Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Guard That Lingerie!

In the mid-teens when women started wearing dresses that required simple slips under them because they were transparent or semi-transparent, and with the advent of the brassiere, it became necessary to control all those sagging straps somehow.  Having worn some of these fashions with the correct underpinnings I know whereof I speak.  These handy little items corralled those wayward straps and prevented embarrassment.
This card from my collection is an example of a bad habit of estate sale people who feel the need to ruin all the nice paper items with their black markers.  I have pointed this out to I don't know how many of them and sometimes just get blank looks.  The serious collectors among them get it, but I still have many otherwise pristine items ruined this way.

This is a Stickup


From 1914-1916 it was fashionable to have collars that were high in the back which complemented upswept hair held up with combs.  This was made possible by little items like this which were sewn inconspicously into the collars to hold them up.  Collar supports were not new, having been used for years earlier to support Edwardian lace collars, but these were the longest they would get.  See some examples below from the American Woman magazine of June 1915.