Fashion history, craftsmanship draw buyers at Harmony Museum sale
HARMONY — Vintage buyers browsed through more than 150 historical garments worn in decades ranging from the Victorian Era to the 1950s at the Harmony Museum Vintage Sale on Saturday.
Some arrived well before members of the Harmony Historical Society could unlock the doors and waited outside the Museum’s Stewart Hall as early as 6 a.m., event hosts said.
Taffeta slips from the time of the Roaring ’20s and corsets that would have been considered outdated by flapper standards were just some of the professionally appraised items for sale.
Erin Kennedy, a Harmony resident, self-described history enthusiast and antiques collector, said her collection mostly focuses on items from the 1870s through 1930.
As she examined different items of clothing and spoke about the fabric and designs, she discussed the evolving culture, craftsmanship and social habits that bridged the 19th and 20th centuries.
“That’s where you get a lot of changing fashions, though if you go to the early 1800s, that’s where you went from corset with big skirt to corset with just big dress,” Kennedy said. “1800 is when the first real change in fashion came, but the big change in fashion came in the late 1800s through the early 1900s from women because ... 1910 is when they started making the bloomers that you can ride bicycles in.”
She said one of the items that struck her as interesting was a particular corset displayed on a table in the back of the hall. Slips, corsets and other accessories and underclothes were in an organized pile Kennedy motioned to.
“With most vintage clothing, you’re gonna have stains, and it’s not going to feel like it couldn’t hold up to anything. You can look at these older corsets here; you can see all the fraying and whatnot,” she said. She held up a pink corset. “This one, there’s no fraying.”
She noted that it came with all of the appropriate pieces and was “whole.” The corset would have been the predecessor to the bra, she said.
Samantha Barna, owner of Sam’s Vintage shop in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood, said she was drawn by the sale’s selection of 1930s clothing. Her brick-and-mortar business grew out of a longstanding interest in vintage fashion, she said.
Barna said that she and her friend of 10 years, Sasha Gardner, decided to attend the event together. Gardner said he collects, restores and photographs vintage clothes and that his focus at the sale was finding pieces from the Victorian Era.
“I actually started collecting when I was 12 years old,” Barna said. “I wanted this really specific Betsey Johnson dress for a Christmas dance, and then I realized that Betsey Johnson pooled a lot of inspiration from vintage design. So I realized that for way less than half the price, I (could) have the original thing instead of a remake of it.”
Bringing vintage clothing back to life is something Barbara Fair, a retired reading specialist from the Moniteau School District, has started since her retirement. It began with an interest in genealogy and looking at old pictures of family members and what they wore. She said that upon learning how to sew while growing up, she learned about bespoke tailoring techniques and how historic garments were constructed.
“When you sew, you find out things that are amazing,” she said. “These people that made these garments; their talents are unbelievable.”
Harmony Historical Society vice president Gwen Lutz noted the workmanship involved in creating many of the vintage items.
She pulled an Edwardian day dress off a rack and laid it, gently, on a table. Hand-stitched with narrow panels of inlet lace and hand-sewn flowers, she said it would have been worn with a long slip to obscure the sheerness of the delicate white cotton.
“Somebody was a real, real artisan,” Lutz said.
When asked if a particular piece caught their eye, Lutz and board member Cheryl Speir mentioned a wedding dress from the 1910s. It sold early Saturday morning, bought by Gardner.
“Our reasons for selling these is to get them into the hands of conservators, people who will take care of them, repair them and put new life in them,” she said. “They don’t fit with our museum’s timeline, and rather than let them sit in our archives and deteriorate, we decided to sell the collection so that somebody could get it who would take care of it.”
Lutz said the clothes were donated by the Baldinger family, who owned the renowned Zelienople candy store that sold novelty confectioneries from around the world. Most of the items belonged to Lois and Dorothy Baldinger, who were teenagers during the 1920s, she said. Dorothy Baldinger’s hat collection was donated to the Zelienople Historical Society.
