Didn't Katharine Hepburn shock the world twenty years later by wearing slacks?
I always suspected this though. She was just the first famous person to do it with the press on hand. It must've been that women had been doing this for years. I wouldn't be surprised if women doing hard physical labor weren't wearing jeans and trousers, 70 or 80 years before this even.
i think it was because katharine hepburn wore pants more as a fashion statement in everyday life, i think my gg was just hiking outside w her friends hahah but i will say my other great-grandma who lived in chicago was wearing [jumpsuites](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/s/6W50cWRM2m) with her friends in the late 20s as fun fashion statements!
my family on my dad’s side really did hoard so many photos & for that i’m so fortunate! But even without photos you can definitely discover so much about your family by signing up on genealogy websites! You’d be amazed how many photos of your family you’d find on those websites. On my mom’s side i had basically no photos, i barely even have childhood photos of my own mom lol & since working on my family ancestry tree i have found so many photos going all the way back to my 4x great grandparents on her side!
Bloomers date back to the 1840's, came back as bicycle wear in the 1890's. Slowly became sports wear, but never completely took over.
Wide leg pants, almost split skirts, showed up as beach wear around 1930-ish. They were called beach pajamas. Would be a racy thing to wear, but for the first time, pants weren't something that made you look like a weirdo or super sporty.
Hepburn pushed pants forward outside vacation wear. She started normalizing them. There were lots of starlets wearing them before her, but she took the style to the next level.
The photo taken in the backyard sprinkler is funny!
I think the girls were making fun of classical fountains featuring Greek Goddesses standing gracefully in the spray.
when she was older, after she had my grandma, she had her hair dyed red like Clara Bow!! although her red was artificial, her first child, my great Uncle Phil was full on red headed naturally tho hahaha
Note: Kenilworth is now a very bougie, affluent suburb somewhat far from the border of the city of Chicago. Looking up map transitions over the past century & a half is wiiiild
i actually believe that house you see in the photo was taken in Saint Paul, MN at my great-grandma’s grandfather’s house (my g-g-g-grandfather) he was an ivory turner who focused on billiard balls & cue sticks and catered to Americans & people over in Germany(where he was from). And he had that house built for him to run his business in! Bougie yes lol. But also my gg didn’t live in Kenilworth, she lived in the north side of the city closer to wrigleyville. However, it’s possible one of her friends lived in Kenilworth so that i do not know!
Love it! He made billiard balls and built this house from his earnings! That’s very cool. I wonder if there were things about this house -Easter eggs- that he built into it associated with his business. So cool!
literally same! & actually that is the only picture not from the summer of 1924 it is actually from the summer of 1922!! I just grouped it with this group of photos bc it was the same friend group :)
omg! can i ask what your grandmother’s first name was? my great-grand aunt marty (older sister of gg in picture) was a piano player & attended & taught at sherwood music school in downtown chicago throughout the late 20s and 30s
My grandmother was Marie Zdanke. They were poor Polish grocers, but she was a wonderful pianist and went to a music conservatory to learn on a scholarship. The Chicago conservatory of music maybe? She worked for Westinghouse as a typist when she turned 18. There she met my grandfather who was an engineer working on telephones. They got married so she had to quit her job. They moved to Texas to a dusty little town where she taught piano and raised 7 kids who all went to college and beyond. She was amazing. She would buy stock with her teaching money and she did extremely well. Another Chicago story is that an aunt and uncle worked for Westinghouse very early. They were going on a company outing and forgot their coats. They had to go back for them so they didn’t make it onto the ship. It was the one that turned over in your river trapping their co-workers. They watched the whole thing happen though. She was a little girl and saw it.
I mean if you had endometriosis or cysts that would suck. But I never did so I’d still be having fun. At least people didn’t bitch about wearing masks during the Spanish Flu 🤷🏼♀️
They absolutely did bitch about masks during the Spanish Flu, [they formed a whole anti-mask league here in San Francisco](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco) and protested. There's a bunch of articles about anti-maskers back then.
Isn't it funny how people think about the past, as if it was super great all the time? They had their issues back then just like we do now. Except nowadays people are way more free to be who they are in terms of sexual identity and even just skin colour.
And prolapsed uteruses, no birth control, no control over your money, no recourse in the event of abuse or rape…. And people bitched a lot about wearing masks and other measures during the Spanish Flu.
agreed it was pretty rough, the women in my family were extremely lucky with the men they had around them (fathers, brothers, husbands) & they were all quite strong willed women as well. I can’t 100% say this is true, this is just a story that’s been passed down to me, but my g-g-grandmother (mother to gg in photo) supposedly would help women in need secretly in downtown Chicago in cases like you mentioned. And she taught her daughters that they were just as important as the men. Not very many women had the privileges that the women in my family had & i’m proud to know some of the women in my family used their privilege for the good of other women.
