The pink Chanel knock-off suit Jacqueline Kennedy wore on that historic day in Dallas in 1963 currently resides in an environmentally...

Left to right: Jules Léotard, late 1860s; patent application for pantyhose, 1956; advertisement for pantyhose, 1960 French acrobat Jules...

Fans were practical accessories for cooling the face and hiding yawns, and they were used as personal flirtation devices at Victorian...

Every culture developed some form of dance, usually related to harvest or hunt celebrations, marital or maturity rites, or victory over...

1922 was a year that straddled two eras. Before the twenties could ‘roar’, the post-war era needed to finish winding down. The fallout...

There have been two major influences upon fashion this year. The first and most obvious is the continuing pandemic. When the pandemic...

We have been receiving a lot of comments and questions about our mannequins. Many of them are vintage, and some need to be restored, but...

Jim Alexander from Hespeler, Ontario was a Corporal with the Li­ncoln and Wel­land Re­gi­ment. In March 1945 he was in Veen, Ger­many...

A few years ago I was helping research the date of an Edwardian opera cloak with the maker’s label 'E O’Donovan' and the final story we...

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...