Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Social History

Believe it or not, I'm still cleaning out stuff from my aunt's apartment.  Considering how many carloads went to the thrift store, and how much more just went straight into the trash (and you know how I feel about throwing things away!), there is still a metric shit ton of this stuff.

I didn't keep a lot of her books.  Most of them were either "old people" books (staying young, prescription drug interactions, vitamins, healthy cooking), saccharine book club romance novels, and random religious tracts given to her by visits that she was too polite to refuse (she had 6 family bibles; I think that was enough even for her).

I kept a few, this being one of them.  I know Edith Head as a Hollywood costume designer, and I'm not particularly surprised that she wrote a book, but this is a serious piece of social history, in addition to a book about clothes.

Check out the heading on Chapter 2:  "How to Dress to Get a Man . . . and Keep Him."  

Actually, a lot of the advice (other than that man-getting bit) is still pretty spot on.  

And I love the illustrations.  If you want your own piece of social history, it's available here.



2 comments:

Jacqui said...

There is a lot of old books out there written for women and how snag a man and keep him. Instead of burning bras, women should have been burning these kind of books. I love Edith Head as a designer and it makes me kind of sad that this was included in her book. But I suppose that's what she was doing with those sexy dresses she created.

Auset's Stitched Treasures said...

I have this book in my collection, because I love Edith Head as a designer. And it is definitely a piece of social history. Considering, her life story, I think she wrote this book to appeal to the masses. Some of her advice you can still been see in action today. I enjoyed it. Another is the book written by Claire McCardell.