Newport, known as the Queen of Resorts, or as Elizabeth Drexel Lehr stated ironically in her memoirs: “the very Holy and Holies, the playground of the great ones of the earth from which all intruders were ruthlessly excluded,” was transformed each summer for the sole and very conspicuous[...]
Archive for July, 2009
The Wonderful World of Hair
Hairstyles of this period shifted with the shifting silhouette in dress and also reflected, as the era progressed, the growing freedom and emphasis on ease in hairdressing that marked a more mobile society. The agricultural depression of the 1880s which dampened spirits, expressed itself in the somb[...]
The Edwardian Publishing Industry
Much as today, the publishing industry of the Edwardian era wrestled with such familiar issues as distribution, declining interest in reading, literary fiction versus “trash” for the masses, competition for bookstores from cheap editions & used book sales, and the eternal assumption [...]
The IT Girl: Lady Duff Gordon
History has unfortunately immortalized Lady Duff-Gordon as the cold, imperious woman who, with her husband, Sir Cosmo, commandeered a lifeboat to themselves during the sinking of the Titanic, completely ignoring her position in history as one of the first couturiers and an indomitable, albeit flawed[...]
