American Style & Spirit - Fashion & Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850-1995 ~ Jane Bradbury & Edward Maeder

Today feels like a good day to talk about American Style & Spirit - Fashion & Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850-1995 by Jane Bradbury and Edward Maeder. It was published recently by the V&A and very kindly sent to me in August by Jane Bradbury, who rightly thought that its themes of fashion history and dressmaking would be of interest here.

Wondering as I was last week about how the exhibits in the Opus Anglicanum exhibition had survived centuries of moth and pestilence I had to agree with Valerie Steel in her Foreword to this book...

'It is a miracle that any clothes survive the ravages of time. If moths don't eat them, the fabric may split, fade or otherwise disintegrate...'

Whilst couture clothes might be preserved it is rare for ordinary everyday clothes from an ordinary working family to survive both the passage of time, and the one-way journey through thrift, jumble or charity shops to then remain in the possession of a single family for 150 years. It is therefore thanks to Augusta Denton Roddis (1916-2011) who saved the family clothing along with letters, photos and ephemera ...

'The way I felt about these older clothes is that it is nice to wear them but that it is also nice to save them...they get increasingly interesting with each passing year.'

And along with her feeling that 'to destroy a letter is to destroy part of a person' it was an attic bursting at the rafters at the family home in Marshfield, Wisconsin, that awaited the family on Augusta's death in 2011. 10,000 letters, 2000 photos and 250 items of clothing.

The Dutch Colonial Revival home of Hamilton and Catherine Roddis, built 1914

Aunt Augusta's attic, 1108 East Fourth Street, Marshfield, Wisconsin (Photo by Gillian Bostock Ewing, 2011)

The Roddis collection recounts the life and times of an educated, civic-minded, upwardly mobile, middle-class American family. It tracks where they shopped, the influence of fashion trends, the varying fortunes, lives and losses of the family, the love of home-dress-making and alterations to update a style, the sharing of patterns and designs among themselves along with the excitement of new purchases. At a time when many women might have concealed the fact that they made their own clothes, not so the Roddis women...they stitched and embellished and wore the results with justifiable pride. If they bought they bought wisely and well because good quality clothes were an investment.

Aunt Jennie's dress, c.1880. as worn by Edith Prindle (c.1918) (RFPA)

When Hamilton Roddis married Catherine Sarah Prindle in 1908 a shared work ethic would guide the family into the twentieth century and it shines through in this book, along with a belief in education and professional careers for the women in the family. There might have been some traditional 'women's work' involved in the sewing but this was about much more besides. It was about quality over quantity, about  personal style overruling fads, about self-confidence in appearance as a stepping stone to personal achievement, and I emerged at the other end of the 300 pages feeling as if I had really come to know and understand the family.

The Prindle family, Evanston, Illinois, 1897. The shirtwaists with puffed shoulder sleeves and simple, close-to-the-head hairstyles were the height of fashion in 1897. (RFPA)

The women are as astute and in tune with business and family fortunes as the men (and the collection also contains a quantity of men's clothes too). Sara Roddis for example, (Augusta's grandmother) having given her inheritance to her husband to invest in the business, insists that there is a legally binding and fair inheritance of equal shares for their son and daughter should he die. And it is frequently Augusta, writing about her nineteenth century ancestors, who ensures that they are not just remembered as clothes horses. These were intelligent, well-read, articulate women, at times in their lives wealthy but also thrifty and generous, and who inculcated a strong sense of 'New Woman' into their daughters who all attended university.

Formal portrait of Augusta by Kay Carrington, Pi Beta Phi House, Northwestern University, 1937 (RFPA. THF 2015.10.62) This photograph was never displayed at the Roddis home because Augusta's mother and father preferred the romantic innocence of another portrait to the more modern and glamorous image of their daughter. They considered this to be "too Hollywood."

The shared and combined love of both needlework and letter-writing ensures a rich primary source of information that is incorporated into this highly readable book, creating an enviable and rare 'combination of art, design and social and economic history'. There will be marriages and the accompanying  trousseaux and there will be elopements....even elopements need a new wardrobe of clothes. There will be varying fortunes, business success and then the stock market crash of 1929, followed by a revival of fortunes thanks to some personal sacrifices and careful management of the family lumber business which becomes a world leader in the Second World War. Good quality timber is required for the building of planes and it will be Roddis veneer sourced from the forests of Wisconsin that will be most sought after ...

'Thin veneer, cut at 1/90th of an inch which dried to 100th of an inch, used to make the Mosquito and H4 Hercules wing skins.'

The family business prospers and in the post-war years there will be money to go on cruises and travel to Europe (especially shopping in Paris and London) while through it all the clothes signpost a route through history.

So often books like this can sit unread and looking very nice on the coffee table but I have read this cover to cover over a couple of months and of course have fallen in love with a few favourite dresses...

Walking Suit, from Franklin, Simon & Co., c.1908. Made of cotton velveteen in the popular Directoire style, with a built-in faux waistcoat THF 2014.24.95.
(Gillian Bostock Ewing)

Silk gauze dress with a floral multi-colour printed pattern incorporating heart shapes, c.1856.THF.2014.24.54
(Gillian Bostock Ewing)

Printed day dress by Samuel Kass, New York, 1945. The cotton-rayon fabric of this dress was made by the Onondaga Silk Company, known for collaborating with artists to create textile designs. THF 2014.24.59
(Gillian Bostock Ewing)

 And you lucky, lucky people America because now you have an exhibition that I am green with envy about...head to the Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan and enjoy every minute, and if you do go please come back and tell us about it. The Roddis family collection was left to Jane Bradbury, author of this book, and the niece of Augusta Roddis, and Jane has donated it to the Henry Ford. All we can hope for is that the V&A decide we absolutely have to see it this side of the pond too.

Meanwhile now of course I realise that, having grumbled about the Opus Anglicanum book to accompany that exhibition, I have slightly painted myself into a corner with American Style & Spirit - Fashion & Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850-1995 because it is also a catalogue to accompany an exhibition, it is quite heavy and it is £30 (though of course check on You Know Where  wink...wink etc)

Perhaps if you go to the exhibition take a trolley with you because I think you will want the book for sure.

Might anyone be going anywhere near Dearborn, Michigan...

Please...

Footnote : My thanks to Jane Bradbury who very kindly offered me the use of any images from the book and sent all the above at my request.