February 2011
62 posts
4 tags
This is my grandmother’s best friend, R. Yoshihara. The photo was taken in Los Angeles, California in 1927.
Many thanks to Cheryl Motoyama for being the first to contribute a photograph of a Japanese American flapper! Absolutely lovely.
3 tags
In 1967, my mom, Wei-Kuo Liang, accompanied her parents on a visit to her brother in boot camp at Hualien, Taiwan. My grandfather took her photo in front of the ivory bridge. She’s wearing a pleated yellowy green empire waist silk dress with gold heels.
Submitted by Gracie O (Phoenix, Arizona).
2 tags
My Wisconsin-born father, Dick Smith, took a job for IT&T in the early ’60s which sent him to Puerto Rico. He met my mom, Elsie Feliciano, there. They fell in love, had my sister, and then after a few years he moved them back to Wisconsin.
This photo of my parents (before they were married, around 1961) was taken at the San Juan Caribe Hilton during a Nat King Cole concert. When I saw...
3 tags
Four African American women in repose on the steps of a building at Atlanta University in Georgia, 1890s. Photographed by Thomas Askew.
From the Library of Congress.
3 tags
This photo was taken (ca. 1928) during a summer that my grandmother spent in Bayonne, NJ working for college money and living with her maternal grandmother and cousins. The family was from Statesville, NC. One sister and her husband migrated to Bayonne around World War I, and several siblings and their mother later followed. My grandmother, who died last year at age 101, had wonderful...
2 tags
Pin-up girls pose at the Spring Formal Dance at the Sandpoint Naval Air Station in Seattle, Washington; April 10, 1944.
2 tags
Two young African American “Rosie the Riveters” employed by the Douglas Aircraft Company in Long Beach, California, 1938.
From the Black History Album.
2 tags
A young African American woman - possibly a showgirl? - sits for a portrait (ca. 1899). From the Library of Congress.
4 tags
This is a stunning photograph of a fashion show at Tule Lake Relocation Center in Newell, California in September 1942. It was one of the most popular events held at this camp on Labor Day. The large audience appreciated the dressmaking and tailoring skills involved in these shows.
I’m absolutely floored that there were fashion shows in this internment camp - also known as No No Camp -...
4 tags
This is a makeshift beauty salon at the Japanese American internment camp called Camp Amache or Granada Relocation Center in Colorado. Like many other internment camps, Camp Amache was built on an Indian reservation. In other words, the government’s forcible relocation of 120,000 Japanese American citizens and legal residents from the West Coast depended in great measure on the...
1 tag
“In assembling a collection of women of color’s sartorial ephemera, the aim of...”
– To read more about why there’s a need for this digital history project, see my guest blog post for Etsy!
3 tags
Howard University chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority (1945)
2 tags
Mabel Robinson (R), a go-go dancer on the NBC musical variety television show, Hullaballoo (1965-1966). She went on to become assistant choreographer for the Sammy Davis, Jr. Show. (Ebony magazine, April 1966)
3 tags
Solitary bliss. Although this photo is undated, Julie London’s Lonely Girl album (Liberty Records) on the floor by her elbow suggests it is approximately 1956.
From the Black History Album
3 tags
These three Chicagoans, wearing their Sunday Best, are waiting for their ride to church, 1941. (The hats! The hats!)
From the Black History Album.
3 tags
Mrs. Dennis Shimizu sits in her quarters at Manzanar internment camp listening to the radio while doing lacework.
Photograph by Ansel Adams. From the Library of Congress.
3 tags
A portrait of the beautiful Fumiko Hirata taken in 1943 by Ansel Adams.
From the Library of Congress.
3 tags
It’s unclear whether these women are simply fans of the pioneering Black-oriented radio station WANN (a 1000-watt daytime station based in Annapolis, Maryland) or if they were hired to promote Hoppy Adams’ popular radio show. Either way, this works really well as a publicity photo.
The radio station began broadcasting in 1948 and hired Adams in 1952 where he remained for 30 years.
3 tags
An advertisement for Royal Crown Hair Dressing, a hair and scalp conditioner. (1966)
3 tags
This is what cool church attire looks like. This woman from North Carolina is on her porch waiting for a ride to church. The date of the photograph is 1940 but the tilt of that hat is forever.
From the Black History Album
3 tags
I love that she’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat and using an umbrella - rainy day style at its best! Anyone else besides me in love with the print of her shirt? I can’t stop looking at it!
Photo from Black History Album, 1937
4 tags
This is my mom. In her red cigarette pants, black ballet flats, and her Vuarnet cat-eye sunglasses, she looks every bit like a glamorous starlet on holiday. The entire outfit (minus the accessories) was gifted to my mom from her more cosmopolitan older sister, who had just returned home after spending a year studying abroad in the U.S. The outfit came from Sear’s, a brand my mom...
3 tags
Twenty-five days after giving birth to my older brother, mom jetted off to Paris in a red wool jumpsuit. Her purse is from Tangiers. “It looks like very nice leather,” she tells me, “but red dye came off in your hand. Oh! and the bottom compartment held shoes.” It’s December 1971 and she’s in Paris here.
Many thanks to Gracie O for sharing this photo of her...
3 tags
Howard University beauty queens pose on a couch, 1947. Photographed by Addison Schurlock.
