than skirts and dresses.  Maybe when my husband dies, I’ll wear slacks like my grandma did -- but I doubt it.     


http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/fashion_costume_culture/Modern-World-1930-1945/Trousers-for-Women.html#ixzz35br4PzDs

http://www.historyandwomen.com/2012/04/woman-and-pants.html

http://www.refinery29.com/anti-pants