Description: One-piece, unlined day dress made from gray, plain-weave linen. This practical dress was worn by museum founder Helen Geier Flynt (1895-1986) in the late 1930s or early 1940s. It is an earlier example of the more practical clothing Flynt wore when working at the museum during the 1950s and 1960s. Constructed in a shirtwaist style, featuring a turned down collar, short sleeves, and a seven-gored skirt ending just below the knee. The dress closes down the center front with nine matching, plastic buttons and secures with a self-fabric tie belt. Decorated with an embroidered motif of cherries on the PL rever/lapel. Further decoration, which also serves to fit the dress, includes gathering on either side of the opening with 15 vertical tucks at the top (partial) yoke seam each side, and gathers at the waist seam. An inside label reveals that this ready-made dress was retailed by Peck and Peck, part of their "American Exclusives" line. Flynt may have purchased it in New York City, or perhaps in a satellite location hear her home in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Subjects: Linen; Embroidery; Textile fabrics Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2019.50 |