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Clothing catalogs are a wonderful source of information on period clothing. Some caution has to be used a specific stores commonly targeted ceratain market sectors. Thus they are not aperfect reflection of contemporary fashions. They are, however, a very important source. This is especially the case when the catalogs provide ad copy describing the styling, colors, material, and other factors. A similar source is retail advertising, but these items are scattered in a wide range of newspapers and magazines. For HBC's purposes we have commbined clothing catalogs and advertisements together to get a better idea of chronological trends. HBC has used the catalogs of many different stores and compasnies around the world. Obtaining compies of these catalogs is oftern difficult. Some researches have compiled books sampling these catalogs which are more available to readers. Of course ther sampling involves a selection process which may affect the usefulness of these volumes.
Mail order catalogs were developed in America, in part to service rural areas and small towb=ns as the railroad spread out over the country. Thus some of the earliest catalogs were American. The most important were Sears and Wards, but there are many others. Safter the turn of the 20th century we begin tio see European catalogs. We have donecsome research on the mail order companies, but do not yet have detailed information on the catalogs they published. In addition to the well known mail order companies, there are also store catalogs. These are less readily availavle, but important sources of information.
Clothing catalogs are a wonderful source of information on period clothing. Some caution has to be used a specific stores commonly targeted ceratain market sectors. Thus they are not aperfect reflection of contemporary fashions. They are, however, a very important source. This is especially the case when the catalogs provide ad copy describing the styling, colors, material, and other factors.
A similar source is retail advertising, but these items are scattered in a wide range of newspapers and magazines. Obtaining compies of these catalogs is often difficult. This requires extensive briusung in library periodical collections and is complicating by the difficulty in making high quality imge copies.
For HBC's purposes we have commbined clothing catalogs and advertisements together to get a better idea of chronological trends. HBC has used the catalogs of many different stores and compasnies around the world. As far as possible we have attempted to include informatio about the source of the various entries in this section.
Some researches have compiled books sampling these catalogs which are more available to readers. Of course ther sampling involves a selection process which may affect the usefulness of these volumes. There are quite a number of these compliations and they can be quite useful to the clothing researcher.
Everyday Fashions, 1909-1920, as Pictured in Sears Catalogs.: This is a nice book, but a little disappointing because all is just black and
white.
Full-Color Victorian Fashions: 1870-1893.: This books gives good hints how to colour pictures of this time period. It's mainly about women but there are children as well.
Sears Roebuck Catalog, 1897.: This catalog is a wonderful source. In nearly 800 pages you can almost see everything you can imagine. And there is a boys clothing department as well.
Kaufhaus des Westens ( Kadewe). Illustrierter Hauptkatalog 1913 (A German mail-order catalog). This book offerers interesting new insights, especially good sailor suit images. Unlike Sears it has a more limited coverage and does not cover items like underwear andc stocking supporters which reveal fully how children were dressed.
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