Montgomery Ward Fashions of the Twenties

JoAnne Olian

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780486472812
• eBook ISBN: 9780486134338
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

What were they wearing during the Roaring 20s? This chic collection presents a comprehensive view of Jazz Age fashions with hundreds of sepia-tone illustrations and captions. Selected from a 1927 Montgomery Ward catalog, these images form authentic reflections of the era's everyday and formal apparel.
For the ladies, the catalog abounds in "rage of Paris" chemise dresses, feather-trimmed cloche hats, and casual wear. Gentlemen's suits appear here as well, along with attire for work and leisure and children's clothes for school, play, and special occasions. Sixteen pages of color illustrations offer vivid portraits of '20s styles, and an informative Introduction by fashion historian JoAnne Olian explains the period's trends. Collectors, designers, and fashion mavens will prize this charming style archive.

INTRODUCTION

Show me the clothes of a country and I can write history.

—Anatole France

A beloved chronicle of Americana, the mail-order catalog is a quintessential element of our country’s history. As early as 1744 Benjamin Franklin, the first mail-order merchant, issued a list of 600 books to be sold by mail. As both mirror and record of the people, no other book has served to the same degree. The catalog kept pace with improvements in technology and changes in fashion, fanning the flame of consumer demand and enabling it to offer standardized, reliable items for the comfort of even the most isolated farmers in the land. The democratization of clothing in America owes a great deal to the mail-order industry, which made reasonably priced, good quality garments available to a broad spectrum of consumers. Economically, socially, and geographically catalogs allowed everybody to participate as a culture of consumption.

Sometimes called the “Farmer’s Bible,” the catalog occupied a place of honor in the farm kitchen, while the actual Bible was relegated to the seldom-used parlor. The first of these publications was the Montgomery Ward catalog, which predated Sears by fourteen years. Affectionately dubbed the “Wish Book,” the Grolier Club, a distinguished society of bibliophiles, named it in 1946 “one of the hundred most influential books on American life.” They claimed that “No idea ever mushroomed so far from so small a beginning, or had so profound an influence on the economics of a continent, as the concept, original to America, of direct selling by mail, for cash. . .the mail-order catalog has been perhaps the greatest single influence in increasing the standard of American middle-class living. It brought the benefit of wholesale prices to city and hamlet, to the crossroads and the prairies; it indicated cash payment as against crippling credit; it urged millions of housewives to bring into their homes and place upon their backs and on their shelves and on their floors creature comforts which otherwise they could never have hoped for and above all, it substituted sound quality for shoddy.”

Aaron Montgomery Ward had worked in a barrel factory for 25 cents a day, stacked bricks for 30 cents, been a country storekeeper and a traveling salesman for Chicago department stores in several rural areas, acquainting him with farmers’ needs and giving him the idea to sell to members of Grange societies by mail. Robert Hendrickson, author of The Grand Emporiums says, “Ward found that farmers were objecting bitterly to the prices they paid for goods at the traditional but obsolescent country stores. . . . Not only were prices high and storekeepers often dishonest, but th...

Table of contents

• DOVER BOOKS ON FASHION
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION