In 1851, American Amelia Bloomer published an article in her newspaper The Lily calling for dress reform. She, and her group of...

Bathing Beauties, 1922 Several period sources claim the word ‘flapper’ originated from the American fashion among teenage girls for...

As men took up team sports in the 19th century, they adopted knitted cotton and wool jersey garments to allow freer movement. However,...

Pages from 1950s/60s catalogue showing Mary Maxim sweaters and a graph pattern for a child's sweater with the Three Little Pigs motif....

New York Times, March 22, 1910, long hat pins were being banned! “It is now a misdemeanor for any woman to wear a long hatpin in public...

A Scrapbook of 1921 fashions For Canada, 1921 was a better year than 1920: William Lyon McKenzie King, Canada’s longest serving Prime...

Even those of us who aren’t catholic are probably familiar with the names of a few saints. There are St. Christopher medals for nervous...

In ancient times, the shoe was often used as a symbol of authority. ‘Upon the land of Edom do I cast my shoe’ (Psalms 60:8) This biblical...

I recently created a bit of a brouhaha on the FHM facebook page. I posted about the word ‘sewist’ with a reference to a New York Times...

Crepe paper Halloween dress, hat and mask, late 1920s The origin of crepe paper is a bit murky. It appears to have been developed in...

In 1943 Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb wrote a song about a munitions worker who "keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage / sitting up there...

On January 19, 1931, the New York Times reported film producer Samuel Goldwyn’s announcement: “After more than three years of constant...

In 1887, three men who all worked at a New York rubber company were committed to a local Hospital for incoherent insanity. Dr. Frederick...

Moths are potentially the worst problem a textile collection might encounter. I have two methods I used to keep them under control. First...