For thousands of women across America, hard hit when the frivolity of
the twenties ended so resoundingly with the Crash of '29, the pages of
the Sears catalog became an essential resource in maintaining a
wardrobe. An ambitious marketing operation, it could not afford to take
chances on haute couture; its fashions were geared as closely as
possible to the prevailing tastes of the American people.
For this historically accurate sampling of authentic 1930s fashion,
Stella Blum, former Curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, selected for reproduction 133 representative
pages from rare Sears catalogs of the period (fall and spring catalog
for each year from 1930 to 1939). Hundreds of illustrations record what
men, women, and children were actually wearing in the 1930s when, as a
copyline from the Fall 1930 catalog proclaimed: "Thrift is the spirit of
the day. Reckless spending is a thing of the past."
You'll see here how simpler women's fashion designs -- of more
traditional, affordable material -- recaptured the feminine form with a
more natural waistline and lower hemlines than seen in the twenties. For
evening wear, longer dresses replaced flamboyant beaded short gowns
while cloche hats, another twenties trademark, were replaced by berets,
pillboxes, and turbans. The seriousness of the accessories and dresses
endorsed by such Hollywood legends as Loretta Young, Claudette Colbert,
and Fay Wray.
For historians of costume, nostalgia buffs and casual browsers, these
pages afford a rare picture of how the average American really dressed
during the thirties. It is an essential resource for study of the
clothing of an important era which designers cannot afford to be
without.
