Archive of a Department Store Fashion Director.
[Labor – Fashion] Stewart, Edith Shaw. Scrapbook Archive of a Department Store Fashion
Director. Pittsburgh, PA, [ca. 1933-1959].
2 folio scrapbooks with various materials mounted verso and recto as well as laid-in: original
photographs, fashion show programs, invitations, clippings, sketches, etc.
The scrapbooks of Edith Shaw Stewart, former fashion director at Pittsburgh’s famed Horne’s
department store. Spanning three decades through the 1930s into the 1950s, the majority bulks to
the 1940s.
Part personal fashion reference and part career diary, these scrapbooks and loose materials are
replete with hundreds of article clippings relevant to fashion trends, products and events; and
dozens of original photographs and programs of 1940s fashion shows staged under Shaw's
direction, including but not limited to the following:
- a series of 12 photographs and the original program of the 1946 show "Let’s Make it a Holiday"
held at Pittsburgh's Syria Mosque.
- 15 photographs documenting a 1948 children's fashion show produced with costumes on loan
from the Brooklyn Museum, also held at the Syria Mosque.
- 2 program booklets and 7 photographs documenting a 1940 original line of ladies clothing titled
"Night-life Shades" ("Inspired by the color spectrum created by Pittsburgh's steel industry") in
colors dubbed Flare Red, Phosphorus Yellow, Spark Blue, Copper Green, Smoke Gray, and Steel
Gray.
- 22 typescript pages of issues of the Tobe Fashion Report from 1948 bound in between paper
leaves of the second binder
- a series, ca. 1930s, of five photographs and descriptive sheets on period costume.
- 5 unsigned ink sketches, summer 1948, when a young Andy Warhol was known to have been in
the store's employ as a window dresser and executed somewhat in his style.
Inventory:
Four-ring binder, brown leather wraps, measuring approximately 15" x 13":
- 38 plastic overlaid leaves with 46 black and white photographs (37 mounted, 9 loose), the
majority measuring approximately 8" x 10"
- 25 fashion show program booklets (20 mounted, 5 loose)
- dozens of clippings and assorted ephemera
Four-ring snap binder, black leather wraps, measuring approximately 15" x 10":
- 85 leaves with 12 black and white photographs, most measuring approximately 8" x 10"
- 5 original ink sketches
- 4 illustrated chromolithograph card booklets (ca. 1914)
- photo reproductions of fashion illustrations
- dozens of additional clippings and assorted ephemera
Additional material:
- cloth book on the centennial anniversary of Horne's
- 10 black and white 8" x 10" photographs
- 5 fashion show programs
- various clippings, ephemeral booklets and printed matter.
A wonderfully detailed and thorough record of a fashion professional working at the largest and
most important retailer in a major American city.
Print Inquire
