Making History Modern

When women bought retro futurism at $4.50 a yard

- Virginia Postrel

SHE IS AN icon of 1920s modernity: an independent woman with bobbed hair and a short skirt, walking with her streamlined Borzoi, the quintessential Art Deco dog. Behind her is a New York City street. But instead of skyscrapers and neon lights, it’s lined with old-fashioned chimneyed houses.

This image, with its up-to-the-minute foreground character and historic background tableau, is from a series of 1929 ads promoting the new season’s print fabrics from H.R. Mallinson & Co., a major silk-textile manufacturer. In a second ad, the modern woman, hand on hip, twirls her long pearl necklace in a stereotypical flapper gesture. In the background is a monument featuring the Mayflower and a hopeful-looking Pilgrim couple. A third ad shows the woman standing with her hand on a ledge, gazing thoughtfully in a pose that mirrors the bust of Abraham Lincoln looking down at her.

Mallinson sold its silks around the world, but it was a resolutely American company, boasting from the start that it produced “national silk of international fame.” It carried its identity into its textile designs. Earlier themes had included state flowers, National Parks, American Indians, and “Wonder Caves of America.”