Original photo album of midcentury fashions featuring Dacron fabrics — primarily from the shop windows of Gimbel Brothers and John Wanamaker Department Store locations in the greater Philadelphia region, home territory of the DuPont corporation.
Very good plus.
Price: $750.00
"COLOR HARMONY FOR THE BOYS"
The album's location captions cluster around Philadelphia, ranging only as far as Moorestown, New Jersey and Wilmington, Delaware, home of DuPont headquarters. Pictured window displays are tilted towards boy's clothing and menswear, with a smaller section devoted to women's suits and day dresses. A number of photos feature placards that declare, "SMART PHILADELPHIANS LIVE IN DACRON AT THE WORLD'S FAIR: in easy-care fluid fashion with the breezes built right in." Dacron was a special feature of DuPont's Wonderful World of Chemistry exhibit and musical revue at the 1964 World's Fair in New York, where American designers Oleg Cassini, Donald Brooks, et al., designed a "Four Seasons" fashion sequence in DuPont synthetic fibers: nylon, Orlon, Lycra, Antron, and the prince of polyester, Dacron itself.
While the album bears no ownership name, it was likely used by a Philadelphia-region sales representative traveling in Dacron around the major department stores and offers a fresh vision of the use of space-age synthetics in contemporary sportswear, where it was styled and sold as a time-saving and physically freeing innovation to American consumers.
Read more: Postrel, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World; Molella & Gabriel, World's Fairs in the Cold War: Science, Technology, and the Culture of Progress.
[Philadelphia]: [n.p.], [circa 1960-1964]. Album, 10.5'' x 9.5''; photos, 10'' x 8''. Original ring-bound gilt-stamped blue leatherette album. Contains 46 photographs in protective plastic sleeves (43 in black-and-white and 3 in color), most captioned with department store and city name. Minor wear to album edges, tape residue to front cover. Photos sharp and crisp.
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