Profile Accuracy Theme of the Week: Fashion

Question

This week's theme: Fashion.

To participate, simply:

1. Choose a profile that fits this week's theme.
2. Review and improve the accuracy of the profile.
3. Reply with an answer below to let us know which profile you chose.

Also see: Photo Sharing Theme of the Week: Family Gathering

Answer 1

Edith Posener Head was a fashion designer, who was nominated for 35 Academy Awards. She won eight times, so she received more Oscars than any other woman. 

In the past, I have worked on her profile, and there was recently a merge that added her parents. I will work this week to improve her profile, add more photos and add sources for accuracy. This is a fair use photo from Wikipedia.

Comments

Thank you sweet Alexis for sharing this great photo of a fashion designer

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I had worked on her and another fashion designer that is still living. I am very happy with my life, and having sweet friends like you Susan—but being a fashion designer has always been my dream occupation.

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My dear friend, I wish you had go for the goal you wish for many years ago, but things was so different when we where young is that not right.

I believe you have done great with your live

You are a very wonderful and creative lady

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Yes Susan, you are so right about being young—things are different.

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For "What a Way to Go," Edith Head had a $500,000 budget to dress Shirley McLaine. They both had a lot of fun. Here's a You Tube.

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Thank you Joyce, you are so good at finding wonderful things. That certainly was a treat to see the absolutely fabulous clothes. I will add it to her profile. Thank you so much!

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You're welcome, Alexis, and thank you for the giving me the credit for finding that interesting video. Some of those outfits were hilarious! I was surprised, when I looked for pictures of Edith, that the outfits she herself wore seemed to be fairly ordinary.

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Thank you, Alexis, for adding the photo of the stunning dress worn by Grace Kelly.  It brings back a sweet memory of my first party dress my mother allowed me to select. I was ten.  It had a black velvet top and a flared white crinoline-type skirt.  I was in diapers when Grace Kelly wore the dress in the Hitchcock movie but some years later, in the early 1960s Edith Head's movie designs were being copied for children's clothes.  A few decades ago I saw Rear Window in a retro theater and suddenly realized that was my childhood party dress. Of course I wore it with white knee socks, paten leather strapped shoes and an aqua cardigan so I don't think I would have impressed Jimmy Stewart.  You did an amazing job with Edith's profile!

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Pat, that is very interesting about Edith Head’s clothing designs being used for little girls dresses. Glad you have such a good memory. I related to Joyce’s comment about seeing her plainly dressed receiving an Oscar, but her designs were wonderful.

Answer 2

For the theme of this week I have choosen a maternal ancestor of my mother, Carl Wilhelm Johannes Schnarr (1777-1828). He was Schneidermeisetr und Kleidermacher (Master tailor and dressmaker).

Therefore, this week I will make his profile more accurate:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schnarr-100

Answer 3

My mother had a great sense of fashion, so much so that my father when courting her, created his "Private Volume", a small photo album of his sweetheart wearing her various fashionable outfits.  Where she acquired this trait is easy to understand because on her father's side there were many Merchant Tailors and on her mother's side many Master Tailors.  I have selected http://wikitree.com/wiki/Stielow-24 my great uncle Fred Stielow.  His profile needs an update.  I added a photo of formal attire 1909 this morning and will add information on the profession. He began at age 14 and worked long hours for the rest of his life. 

Comments

Here's more about top hats.

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Thanks, Joyce, for your link to an extensive look at the subject of top hats. Fascinating how something you, at first glance, think is somewhat alien to your life, has instead been a part of it all along, every decade.  And yes, now that I think of it, I wore a black top hat with purple sparkles to an adult Halloween party in my adventurous youth when I dressed as Marlene Dietrich (blond wig of course).  I'm a senior now so this is a long time ago.  I think you've done this before, got me to think of something forgotten.  I appreciate your abilities to do this!

Answer 4

I will work on George Attwood. I don't have many people in my tree related to clothing, but George was a tailor and his profile could do with a proper cleanup after merging with another profile that had sources behind paywalls.

