New Accession
Gene Burton's
Fabulous Fashion
Image: Betye Burton wearing an outfit sold in the store, circa 1950 (Gift of Betye Burton, BUR1.11.1)
For four decades, fashionable Pasadena women shopped at one of Gene and Betye Burton's stores. They opened their first store, Carrousel, at 396 South Lake Avenue in 1949. Their most well-known store, Gene Burton, was located at 505 South Lake Avenue from the early 1960s through 1989.
Image: Advertisement for Carrousel dress shop on 899 East Green, 1950 (Gift of Betye Burton, BUR1.11.2)
The Research Library and Archives is proud to announce we are the recipient of a recent donation of advertisements, photographs, correspondence, photographs, and fashion illustrations relating to the store. The collection, titled the Gene and Betye Burton Collection, preserves the memory of this important local business and offers a unique window into Pasadena fashion trends of the 1950s through the 1980s.
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The Collections Quarterly, sent out four times a year, features new acquisitions as well as select items from the Archives, art and artifacts collection, and the Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo collections.
This edition was inspired by the new textile arts exhibition, Fabulous Fashion - Decades of Change: 1890s, 1920s, & 1950s.
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Archives Feature
Business Ephemera Collection
The Archives' ephemera collections house hundreds of items from everyday life, including numerous items from Pasadena's rich fashion history. The Business Ephemera Collection has materials from many of Pasadena's oldest clothing, shoe, jewelry, and department stores. Bassett's Walk-Over Boot shop sold fashionable ladies' boots in the 1890s. The Cawston Ostrich Farm, located in South Pasadena, supplied ostrich feather fans, boas, hat plumes, and feathers not only locally, but to shops across the country from New York to San Francisco between the 1880s and the 1930s. Pasadena institution F.C. Nash's started as Nash's grocery store in 1889. The store progressed into general merchandise in the 1920s and began to focus on clothing and fashion items as well. In 1950, F.C. Nash's son, Hammond G. Nash, expanded the business, creating a Nash's chain with department stores in Alhambra, Arcadia, Whittier, Fullerton, and Pomona. Pasadena has also been a prominent location in the spread of department stores in Southern California, hosting branches of both Bullock's and Robinson's. From business cards to style books and from receipts to shopping bags and everything in between, the Business Ephemera Collection holds many clues to Pasadena's fashionable heritage.
Image: Cover of the Cawston Ostrich Feather catalog, circa 1900 (Business Ephemera Collection)
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Collections Feature
Leg O'Mutton As Fashion (Not Entree) Etiquette books from the 1890s list at least eight different kinds of necessary daytime toilettes (or outfits), including morning dress, promenade dress, walking suit, carriage dress, and riding dress. The two-piece dress, with a high-collared bodice or shirtwaist, was stylish. Skirts had a tiny waistline with a full floor length skirt, usually flat in front with a fuller back. Leg o'mutton sleeves, full at the upper arm and tight from elbow to wrist, were so large by mid-decade that they required separate inner supports in the upper sleeve. The day dress pictured is the perfect example of the epitome of 1890s fashion. It is also currently on view in Fabulous Fashion. Image: Detail of a rust brown silk twill two-piece day dress with exaggerated leg o'mutton sleeves, 1890s (Costume & Textile Collection, 83.1.101ab) |
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Fenyes Feature
Hundreds of Hats
Whether worn as a fashion statement, a mark of official rank, or a symbol of social status, whether worn for protection or to complete an ethnic costume, hats are a dress accessory well represented in Eva Fenyes' sketches and watercolor paintings. Between 1867 and 1930, Eva added hats to hundreds of her pictures. Occasionally, these hats were the focus of her images. For example, she depicted a Maltese shop-girl wearing a traditional ghonnella (or faldetta), a young woman modeling "great great grandmomma's calash," and a "skinny man with the swell hat" on the train from Savannah to Charleston. Shown here are hats worn by Captain William Muse and Eva Muse, their daughter Leonora and her nurse Julia Fabisch while they traveled by carriage through Pennsylvania in 1884.
The variety of headwear Eva Fenyes illustrated over the decades offers a treasure trove of style and function for interested students of fashion. Digital images of thousands of her sketches, hundreds of which include hats, can be viewed in the Reading Room.
Images: Details of portraits with hats (Fenyes-Curtin-Paloheimo Collection, ESF.009.1263 and ESF.009.1264)
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