Fur-ever Lovely
By Stefene Russell
Photo by Schweig Studio, 1929; courtesy of Missouri Historical Society Photographs and Prints Collection
It was a more glamorous time: 78 years ago, no one would have ruined the fun by bitching about the chinchillas that were flayed for those fur collars, or wondered aloud if the lead in red lipstick might cause cancer. It’s also hard to imagine staging a fashion show in a city park these days. This is Heman Park; notice there are leaves on the trees. It’s not exactly coat weather. But
78 years ago, before the invention of those accursed sweat pants, ladies didn’t mind suffering for beauty. These gals enthusiastically twirled and sank their hands into pockets and popped their collars even as they grew faint from the humidity and the heat from the klieg lights. Here, we get a rare point of view, the same one you’d see if you peeped out from behind the velvet curtain obscuring the improvised dressing room. This is what you saw if you were lucky enough to be backstage among the discarded dressing gowns, the wiglets and the half-melted lipsticks, where the zipper-upper of dresses, the crimper of bobs, the sprayer of hair lacquer—and most important, the wielder of powder puffs—held court.
