NEW STYLES OF 1938

Here are some fun finds from a 1938 Spiegel Catalog.

Love the little camera she's holding.

There were no similar outfits for little girls. Hmmm, I wonder why.

The cover. The text says, "The best thing in life is a happy, comfortable, attractive home. When the day's work is done, it's our haven of peace and quiet, rest, pleasure and security."  What the text deletes is that the day's work for the wife is at home, working hard to provide that peace quiet etc.

Spiegel 1938 Cover, detail. At first I thought this was a peddler, which would be appropriate since my Spiegel relatives came to America and worked as peddlers, eventually starting the store that would become Spiegels. However, on closer inspection he seems to be an itinerant knife sharpener. His clothing style doesn't match the clothing style of the woman and girl, and the proportions of the people to the house are way out of  scale, so I suspect the whole image is rather fanciful.

Comments

[Maggie Jochild]

I was struck by a few things in this post. The first was the Empire Range, which looked identical to the one we had in my flat on El Dorado Street in Oakland during the 1980s. Before you say it would have been too old, let me argue no, not for that cheap landlord, AND when it broke at one point, the stove guy we had in to fix it declared it an antique. But he, and we, argued for its repair rather than replacement. It was a jewel to cook on, once you learned the settings (all of the markings on the dials were rubbed off).

That's why Myra and Ginny have one just like it. Myra found it at a thrift store, had it fixed up and won't cook on anything else. There is the option of two more burners on the right and/or a "cistern" at the back to keep water simmering or slow-cook beans, stews, etc. And the big-ass griddle in the middle has hot and cold spots for different kinds of grilling.

Now, re the "crisp cottons": It was so evocative of many things for me. First of all, shopping from mail-order, which is the only way we got school clothes, coats, even shoes when I was growing up. Rural and poor, reading the catalogue was a year-long treat and dreaming about things we couldn't have. Mama knew how to derive actual meaning from the descriptions, which were "good buys" and which just looked pretty on the page. Besides Spiegel, we favored Monkey Ward, J.C. Penney's (as kids we whispered to each other that his first name was Jesus Christ, blasphemy), Sears Roebuck (the rumor was that one of them was BLACK), and National Bella Hess.

And -- the cotton dress thing. I HATED dresses, hated how they didn't keep out the cold of winter, how I had to wear petticoats underneath which scratched my already chapped legs, how it was shameful if somebody saw underneath but boys were always trying and you WERE exposed, how starchy and stiff they were in the morning (my mother ironed with Niagara Spray Starch). In the summer I could wear shorts around the house only, and I did not get a pair of jeans until I was 12 -- hand-offs from a friend which my mother had a shit-fit about. Even so, even with my reality, I feel a strong nostalgia and pull to the working of the ad copy, the "simplicity" and instant approval you attain if you wear a dress. Dresses are the ultimate gender frontier. Whenever I watch a sci-fi show, it's the first thing I look for: If in that distant future or other planet, women are still wearing dresses (and men are not), I know the imagination of the writer has not dared to boldly go, and adjust my expectations accordingly.

Lastly, the camera the cotton-dress bright-print woman is wearing looks just like my mother's Brownie: You looked down into the lens from the top, loaded the film manually (and a bit laboriously), and turned a little crank on the side to advance the film. Most of the photos from my childhood were made by that Brownie. I didn't find it among her belongings when she died; likely she had thrown it out years before as out of date. Too bad.

[liza]

Wait! In your novel, Ginny Bates, they cook on an Empire Range? Seriously? I don’t remember reading that, but if I did, I must have registered it subconsciously. Anyway, how cool.

I too used to find it a treat to read the Spiegel catalog. And how interesting it is that due to our particular circumstances we looked at the same object so differently. You - a poor girl in the rural South, and me - an Urban Jewish Yankee whose family owned the company. I guess that’s the definition of situated knowledge. I wonder what we would have made of each other had we met then.

Do you remember if your parents bought on credit? The whole idea of buying credit was new. Certainly not the huge economic black hole it is today.

When I read the catalogs, I was most fascinated by the ads for foundation garments, which seemed hopelessly old fashioned and yet which I felt destined to wear. Also, I would squirm with embarrassment that the girls in the catalog wore ankle socks with their “party shoes.” It seemed so unsophisticated and babyish. I begged my Uncle Modie Spiegel to let the girls wear stockings. I was so frustrated that my cogent arguments didn’t sway him.

I don’t remember actually wearing clothing from the catalog, nor did I ever get the pony they offered for sale, and which I desperately wanted.

It must be a Southern thing that you didn’t get to wear blue jeans as a kid. I lived in them. Even on Park Avenue. The only time I got out of my jeans or shorts was to go to school, where we were not allowed to wear pants. Or to go to a party, for which I had to wear a party dress. If the boys tried to look up my dress I smacked them.

I also look at Sci Fi in terms of their clothing. But I don’t think you can get a good fix on what the clothing is saying about gender until a several years have passed, because the gender expression in TV and movie fashions are so tempered by the fashion styles of their times. Looking now at the mini skirts on the crew of The Enterprise in the Star Trek TOS (the original series) they look ridiculous and hugely gendered, but when they made the series, in the 1960’s, mini skirts were cutting edge and almost futuristic in their attitude.

I love the crew’s costumes on Battlestar Gallactica because they are all so workmanlike and plain, and the men and women wear the same uniforms. But in twenty years, we may look back on it and see gender differences that we don’t notice now.

Too bad, indeed, about the camera. They are great artifacts, and relics of the film age.