The best-dressed list is coming out this week in People magazine.  How do you think the magazine selections measure up to the three following standards from 1938?  How can you use these simple beauty secrets to change your look from retired-soccer-mom BLAH to pre- and post-menopause WOW.

“Check over any list of best-dressed women compiled by a man and you will discover every one dresses to idealize her face and figure, compliment her coloring, and dramatize her temperament.”


From: Designing Women:  The Art, Technique, and Cost of Being Beautiful   By Margaretta Byers with Consuelo Kamholz.  Simon and Schuster.  New York.  1938.

                                                    “It was my idea that if you started any
kind of business, you should begin somewhere near where you hoped to end. In other
words, if I wanted to
make really good clothes to order, I would start out making
good, and therefore expensive, clothes to order.  If I started making inexpensive
clothes, I thought probably I’d die making them."

*  Text by Elizabeth Hawes from her groundbreaking book, Fashion is Spinach circa 1938

The Lost Art of Dress by Linda Przybyszewski inspired me to search out some of the original texts she used in her research.  I loved the language so much I wanted to share it.  So here’s an example of a “found poem” I wrote using her words. 

Elizabeth Hawes was one of the first American designers who broke with Paris haute couture to create comfortable stylish clothes for American women.  She also was an author, union organizer, champion of gender equality, and political activist. 


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