I'm going way back in time today, to the summer of 1908 - this catalogue has seen better days, the outside covers are quite fragile. This book belonged to a relative - just to think that people from my family shopped from this book - it's hard to even fathom. The catalogue is 318 pages - of course, there are the regular sections, clothing for ladies, men and children, home goods - then there are the categories which could only be from a catalogue way back then - horse and cattle medicines, notions and small wares, there's just so much that we don't even see any more.
In this post I'll be showing you the fashions that the lady of the house would have been wearing in the summer of 1908.
I'm just looking at the sizing chart for these suits - bust sizes are 32 - 42 but waist sizes are 23-29. If you needed a special or extra size, it was $3.50 extra and would take 10 days to make the special order.
Can you just picture the ladies wearing these at a picnic? Just look at all the embroidery and lace...
Look at that cape on the upper left - it was made of black brocaded silk, bottom frill of lace, silk ribbons and lined with sateen - for $6.00
This would be a shirt or blouse to us - back then it was called a "waist" - lots of embroidery once again and lots of buttons - the cheapest one is 75 cents!!
There are quite a few pages of footwear including shoes and boots. Carla and I often comment when we see these old shoes in antique shops, they're just so narrow - I see that sizes were from 2 1/2 to 7 - I couldn't even get my foot in one of these!!!
Of course, this was the time of hankies - I've never heard of lawn handkerchiefs before, have you?
The millinery department was just as extensive as the footwear - there are many pages. The colors were about the same for every one - black, navy, brown, pearl, champagne or white. They're so pretty!!
There's also quite a selection of corsets - the description for the gal in the picture reads - straight front, fine sateen, filled with steel wire, long hip, hose supporters attached, drab and white available - 85 cents!!!
An enamelled maple leaf brooch, gold plated for 10 cents!!! The other jewellery pages include hat pins, bracelets, lockets, chains and watches, but the watches weren't wrist watches, they were pocket watches.
This is the back page and not in good shape at all - I thought the scents for the perfumes were very interesting - new mown hay, crab apple, wall flower, sweet clover - those are just a few of the different ones, of course, there are lots of flowery scents - all selling for 40 cents an ounce.
It was really hard to pick out a few pages for this post - click on any picture for a better look. I'd love to share more with you another day....
Carla has entered an online contest -" Blog What You Love" and sure would like to win the big prize of a $1,000 shopping spree at her local mall. Because she is my daughter, I'm going to help her with this post and I hope you will too - if you're on Facebook all you have to do is "Like" her blog post and you can do that right here - let's get her some more votes!!! It's that easy!! Thanks so much!!
