Fashion Book: Fashion, the Century of the Designer

Fashion Book: "Fashion, the Century of the Designer"

In the first few years of the 2000's, there were many publications that reviewed 20th century fashion.  This is one of those books, however it is well written and illustrated, being more than a pretty coffee table book.


Every fashion library needs an encyclopedia of sorts.  This is a huge volume that spans the 20th century and includes nearly every important trend and designer. Arranged by decades, this book can give an overview of a specific era, or it can be used to look up specific information. Probably every designer of importance in included here, located within the decade chapter where their contributions mattered most. Additionally, there are features that include British, Italian and American fashion.

Having this book on the shelf will ensure that you can find information on 20th century fashion in a concise but well defined way, providing a start for any type of research or general knowledge.  If I have any problem with "Fashion, the Century of the Designer" it might be that it is very heavy and awkward, being larger than most textbooks on the subject.  I guess that's the price you pay to include lots of color photos.

Title: Fashion: the century of the designer, 1900 - 1999
Author: Charlotte Seeling

Hardcover: 656 pages
Publisher: Konemann (2000)
Book size: 11.7 x 10.2 x 1.9 inches

This book may be found in my shop

Digital Fashion and Costume Libraries: The Casey Fashion Plates, Los Angeles Public Library

Researching the history of fashion and costume online has taken grand leaps recently. In part to sort out the best from the rest, I have a short series of posts here on digital costume and fashion image collections now available to the public online. I thought I'd start with the Los Angeles public library, because a girl has to have some loyalty to her home base.

The Casey Collection of Fashion Plates consists of original fashion plates, spanning the years from 1780 to 1880. This huge collection has over 6,200 images, and that's alot to sort through, but the search engine is easy to use when looking for a specific year's costume plates. The images come from both American and British publications.

Overall review: I found this huge site to be well organized and easy to search. The images are easy to enlarge using a touch screen and the quality of those enlargements is excellent. I would recommend this to anyone needing a large body of images for research on a specific year or era between 1780 and 1880.

Improvements: I would have liked each image to be dated in the general search pages, as they are not in chronological order. The search is by year only, terms and other details cannot be searched. I would like to be able to search by decade, rather than having to enter 10 searches in order to see a decade of plates.

How it works:

Images per page: setting from 10 to 50 are available

Text per image on the search page: none

Text per image on the detail page: date, title, collection and item I.D. This does not include notes on apparel or other details in the image

Enlargement: (+) icon on upper right of page brings up the image in large scale on page. This can be further enlarged by using a touch screen, or the ctrl/+ keyboard

Search: "search collection for" box will bring up images by YEAR only. Does not search by decade or garment type.

Return: "return to search browser" brings user back to first page to start a new search

Speed: I found this to search and load quickly.

Copy: no, images cannot be reproduced

House of Shroyers: Vintage Dress Label

This "House of Shroyers" advertisement from 1960 shows dresses that seem typical for that era. The company was a long standing manufacturer of women's styles during the early to mid-twentieth century. I became interested in the label after finding a dress with this brand that was in excellent 'dead stock' condition.

My research led me to the Pennsylvania mining town, Shamokin. It seems that while the "House of Shroyers" label was produced there, several other apparel manufacturers were in town as well. The company that made this brand was the Shamokin Dress Company. It closed in 1984 and press releases at that time stated it had been in business for 70 years.

House of Shroyers workers, a partial view from the entire company portrait, 1946

The company produced an early brand, the Climax Dress Manufacturing Company, a label that was known for simple house dresses. The "House of Shroyers" logo was patented in 1949. A large employer for the town, at its height in the 1950's it employed over 600 people, mostly women. During the entire time, this business was owned by John E. Shroyer and family of Shamokin, who began at first by producing cotton bib front aprons that postal workers wore to sort mail.

The company produced both private label (for companies such as Leslie Faye) and their own "House of Shroyer". The private label dresses sold for considerably more than the company's own label. Locals still tell stories about their experiences working at this major regional employer.

While there is no mention of a designer, it is easy to see that this brand tended to focus on the half-size customer. The styles are not progressive, and seem to be created for an older customer base, both in silhouette and design.

The dress shown above is currently listed in my shop, HERE. <

This blog post has become a very popular article on my blog. If you are reading this from Shamokin or know more about Shroyers, please feel free to leave a comment here, thanks!"