For the Ku Klux Klan, the early 1920s were the golden age since many influential and successful people were either sympathetic to the cause or straight-forward Klansmen. The group claimed to have three million members across the country, including eminent leaders from coast to coast. The silent film Birth of a Nation, which presented members as heroes and aligned with…
Vintage Wonders
A pillar of Western society, especially America, beauty pageants were outlawed in the Soviet Union since 1959 — no cheeky fashion, no celebration of beauty and elegance, no barely clothed girls. But in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest General Secretary of the Communist Party, arrived and transformed the scene. His accession brought in a new era of social freedom for…
More than 100,000 women assembled in the streets of the Iranian capital on March 8, 1979, to oppose the mandatory hijab ruling of the new Islamic government, effectively mandating women to wear a headscarf whenever away from home. On International Women’s Day, the photographs show women from all walks of life — nurses, students, moms — marching, smiling, arms raised…
The flight attendant occupation assumed permanent form in the 1930s as “women’s work,” that is, job characterized as embodying white, middle-class ideals of femininity but also mostly performed by women. Together defining the new field of in-flight passenger service around the social ideal of the “hostess,” airline managers and stewardesses attempted to attract well-heeled travelers into the air. Like middle-class,…
These charming, elegant, and endlessly joyful images of roller-skating girls catch their carefree attitude. Re-discover the basic joys and ageless charm of these young skaters from bygone days. Roller skating originated in the 18th century, far earlier than one would think. Still, the early designs were far different from the sleek, sophisticated skates we know today. Possibly to replicate ice…
The sociopolitical climate of the 1960s and 1970s affected fashion in the Soviet Union. In a time of political rigidity, the women of the Soviet Union discovered a stunning means to imbue style with a special appeal, therefore producing a singular and shockingly gorgeous fashion. Fashion had not been a major focus for Soviet ideologists in past generations and was…
With little aid, no pay, and no other employment, LIFE magazine chose in 1941 to chronicle the life of one of the largest single demographics in the United States: the 30 million housewives who did most of the washing, made beds, cooked meals and nursed practically all the babies of the nation. The magazine decided to feature Jane Amberg from…
The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1886 marked the beginning of the timber trade in British Columbia, it made possible the exploitation of the interior forests, presented the trade with the Prairie market, which was to sustain it until 1913 and it attracted plentiful capital to the industry for the first time. For it opened the industry the…
In the 20th century, swimwear evolved dramatically as fashion trends quickly changed and the Victorian era’s constrictive rules gave way to fresh ideas of freedom and utility. Mirroring the fashion worn by males and subsequently guiding the simplified designs used in the first years of the Olympic Games, early in the century one-piece swimsuits became common wear for women. These…
Wearing what would seem to us like quite conservative swimwear today, the women were being detained for violating a restriction on public wearing of their ‘short swimsuits’. Early in the 1900s, modesty rules were quite rigid and mandated that most women wear stockings in addition to long one-piece clothing. The mayor of Atlantic mayor, New Jersey barred even the males…