Clothing & Accessories - Overview
Work, play, fashion, economic class, religious faith, even politics—all these aspects of American life and more are woven into clothing. The Museum cares for one of the nation's foremost collections of men's, women's, and children's garments and accessories—from wedding gowns and military uniforms to Halloween costumes and bathing suits.
The collections include work uniforms, academic gowns, clothing of presidents and first ladies, T-shirts bearing protest slogans, and a clean-room "bunny suit" from a manufacturer of computer microchips. Beyond garments, the collections encompass jewelry, handbags, hair dryers, dress forms, hatboxes, suitcases, salesmen's samples, and thousands of fashion prints, photographs, and original illustrations. The more than 30,000 artifacts here represent the changing appearance of Americans from the 1700s to the present day.
"Clothing & Accessories - Overview" showing 2 items.
Oak Hall Clothing Co.
- Description (Brief)
- A stamp holder and pocket calendar of cream celluloid. The inside contains a calendar for 1900. A promotional novelty, it advertises Oak Hall Clothing Co. of Boston. The front resembles a stamped envelope.
- Oak Hall was a well-known men’s clothing retailer in Boston started by George W. Simmons. The name derives from the new woodwork in the store following an 1842 renovation—a look that became synonymous with high-end men’s clothing stores. Thanks to Simmons's aggressive marketing campaigns, the store was familiar to most residents of New England in the mid-19th century. It is mentioned in works by Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Main Street”) and derisively by Henry David Thoreau (“Ktaadn”), as well as in correspondence by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was incensed at the store’s use of advertising poems (written by “Professor Goodfellow”), and patterned on Longfellow's style.
- Source: “Oak Hall in American Literature” by Steven Allaback, in American Literature Vol. 46 No.4 Jan. 1975, p. 545-549.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1900
- maker
- Whitehead & Hoag Company
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0980
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0980
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Jamestown Exposition - Garrett's American Wines
- Description (Brief)
- Advertising pin for Garrett & Company made specially for the Jamestown Exposition of 1907 in Norfolk, Virginia. The front features color images of Pocahontas, Virginia Dare and Minnehaha (described as "The Cousins") and a crest for Garrett's American Wines. An image of the Virginia Dare clock atop the Garrett and Co. building in Norfolk is on the back. The back also reads "Take Berkley ferry in Norfolk, Va."
- Garrett & Company, established in North Carolina in 1835, was a manufacturer of American wines using the indigenous Scuppernong grape. Virginia Dare was their most popular wine, named for the first child born in America to English settlers. Dare was born on Roanoke Island, which is also home to the Mother Vine, a Scuppernong vine known to be the oldest cultivated grapevine in the world. Pocahontas and Minnehaha were names of two other Garrett & Company wines.
- The company moved to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903, after the growing temperance movement in the South made North Carolina an unfriendly environment for a wine business. By 1912, the spread of dry counties northward compelled the business to relocate for a final time to New York State. Eventually, nationwide Prohibition forced the company to abandon its wine manufacturing altogether. In the Dry years, the company diversified into Virginia Dare flavoring extracts and the sale of grapes for use in home winemaking.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1907
- depicted
- Pocahontas
- advertiser
- Garrett & Company
- maker
- Whitehead & Hoag Company
- ID Number
- 2006.0098.0141
- accession number
- 2006.0098
- catalog number
- 2006.0098.0141
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center