Some fascinating pics here of how some department store employees dressed in the US around 1900.


Hey, is that Jude Law in that pic?? I didn't know he was a time traveler.

http://mashable.com/2016/04/07/department-store-workers/

Around here , up until the mid 60s , department store staff all dressed quite formally. Men in dark suits and ties asn women in dresses or skirt blouse and jacket. An pretty much all who served the public were at least 30 years old.

How about Kurt Russell (or his great, great ...) in this one?

Thanks for sharing those great pictures. Those poor ladies though. I think I'd wage war against the corset were I there. I can't imagine working in those.

I shared the pics with my daughters.
with the caption these formal dresses should make a come back. LoL
did not go down to well.

don't know how they could work on their feet all day w/o fainting...

When I see pictures of the clothing they wore I always think the same thing. Summers must have been miserable. No shorts, tee-shirts and flip-flops back then.

and no air conditioning

Cool find Panzer.


Wheels

People were used to being warm and sweating during the summer and cold and shivering during the winter. Of course, all those layers made winters less difficult actually.

I think it's also notable that dept store workers could afford to dress like that back then. Try doing that today, unless the store sells its employees those clothes at cost...which is why it's easier (cheaper) to allow informal clothing.



The Jedi Master

I would have melted like a popsicle. I've always had this strong internal body heat where I break a sweat even in the low 80's. Yeah, I live in the wrong State.

What strikes me from the photos are the smiles. The custom at the time was to avoid smiling in photos, as it was thought that it was a crazy deranged look and it was considered crass, and no one wanted to be remembered like that. Especially the men, which seem to follow that trend on the pictures.

Maybe because the informality of the pictures, they actually were not that worried about posterity.