I have 1000 letters left behind by the Nicholsons. Of these 1000 letters, I have posted about 300 from the 1908-1913 era on http://www.tighsolas.ca/, my social studies website.
I am now using these letters to write a novel, Flo in the City, on this blog.
Flo in the City, is about a young girl, Flora Nicholson, coming of age in the era. Flora is 16, a student in ‘high school’ or academy as it was called back then. Flora has two older sisters (Marion and Edith, both teachers) and an older brother, working in a bank.
The Nicholson letters tell an important story, about a pivotal time in Canadian and world history. The same story can be told in pictures from the Eaton’s catalogues of the era.
This morning I perused the 1909 Eaton’s catalogue available on Archive.org and snipped some pictures. I know if I compare this catalogue with the 1913 one, I will see some major differences. And I plan to do just that.
For right now, I’ve taken some snapshots from 1909, which I will post on the website as I write the installments of Flo in the City for the rest of 1909 and for 1910.
The advertisement above, for winter jackets, is the first picture in the 1909 Eaton’s fall and winter catalogue. This says a lot. Just like in modern department stores, as you ‘enter’ the catalogue you are met with women’s fashions. This says something, too.
Simply put, it suggests that women’s lust for clothing drove the consumer age, which makes the story of Flo in the City extremely relevant. The study of fashion history has always been considered a frivolous aspect of turn of the century history, say, compared to automobile history, but it clearly is not.
A person can learn an awful lot about women’s social history and ‘consumer age’ values, by examining fashion, and an awful lot about the 1910 era, by studying the Eaton’s catalogues.
Ironically, Edith mentions in a letter than she desires a pony jacket. No coincidence that ‘pony coats’ are the first item in the 1909 catalogues.
But at 37.00 such a coat is out of the question for Edith, who makes about 200. a year. That doesn’t stop her from purchasing a 7.50 hat from Ogilvy’s in 1909, a more stylish and expensive hat than would be found in the Eaton’s catalogue: a woman’s gotta have fun.
I grew up in the 60′s and ‘the residue’ of this era remained: for instance, my mother thought Persian Lamb the epitome of chic. I thought it was for old blue-haired ladies. On the other hand, those peignor sets, with silver comb, brush and little box, for something or other, simply enchanted me. They seemed the epitome of feminine to me. “Comb your hair 100 strokes each night, ” my mother would say. And in movies, that’s just what the beautiful actresses did, as they sat at their dressing tables.
