Hello, my name is Susan Dawson, and I have been interested
in fashion for as long as I can remember. My mother made a good deal of my wardrobe until I went to college – I was a picky bastard, and this let me customize everything I
wore. She made me a super-complicated Ralph Lauren outfit
for an 8th grade concert and humored my desire to dress like a little rockabilly girl when I discovered the Stray Cats, patiently tolerating most of my fashion whims. I read my first Vogue in junior high, and never looked
back; I can even remember Cindy Crawford’s first cover and thrilled to each
supermodel cover when my magazines came in the mail every month. I wrote my
dissertation on fashion and diplomacy. I’m pretty sure my advisor wasn’t
thrilled with the topic, but I got to read every issue of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar
from 1945-1960, so I didn’t care. In the words of the inimitable Tim Gunn, I
made it work.
I’ve been looking for a research project to get me excited about history again; I’ve been in sort of a funk, and wanted something interesting and fun that married my love of vintage fashion with an interest in the politics of women’s bodies. I was actually inspired by two things: the burlesque performer Dita von Teese, and the writer Rebecca Harrington. Dita von Teese in particular has done so much not just to preserve, but also to educate about fashion, and especially fashion as it relates to the changing female form. She has worked to understand and embody how women shaped their bodies in the past, and it had me thinking about how the fashionable figure has changed (or maybe it hasn’t) since the 1940s.
A few years back, I began reading Rebecca Harrington’s posts on thecut.com – she writes hilariously about trying various celebrity diets (Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jacqueline Kennedy, Taylor Swift), and has a book out that compiles her various columns: I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting. Her writing is fun and chatty, and the idea is great; she inspired me to think about my own research with renewed enthusiasm. My dissertation looked at foreign policy coverage in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s and 1950s. It was interesting work, but my real passion is for fashion history. At the same time, I was lately getting into food history: what people eat and why, how class influences food choices, and the relationship between socio-economic class and weight.
Around that same time, I picked up a book by Linda Przybyszewski called The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish, (thank you Amazon recommendations!) and got inspired to start a research project. I was able to get access to Vogue’s online archive through my job at Southern New Hampshire University (I would seriously work there for free just for access to the online archive; just kidding, I don’t work for free), and with that and encouragement from K. Wiley Sider (get her books, now, you will not regret it), I started work.
Przybyszewski’s book discusses a group of women she calls the "Dress Doctors" who gave fashion advice to women throughout the first half of the 20th century. They taught home economics classes, wrote in magazines and newspapers, and wrote textbooks; combined, their work helped make American women some of the best dressed in the world. As their influence declined, however, so too, did American leadership in style. Przybyszewski's book discusses the Dress Doctors as a sort of democratic force. Their advice was available to all women, regardless of class, and because most women could sew (or if they were wealthy, have their clothes made), they could achieve a stylish wardrobe on any budget.
I’ve been looking for a research project to get me excited about history again; I’ve been in sort of a funk, and wanted something interesting and fun that married my love of vintage fashion with an interest in the politics of women’s bodies. I was actually inspired by two things: the burlesque performer Dita von Teese, and the writer Rebecca Harrington. Dita von Teese in particular has done so much not just to preserve, but also to educate about fashion, and especially fashion as it relates to the changing female form. She has worked to understand and embody how women shaped their bodies in the past, and it had me thinking about how the fashionable figure has changed (or maybe it hasn’t) since the 1940s.
A few years back, I began reading Rebecca Harrington’s posts on thecut.com – she writes hilariously about trying various celebrity diets (Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jacqueline Kennedy, Taylor Swift), and has a book out that compiles her various columns: I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting. Her writing is fun and chatty, and the idea is great; she inspired me to think about my own research with renewed enthusiasm. My dissertation looked at foreign policy coverage in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the 1940s and 1950s. It was interesting work, but my real passion is for fashion history. At the same time, I was lately getting into food history: what people eat and why, how class influences food choices, and the relationship between socio-economic class and weight.
Around that same time, I picked up a book by Linda Przybyszewski called The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish, (thank you Amazon recommendations!) and got inspired to start a research project. I was able to get access to Vogue’s online archive through my job at Southern New Hampshire University (I would seriously work there for free just for access to the online archive; just kidding, I don’t work for free), and with that and encouragement from K. Wiley Sider (get her books, now, you will not regret it), I started work.
Przybyszewski’s book discusses a group of women she calls the "Dress Doctors" who gave fashion advice to women throughout the first half of the 20th century. They taught home economics classes, wrote in magazines and newspapers, and wrote textbooks; combined, their work helped make American women some of the best dressed in the world. As their influence declined, however, so too, did American leadership in style. Przybyszewski's book discusses the Dress Doctors as a sort of democratic force. Their advice was available to all women, regardless of class, and because most women could sew (or if they were wealthy, have their clothes made), they could achieve a stylish wardrobe on any budget.
Although she discusses the Dress Doctors' philosophies about
how clothing should follow the lines of the body, the author does not address
the body underneath; how a good figure was obtained, maintained, or managed
through diet, exercise, or foundation garments. I wondered whether there was a
similar group of women or men who advised women about how to get the ideal
figure for the clothes they would so stylishly wear. What were the
recommendations women received on diet and exercise? Who followed this advice,
and did it work? How did it change across the 1940s and 1950s, in particular?
I thought I might be able to figure this out by going back to my old research standby, fashion magazines. I wanted to know how mid-century women controlled their weight through diet and limited exercise regimes. This research will necessarily be class-based. One of my research interests is class and food (today, it seems to me fairly obvious that thinness, for a variety of reasons, is the purview of the wealthy). So, I thought I would start researching class, diet, and body shape – how silhouettes changed across the two decades I want to focus on, how upper class women met and set those ideals, what tools were available for them to get their ideal body type, and, of course, what it all meant for fashion and society.
In addition, I thought it might be a fun twist actually to follow the diets myself (while blogging hilariously about it, naturally). These ideas are not entirely fleshed out just now. I know what I want to do, and how to begin, but I am not sure where my research will take me, or even what questions I will ask now or later. I figured I would just start by tackling the diets. If you have any (supportive) suggestions, I welcome them, and any photos I post are not meant for publication or other potentially copyright infringing uses. So, welcome to the world of diets in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and maybe later, other magazines. I hope I can re-create something of the world in which they lived, and, what the heck, re-create my own figure in the process.
I thought I might be able to figure this out by going back to my old research standby, fashion magazines. I wanted to know how mid-century women controlled their weight through diet and limited exercise regimes. This research will necessarily be class-based. One of my research interests is class and food (today, it seems to me fairly obvious that thinness, for a variety of reasons, is the purview of the wealthy). So, I thought I would start researching class, diet, and body shape – how silhouettes changed across the two decades I want to focus on, how upper class women met and set those ideals, what tools were available for them to get their ideal body type, and, of course, what it all meant for fashion and society.
In addition, I thought it might be a fun twist actually to follow the diets myself (while blogging hilariously about it, naturally). These ideas are not entirely fleshed out just now. I know what I want to do, and how to begin, but I am not sure where my research will take me, or even what questions I will ask now or later. I figured I would just start by tackling the diets. If you have any (supportive) suggestions, I welcome them, and any photos I post are not meant for publication or other potentially copyright infringing uses. So, welcome to the world of diets in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and maybe later, other magazines. I hope I can re-create something of the world in which they lived, and, what the heck, re-create my own figure in the process.
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