 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Attwood-619

Answer 5

For this week's challenge, I chose Ona Heard. I've been slowly working on her profile for a while, and this week's challenge was the perfect opportunity to get it done. She loved clothes. In her profile, you'll see mention of dressing up specifically for Christmas. That was one of her favorite times of the year.

Comments

Let me be sure I have this right: Her name wasn't Ava, it was Ona. Her sisters were Ova and Oma. Oma was married to Onice. How confusing!

But she looks lovely in her Christmas outfit. Thank you for sharing her.

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And the of course she also had a brother Alva. It's been a big headache getting all the correct documents right for each of the sibling!

Answer 6

This week I improved the profile for Aunt Bernice, who learned to fit clothing working with her sister in the 1930s fitting corsets. She later married and moved to the small town of Norwood, Colorado, where she ran a clothing store, taught most of the girls to sew, and made most of the wedding dresses.

I have many fond memories of Aunt Bease, visiting several times, including three months while I was in kindergarten. At age 15, she taught me several sewing skills, helping with a corduroy suit. She had a small house, and one entire room upstairs was converted into a closet. Sadly, her arthritis became so bad in later life that she could no longer hold a needle. But as was her nature, she took it in stride.

Answer 7

What do I know about fashion?  But I know a little bit about history.

 “Godey’s Lady’s Book” was the preeminent magazine that brought fashion design to the women of the United States for almost 70 years.  Despite a publisher’s change and name changes it was published from 1830 to 1896.  It carried illustrations of women’s fashion which were copied for the lady’s wardrobe.

 When I think of women of fashion, I think of Pauline Smith (Smith-165551), half-sister of my third great-grandfather.  Don’t ask me why, because I know little about her.  She lived in Georgia probably all of her life.  She was visited by her nephew during the Civil War, and the scene I have in my mind is one you might see in the movies of the period.  So, I will assume that she was fashion conscious, and work on her biography.

Answer 8

I am going to work on the family of Oscar Jacobson aka Samuel Jackson, he was born in Russia, arrived in England about 1884 and worked as a tailor in London, he moved to Bath and set up his own business two of his daughters were in the trade, one as a dressmaker and the other a milliner.

Answer 9

I improved my profile for Mary Forse, my first cousin 5x removed, who was a dressmaker in Yetminster, Dorset, England. 

I haven't been able to determine if she married or when she died yet, but I did improve the birth date and added the census list to make it a better profile. 

Answer 10

This week, I improved the profile of my Aunt Evelyn Ella Ceruti Kirkland.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ceruti-14

She is featured in the family gathering photo dressed in a fashionable circa 1906 dress, seated on the far right. Additions to the profile include family members such as husband and children, as well as additional sources.

Answer 11

In Adams, Massachusetts, a statue of William McKinley seems to be waving at people passing by. But what does William McKinley have to do with fashion?

If we're going to have some interesting fashions, we first need some fabric. Back around 1900, much of the world's fabric was produced in the huge textile mills of the northeastern United States. Adams was home to one of the largest cotton mills in the world. (Documented in this 1917 movie.) Like other American industries, the cotton mills of Adams benefited from tariffs which protected them from foreign competition, tariffs  which they owed to President McKinley. After his assassination, the mill owners of Adams commissioned this statue, in which his arm is raised dramatically as he urges the passage of the McKinley Tariff Bill.

Now the economy of Adams relies more on tourism than on cotton manufacturing, so perhaps he is indeed waving at the passers-by.

I have added this picture to his profile.

Answer 12

Follow the change of fashion in the 97 year life of my 2nd great-grandmother, Georgianna Ross: https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2021/07/52-ancestors-week-29-fashion.html

Comments

A really interesting and well-done story. Thanks, Chris.

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Glad you enjoyed it, Joyce!

Answer 13

https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Smith-239261

My mother was a wonderful seamstress and tailor.  In the 1960s she would sew many of her clothes and copied Jackie O, even down to making her own hats.  She competed in Illinois Women's Fashion competitions and even went to Chicago and won a Vogue Fashion award.  She taught me how to sew.  It was one of her passions.  

Answer 14

This week I finally saw a photo of my great-great grandmother Elizabeth Catherine Smith. She certaintly didn't look how I imagined her to, what with her very fashionable hat and scarf. As well as adding her parents, I added some new information about her, including her parents' info.