From the Black History Album
2 tags
Nine young African American women assembled on the steps of a building at Atlanta University in Georgia, ca. 1899.
Photograph by Thomas Askew. From the Library of Congress.
4 tags
The finale of Flapper Friday, for now.
4 tags
4 tags
And Flapper Friday continues!
4 tags
I can’t decide what part of Marguerite Willard’s look I love more, her corsage or her hair which recalls Princess Leia’s hair buns but, you know, preceded them by about 50 years!
Welcome to Flapper Friday!
3 tags
My good friend Teresa Limon (ca. 1956), was born in New Mexico to a New Mexican native and a Mexican immigrant. As a young woman, she packed fruit in Santa Barbara, California but later moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where she became and remains active in local politics, particularly concerning Chicano/Latino issues of social justice.
I love that this photograph captures her...
2 tags
A model takes the catwalk in maybe the best capri pants I’ve ever seen at the 47th Anniversary of the NAACP Banquet and Fashion Show in the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego, California. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 13 April 1956)
3 tags
A model takes the catwalk in a coat and hat at the 47th Anniversary of the NAACP Banquet and Fashion Show in the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego, California. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 13 April 1956)
2 tags
Models posing in front of the El Cortez Hotel in San Diego, California at the 47th Anniversary of the NAACP Banquet and Fashion Show. (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 13 April 1956)
3 tags
An officer inspects the luggage of this smiling Japanese American woman wearing a cardigan and cross at the Santa Anita Park assembly center where she will be processed for internment. Among the items confiscated were cameras. Japanese Americans were not allowed to visually document their own lives in the camps but were subject to white American photographers, some of whom like Dorothea...
3 tags
These three Japanese American women are just arriving to Lone Pine, California (May 1942, photographer unknown). They’re walking to a bus that will take them to Manzanar internment camp. There is so much to love about this photograph: the saddle shoes and socks combination, the headscarf, the wide-legged trousers, and, oh yes, the suitcases (including that makeup case!). More striking,...
3 tags
Teenagers walking to school at the Manzanar internment camp. Photograph by Ansel Adams.
From the Library of Congress.
3 tags
A profile portrait of Manzanar internee Yeko Yamamoto, 1943.
Photograph by Ansel Adams. From the Library of Congress.
2 tags
Surely the coolest couple to ever step foot into Daisy Studio, 1942.
From the Black History Album
2 tags
Jessica Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) was kind of enough to send me the entire six-page pamphlet released by the Department of the Interior in the 1970s featuring fashions from the eponymous label of designer Remonia Jacobsen (Otoe and Iowa Indian).
3 tags
Well-dressed women going places - this is precisely the kind of image that adds to the romance of old New York and, more specifically, Penn Station (ca. 1942). I love it.
From the Black History Album
1 tag
“While standards of beauty and style are not universal, you’d be surprised...”
– For more about the interconnections of race, gender, and fashion, read my interview with Alyson Mance (of AOL’s Black Voices on Style news website).
3 tags
This hairstyle, dubbed the “Freedom Burst,” is another look featured in the Jones’ All About the Natural book published by Clairol, Inc. (1971). The “bursts” are created by two separate cornrow braids beginning from above each eyebrow and braided back.
3 tags
For many years, this unknown woman was mistakenly identified as the illustrious writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Her actual name is still not known but her hat and her smile are clearly fabulous. (1935)
From the Library of Congress
3 tags
My obsession with hats and headpieces grows! This young African American woman (ca. 1899) looks positively regal in her elegant hat and perfect posture.
From the Library of Congress
3 tags
When my mom, Wei-Kuo Liang, was in her twenties, she was a stewardess for China Airlines. This allowed her the freedom to see the world and undoubtedly expanded her life, and fashion horizons. She was always bold and fearless, especially for her day, which is why she’s an inspiration to me.She’s a fiercely independent woman and I think it shows through her clothes. I try to emulate...
3 tags
This gorgeous woman is Kay Kageyama, an internee at Manzanar internment camp (1943). Photograph by Ansel Adams.
From the Library of Congress.
4 tags
Let one thousand more bonnets like this one bloom! This woman, photographed by famed French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, was a participant in the legendary Harlem Easter Parade (1947). I’ve been staring at her Easter bonnet for weeks now and thought I’d finally share it here. (I wouldn’t mind getting a better look at the man behind her either. His pinstripe suit looks...
2 tags
A very fashionable representative of the NAACP on a break, 1943. (I really love her sweater with the strong shoulders and are those buttons or grommets? Either way, LOVE.)
3 tags
Here I am with my mom, Shukla Reyes, in homemade matching outfits (ca. 1978). She made so many matching outfits for us from patterns bought at Woolworth’s that I don’t remember how many we had. My mother was extremely fashionable - she had furs, leopard print coats, blazers - she was always dressed to perfection. As a young woman, she moved from India to London for beauty school where she was...
4 tags
Photographs like this make me feel really lazy about my own hair. Sitting from left to right are Kiyo Yoshida, Lillian Watkatsuki, and Yoshiko Yamasaki. These high school girls are in a biology class in the Manzanar internment camp - look at that gravity-defying hair pouf on Yamasaki!
Photographed by Ansel Adams, 1943. From the Library of Congress
