Book Report: Gimbel’s Illustrated 1915 Fashion Catalog Gimbel Brothers

This is a first—I could not find this book on Amazon, but here is a link to one for sale if you have a yen for it. It was published in 1994 by Dover Publishers. It has over 2000 illustrations, and no I didn’t count them, do I look crazy?

I’m sure Kathy found this somewhere second hand and gave it to me to read. I thought, what an excellent book to do a book report on for the blog. I think that we have said before that we like to look at old catalogs for identifying things that we find, but also to see styles of the time, hairdos, what kinds of events that people dressed for, and of course what did it cost way back then. Lots of societal info in these catalogs.

I took so many pictures that there will be two posts about Gimbels, unless you revolt. Please let me know if you don’t care to see the rest, but I have to tease you that the second post is going to be about all the underthings that people wore back then. Makes me happy to be alive in the latter half of the twentieth and early twenty-first century!

Gimbel Brothers, or simply Gimbels, was an American department store that started in 1842 and closed in 1987. They started in Milwaukee, WI, opened another store in Philadelphia, PA, and finally moved headquarters to New York City. They started the first annual Thanksgiving parade in Philadelphia in 1920, which continues today. They were the main competitor of Macy’s department store.

So, the Great War started in Europe in 1914, and there is no mention of it in the catalog, and they even tout Paris fashions. The first few pages are testimonials, information on how to send payment, what kinds of samples would be sent, and some general talk of Gimbel Brothers’ great quality. This is the second page after all that:

Even in 1915, you don’t see a lot of ankle. I’m pretty sure if these ladies knew what fashion revolution that was coming in about five years, they would faint. The dress on the left is linen. Have any of you had any piece of clothing made from linen? Mine are always wrinkled messes in about 30 minutes or less. Could you imagine ironing this dress with a 1915 iron? It might take all damned day and need it every time it’s taken out of the closet! Since it’s only $5, ha ha in 1915 dollars, I might be tempted to wear it once and palm it off on the “needy”.

The other coat dress has “man tailoring” so you know it’s good. Just listen to this descriptive sentence, “In this dress you see a superb model that is developed after the ideals of the carefully dressed American woman of fashion.” That’s a lot of pressure to put on a coat dress—hope it’s up to the task!

Next we have “Charming, cool, comfortable dresses for women”:

I’ll give them charming because I’m not expert on the late Edwardian style, but I would debate cool and comfortable. First, there wasn’t any comfortable women’s clothing in this era. You’ll know why when you see all the layers underneath, and that also rules out cool. None of the dresses on the left look comfortable or cool; charming is in the eye of the beholder. The left-most dress on the right page is made from linen, so neither comfortable or cool. The checkered one is made from gingham, so it has a chance to be kind of comfortable, and relatively cool. The right-most dress is made from rice cloth which a Google search only turned up cloth for cooking rice, or rice sack cloth, a whole ‘nother animal. I’ll keep trying for figure out what it is, but if anyone knows, please share.

“America Combines Empire and Victorian Models” labels the left page and “Fit for Lovely Girlhood” is on the right:

Gosh, advertising language was so flowery in the past. I’m not sure it would work well in our weary cynical world. The left-most dress on the left page is described as a dainty dancing dress for misses or small women. In my young days, misses was what you labeled something that was bigger than the acceptable sizes, but here, it means teenagers or young twentysomethings. The dress is made from satin and chiffon, but is only $10. Now, that was quite a bit of money then, equivalent to about $310 today, the interwebs tells me. Pretty good chunk of change for a dancing dress! The dresses on the right page are for the younger set, and kind of match what I thought young ladies would wear in the 1910s. I like all the sweet embroidery on them.

Gimbels doesn’t ignore the working women, or those in “service”:

The leftest dress on the left page is described as a sports model. I’m not sure what sport or activity that you could perform in this skirt and blouse, but I hope it’s nothing more strenuous than waving a hanky. Maybe golf, but tennis is right out! The dress nearest the center on the right page is described as for office or business wear. These four seem plainer than the outfits on page 34. I had always believed that if someone was “in service” that indicated a paid domestic position. I think here it is being used as a euphemism for “working”. I don’t think any of them would be something that a downstairs maid would wear, but who knows? Slap a fancy apron on them, and maybe it would.

Poor pregnant ladies:

The dresses are bad enough, even if they are carefully designed. The outermost dress on page 48 is wool, and described as an “albatross” gown appropriate for home wear. Way to make a woman feel attractive—describe her as a great big bird, with a secondary meaning of causing concern, anxiety, or hindering accomplishment. They should have called it a stork dress, which is appropriate for the woman’s condition.

On the right page, you can take a look at the two maternity corsets!!! Yes, corsets. It’s a wonder that my great-grandmother ever delivered a healthy baby. Can you even imagine? “Yeah, I know you’re eight months enceinte, but you just have to buck up and keep your figure” says other women who had to do the same thing during their pregnancies. Barbarous! Right behind it is the nursing corset.

Well, after you birth the little darlings, you have to dress them:

So glad that they are “proper”; whatever would we do if children weren’t proper? A lot of this clothing is made of wool, because it’s hard-wearing. The little sailor outfit on the top row is made from serge and silk. I wouldn’t let a kid out of the house wearing anything silk or carrying a sword! The little boy in the bottom row in the checkered “Dickens” suit, kind of reminds me of a Humpty Dumpty poem in one of my childhood books. With spats!!!

Slightly older boys have it a little better:

At least they get to wear caps and play baseball in the wool knickerbocker pants, all properly buckled at the knee. I was thinking of the Music Man song, “Ya Got Trouble“, where the boys were reading Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang and buckling their knickerbockers below the knee! And Music Man was set in 1912, so the fashions might be pretty close.

Little girls don’t seem to catch a break, fashion-wise:

They are still wearing dresses, albeit with less frills for play time. Some of the dresses even look like you could run in them. But don’t forget the wool, or knitted stockings that they had to wear. And of course, the right page shows all the pretty dresses that little girls wore and looked like pretty dollies. Don’t get me wrong—I loved wearing pretty dresses when I was a kid. But not everyday, with your mama yelling at you to keep them clean. What if you weren’t “dainty”, whatever could you do as a young girl in a certain level of society in the early 1900s? Probably get lots of scoldings. Did you notice that the girls have no toys, or anything in their hands, unlike the boys?

I hope you enjoyed the first part of the catalog review. Life sure was different back then. I also think that Gimbels was only for people of a certain financial status. Working folk weren’t going to spend that much money on one piece of clothing!