Answer 15

I wrote a fashion-related blog post mentioning several of my ancestors: https://rhymeschemesanddaydreams.wordpress.com/2021/07/25/52ancestors-in-52-weeks-fashion/

I added sources to the profile of my 3GG James T. Reid. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reid-7119

Answer 16

Fashion is not just clothing.  It can also be a manner of speaking, such as the glottal fry which is fashionable among some people and in some places.  It can be the tattoos that to a prior generation were only found on sailors.  It can be anything that is transitory, and connected to a certain group of people or a certain generation.  

The fashion I often work with genealogically is the naming traditions among New Englanders.  Names go in and out of fashion, and sometimes you don't know why.  New Englanders, who were generally of English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish stock; why would they have recurring Spanish sounding names, for example?  One of my ancestors was named Lorenzo Jepson.  Why?

He was one of thousands of children named after an itinerant preacher of the early 19th century, by the name of Lorenzo Dow.  Apparently Lorenzo Dow's power of personality was unforgettable, and despite a relatively short life, and no surviving children, here we are almost 200 years after his death, talking about all the Lorenzos that were named for him.

We have a profile (currently adoptable) of the famous Lorenzo Dow, Dow-1037, b in 1777 in Coventry CT.  That profile showed his parents, but his dad was not connected to his own line.  I found his birth record and connected Lorenzo's dad, (Humphrey Bean Dow), to his forebears.  Humphrey's middle name came from his maternal great grandmother.  Still don't know where Lorenzo came from.

Comments

Thanks for an interesting take on the subject of fashion. I just asked Family Search for people named Lorenzo born in Connecticut between 1760 and 1790. There were more than you might expect.

Answer 17

I gave Alexander McQueen a picture. On FamilySearch I found his supposed paternal grandparents and one pair of greatgrandparents, but I didn't find the document that connects them to their children. So I didn't add them. 

Answer 18

For this week's (actually this past week's challenge), I adopted Charles George Fashion.  It turns out, he was named after his father.  Charles enlisted after WWII for service in the Panama Canal Program.  The original profile has him attached to a mother, a step-sister and a spouse, but I could only find bare evidence to support those connections.  He now has sources and a small biography.

Answer 19

I had quite the adventure connecting my husband's ancestor, Catryntje Van Voorhees Van Doren. A lot of the challenge for me was in understanding the Dutch fashion in naming conventions... I've made progress in that, but I'm still by no means an expert. She was already on WikiTree, managed by the New Netherland Settlers project. An old GEDCOM import from Ancestry had her name as Catlyna, and reported she died at about 1 year old. She also had a younger sister, Catrina, (my sources say Catlina), who definitely died in infancy. 

I had to get all the available-to-me research together in order to make my case that she actually lived long enough to marry John Van Doren Jr. and have four sons before dying in 1792. This included DAR records, my mother-in-law's extensive research that includes binders full of printouts from Family History libraries, and searching through Van Doren and Van Voorhees genealogy books that are available online. I really appreciate Ellen Smith's helpful encouragement through all of this. I'm most comfortable doing ordinary American genealogy from 1800 on, so I felt I had to step up my game. I did my best, and I've spent the better part of the last two weeks adding and connecting Van Dorens, writing bios and looking up sources. I discovered the category "Dutch Descendants of Somerset, New Jersey" and started adding it to many profiles.

One interesting thing about the Dutch fashion in naming -- if the first wife died and the husband remarried, the first girl born to the second wife was named after the first wife. So I connected Nelli Lott as John Van Doren's 2nd wife (she was also on WikiTree, not connected to a husband, but her dates had no conflict). Her first daughter was Catherine Van Doren, who married Simeon Van Nortwick. 

On my husband's line, Catryntje's son Abraham named his daughter Catherine Voorhees Van Doren. She named her daughter Catherine Voorhees Leigh. She named her daughter Katherine Van Dorn Andrews (and we see the fashion in spelling change). She named her daughter Katherine May Denman. That was my husband's grandmother. When we were married his uncle told me how nice it was to see the name Katherine return to the family. It was very sweet, but I didn't realize until now how far back that name goes.