Everyday Fashions of the Sixties As Pictured in Sears Catalogs

JoAnne Olian

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486134239
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

This compilation from a style-conscious decade features scores of illustrations with their original captions specifying colors, sizes, prices. Items include apparel for men, women, and children — from lingerie and playclothes to bridal ensembles, Madras jackets, and vinyl slicker coats. Introduction. Over 300 black-and-white illustrations.

INTRODUCTION

LAND OF THE MAIL-ORDER CATALOG

Since colonial times Americans have had a penchant for almanacs, newspapers, magazines, and how-to manuals. The practical, the relevant, and the topical would appear to be a more authentic expression of American life and interests than the romantic or the poetic. The mail-order catalog, which has been called the “first characteristically American kind of book,” is the consumer manifestation of this predilection, and was one of the principal reasons for the relatively homogeneous appearance of Americans nationwide.

In its very first issue, published in 1867, Harper’s Bazar complained that uniformity of dress was “a characteristic of the people of the United States. The man of leisure and the laborer, the mistress and the maid, wear clothes of the same material and cut. The uniformity that results is not favorable to the picturesque.” On the other hand, a writer in Appleton’s New York took pride in the lack of distinction: “It is safe to assert that the United States may challenge the world to show, in any country, as many elegantly dressed women. Not only in the large cities but in country places and small villages, the same distinguishing characteristics are observed, an air of fashion modified by a general fitness.” The ability to appear well-dressed was aided in no small measure by the mail-order houses, which provided an affordable link with fashion to farmers living on remote prairies (Lynes, The Tastemakers, 1980).

Largely responsible for the Americanization of the immigrant living on the remotest farm, the influence of the mail-order catalog was apparent even to foreign observers. “Widely as the Scandinavians are separated from the Italians, and the native Americans from the Poles, in sentiment, in modes of life, and even in occupations they are yet purchasers of nearly the same goods,” observed an English economist in 1919. As the purchasing agents for their families, farm wives created their material world from the offerings of Sears catalogs. They furnished their homes in Sears’ style and dressed according to the latest fashions shown in Sears, which also catered to their fashion-conscious daughters who, if they kept up with the most recent semi-annual catalog, could be all but indistinguishable from their urban contemporaries.

WHATEVER BECAME OF THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER?

Between 1945 and 1960, advances in technology reduced the work hours necessary to grow crops by more than half, while increasing agricultural productivity to a level that outstripped demand, resulting in lower crop prices. Therefore, many farmers were driven to sell their land to large agro-business firms (with the financial capability to take full advantage of improvements in farm machinery, fertilizers, and pesticides), and seek employment in the towns. According to the Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture, in this period the farm population fell from 30 million to 15 million, and by 1970, fewer than 10 million Americans were still living on farms. The farmer’s daughter had moved from farmhouse to ranch house, from cornfield to crabgrass, from the prairie to the patio.

The enormous economic and social changes which occurred between 1940 and 1960 are particularly telling when comparing the 1940 census with late 1950s statistics. Just before World War II “only one out of five Americans owned a car, one in seven had a telephone, and a mere 15% of the college-age population attended college. One quarter of America’s homes still had neither a refrigerator nor an icebox, 60% lacked central heat, and three out of four farmhouses were lit with kerosene lamps. In 1945, fewer than 35 million families owned radios, and under 30 million telephones were in use.” (“Life in Rural America,” National Geographic Society, 1974).

In a 1941 profile of a typical catalog customer, Sears recounted the “red-letter day” when power lines reached this family’s Minnesota farmhouse: first on their list of “musts,” of course, was a centrifugal pump for running water. Then came the electric range. And as the months went by, other conveniences were added: vacuum cleaner, toaster, iron, radio, and clock. In addition, by using a Sears electric cream separator and a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION