fashionable 1940s coeds

I've been a little bit obsessed with these Nina Leen images of "1940s St. Louis college girls" ever since they popped up on the internets a couple weeks ago.  I first saw some of them on the Honey Kennedy blog, and couldn't help but be drawn in by these fresh-faced gals with flowers in their hair and  amazing dresses.  Not to mention--St. Louis!  That's where my people come from, and where I was born.  I wanted to know more about these photos, but information was scarce.  I didn't have any luck until I searched the Life magazine archives (a separate beast from the Life photo archives).  There I ran across this brief article in an October 1944 issue of the magazine. 

I saw immediately that the few photos in this article were very similar to the Nina Leen photos in the Life archives, and seemed to come from the very same shoot.  The article is about Washington University students who act as a review board for R. Lowenbaum Manufacturing Co., a St. Louis-based junior dress maker (Minx Modes was one of their labels).  Apparently Washington University had a dress design program--no doubt to work as a feeder for the burgeoning St. Louis juniors dress industry, which many of my relations worked in, in one manner or another--and these lucky students got to have a say in which dresses were made.  The article identifies the women standing on the right as the dress designer.

This dress--which I think is totally cute--is judged "too plain" by the board.  Interesting tidbit that plainer dresses "go over best in the East"--because  the girls in the large eastern cities are more sophisticated?

The ladies dig the ruffles on this dress.

Most of the Leen photo don't appear in this short article, but you can see lots more in the Life photo archives.   Here are a few more shots I loved; be sure to check out the archives to see more.

xo

K

the rag trade

1947 Carole King dress ad, from Silverbluestar's Flickr.

If you have worn or owned a vintage dress with a Carole King, Doris Dodson, or Minx Modes label in it, there's a possibility that at some point it passed through the hands of my grandmother, or one of my great aunts or uncles.  In the mid-1930s, the concept of junior fashions was born in St. Louis, Missouri (I was born there, too--but a bit later) making it, for a time, an unexpected hub of the fashion industry.  A 1940 article in the Palm Beach Daily News had this to say about St. Louis' burgeoning dress business: "The junior dress industry in St. Louis today employs more than 6,000 people and is growing as rapidly as trained help can be found for the machines.  The industry is entirely a local project.  There has been no outside capital to subsidize it.  Eighty percent of the designers employed are young girls fresh from the art school of Washington University [in St. Louis]."

None of my relations designed the dresses--I don't think any went to art school, either--but my great aunt Margaret (seen in the above photo with her brother and nephews) worked as a bookkeeper for the Forest City Manufacturing Company, which owned several junior dress lines.  

My mother remembers her Aunt Margaret saying she worked for "Grace Dozier Durocher's company." Grace was married to Leo "The Lip" Durocher who played baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals.  She was head designer for the Forest City Manufacturing Company, and later had her own line in the company, Carole King.  I didn't find a lot of information about Grace.  She and Leo Durocher were married for nine years and divorced in 1943.  I thought this divorce notice--from the October 11, 1943 Milestones section of Time magazine--was pretty funny: "She [Grace Dozier Durocher] said that The Lip was 'constantly of nagging disposition,' and asked no alimony."

Here's Margaret with her niece, my mother.  (I'm loving the scalloped trim on Margaret's dress here.)  Margaret would bring home sample dresses from work for her three eldest nieces, one of whom was my mom.  The dresses would all be the same style/cut, but in different colors.  My mother would get the last pick, and usually ended up with the pink dress.  She was happy though.  No one in the family had a lot of money, and a brand new dress that wasn't a hand-me-down was something rare.

My grandmother Marian (in the center of the above photo) worked in the St. Louis dress industry, too, doing piecework sewing.  My mom told me that a couple of her uncles also worked in the industry as fabric cutters.

It's a little sad to think that this industry that employed many of my family members no longer exists in St. Louis--or even in this country, really.  My grandparents and my great aunts and uncles had very little money to spare, but they still managed to dress well--in clothing designed and manufactured right here in the US!  Amazing.

xo

K