Hittin' the Books -- Back to School with the Centennial Dress Project

The little yellow signs are out at all the crosswalks in my neighborhood and traffic slows to a crawl just around 9 o'clock -- which means that school must be back in session. Unfortunately, I am not among the lucky little duckies going back to their classrooms for lots of learning and making new friends and breaking in your new box of crayons and whatever else back to school means. But I am not going to let that get me down, no sir! I am trying to get ready for my back to school as well, next June!

I'll be honest with you -- the dress project stalled out a few months ago. The reason? I decided, after lugging a folding table in and out of my room for about a week so I could finish my walking skirt, that I needed a sewing table, or at the very least a sewing cabinet that once housed a sewing machine. You know, one of these numbers where the machine flips down inside?

I already have a machine, so all I really needed was an empty cabinet that I can set it on top of. I went to all my local secondhand shops (at least twice) and the local ReStore, a shopping outlet run by Habitat for Humanity that, in addition to taking used or left-over building supplies, also sells reused furniture. (If you have one in your area, GO! It supports a good cause and they have all kinds of odds and ends.) They had a lot of sewing cabinets...in a corner of the sales floor where I couldn't go and look at them. So that trip was a  bit of a bust too.

I spent a weekend on vacation in the city with some of my school friends, and when I called to check-in with my family on Saturday night, my mother told me that she and her sister and found (and purchased for me) a sewing table they thought I was really going to like. So, when I arrived home on Sunday night, I found this little beauty waiting for me:

Helloooo, gorgeous!

It's a Sears, Roebuck, and Company cabinet with a matching stool, and after checking all the sites on the internet I could find, I still have no idea when it was manufactured or what kind of machine was originally inside. I also did not find a single picture of a table that looks a thing like this one -- it's in a sort of Japanoiserie/ Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie style, which makes me love it even more. Given the model number inside, I think it was manufactured in the late 1930s.

And they told me it was my birthday present. Thanks, Mom and Sis!

So, with my table problem solved, I went to the library, checked out a number of books on 1910s fashion, and continued with my research. One of the books I really wanted (and eventually found) was Dover Publications "Everyday Fashions, 1909-1920, as Pictured in Sears Catalogs". The other books I've found are nice, but not very helpful. My turn-of-the-century Bennie is not buying a Parisian couture dress by Lucille or Poiret.  She's probably getting a ready made dress from the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog, a significant investment for school that will set her parents back anywhere between $5.90 and $6.95. A hefty sum, considering the average salary of a US Postal worker was about $1124 dollars a year, and that of a teacher was a meager $547 yearly.  For hourly workers, wages could range from 21 cents an hour in manufacturing to 55 cents an hour in construction trades. (Statistics from The National Bureau of Economic Research)

And, as today's parents can commiserate, new clothes for school come after paying for school, which is also not cheap. In 1916, one semester at Saint Ben's would cost this Bennie's parents a whopping $172, not including boarding at school over Christmas and Easter vacations, which would have been twelve dollars more.
So, what does a six dollar, off-the-rack dress look like in 1913?

All of the dresses in this illustration, with the exception of the second from the left, fit the price range.

 Sears and Roebuck also state very nicely at the bottom of the catalog page that "All dresses will be furnished in skirt length ordered, but with open hem so that length can be adjusted to suit customer." Even if we buy a ready-made dress, we're still going to at least hem it so it fits. How interesting.

Sears also has a page of dresses for 'Misses' (I think this may be the 1910s term for a 'young adult') and 'Junior Dresses for 13 to 17 year old Girls.' Have we really been calling it the Juniors department since the 1910s? I never knew.

This is what the Plastics looked like in 1912. Big perfect hair and tiny ankles.

These dresses are being made up in fabrics like velveteen, mohair, whipcord serge, and broadcloth. Norah Waugh's 1968 book "The Cut of Women's Clothes, 1600-1930" reports that fabrics like voile or muslin were in use, as were materials like linen, cotton, and shantung for something called a tub frock, which I think might be another name for a washdress.

Next step -- Buying a pattern, and a trip to the fabric store!