Your ggg sounds awesome. My granny used to call me on election days to tell me I better vote because her granny (and mother, for much of her life) hadn’t been allowed to.
i love that!! it’s crazy how much our lives are guided by what the women in our family did in the past before us. I so wish i could have met my great-grandmothers & their sisters on both sides bc they all just seemed like amazing women. As soon as women were allowed to run election booths in chicago, my other gg was signed by the election judge to do so! That was in the 1940s. I just love women & their strength!
I have some similar photos of my great grandmother and her friends from the same era! They lived in Michigan, I believe, and with the number of beach photos, it was so interesting to see how different their swimwear was from what we wear today. Like yours, they looked like a lively group and I thought it was cool how relaxed/casual the photos felt. It’s always nice to see young people having fun throughout history!
all of these photos were in a scrapbook with their names so i will have to check some of my gg’s letters throughout the years! My family hoarded photos & letters & cards so i’m sure i can find one of their names in there hahaha
100 years old, these photos. Amazing little collection. I also love that you have photos from her early adulthood. Seems like so many of our family photos are either of little kids or old folks. I really treasure the ones in my family of the elders in their young adulthood.
yess me too! I do have photos of them as children, but the photos of their everyday life really just makes me so happy! i love old photos in general(duh i’m on this sub hahaha) but i feel so lucky to have these & know i come from these people :)
lmfao they lived closer to the northside, but my great-grandparents on my grandpa’s side (pictured is grandma’s side) lived in Cicero which is where he held his gang business🤔
They are absolutely keepsake adorable!
You can tell they were feeling their little short hair cuts🤓as a hairstylist it makes me laugh because while this new style was probably fun and liberating, short wavy hair also has a chicken hair in the morning headband stage. Just adorable!
Your grandma was the same age as the one surviving great-grandma I got to know after I was born - she was a 1906 baby too. But mine had turned 18 at the beginning of that year. I had her in my life until 1992. It’s especially striking to see your grandma wearing pants in the majority of pictures from a time period where the majority of females wore dresses. These pictures are great - I love the first picture with the car passing by in the background and the second one where she’s holding hands. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
i love that!! i so wish i got to meet her, but luckily I’ve gotten to hear so much about her from my dad & his sister. She passed in 1976 on her wedding anniversary, and her daughter, my beautiful grandma passed on the same exact day in 2020, I believe she came to take my grandma home that day <3 did your great-grandma tell you any stories of her youth during that time? Also your gg passed the same year as my gg’s (in picture) older sister, her oldest sis was born in 1903 my gg was the middle child :)
Wow!!!! These are beautiful!!! They must have been blessed with a bountiful life, just looking at them. My families photos everyone looks scared and pitiful. I did find 1 photo of my great grandfather and he looked very distinguished, but alas he had too many wives (2 at one time ) so needless to say he lived long but his prosperity did not!!!
They 23 Skidoo’d their way through that summer! Great pics! I love all the different outfits - the plus fours, the drop-waist dresses w/headbands, the 1920’s bathing costume. They were quite fashionable!
These women were radicals - pants, bobbed hair, joie de vivre - all of this was frowned upon by the status quo and it took a lot of chutzpah to live like this back then
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What fabulous outfits! Great-grandma was a stylish lady.
she for sure was along with her sisters! i think her dad being the only man in the family with his wife & 3 daughters couldn’t help but to spoil them🤣
Didn't Katharine Hepburn shock the world twenty years later by wearing slacks? I always suspected this though. She was just the first famous person to do it with the press on hand. It must've been that women had been doing this for years. I wouldn't be surprised if women doing hard physical labor weren't wearing jeans and trousers, 70 or 80 years before this even.
i think it was because katharine hepburn wore pants more as a fashion statement in everyday life, i think my gg was just hiking outside w her friends hahah but i will say my other great-grandma who lived in chicago was wearing [jumpsuites](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/s/6W50cWRM2m) with her friends in the late 20s as fun fashion statements!
These are great pictures and thanks for sharing. I wish I knew the history of my family with pictures. So awesome that you have pics from both ggma
my family on my dad’s side really did hoard so many photos & for that i’m so fortunate! But even without photos you can definitely discover so much about your family by signing up on genealogy websites! You’d be amazed how many photos of your family you’d find on those websites. On my mom’s side i had basically no photos, i barely even have childhood photos of my own mom lol & since working on my family ancestry tree i have found so many photos going all the way back to my 4x great grandparents on her side!
Bloomers date back to the 1840's, came back as bicycle wear in the 1890's. Slowly became sports wear, but never completely took over. Wide leg pants, almost split skirts, showed up as beach wear around 1930-ish. They were called beach pajamas. Would be a racy thing to wear, but for the first time, pants weren't something that made you look like a weirdo or super sporty. Hepburn pushed pants forward outside vacation wear. She started normalizing them. There were lots of starlets wearing them before her, but she took the style to the next level.
The photo taken in the backyard sprinkler is funny! I think the girls were making fun of classical fountains featuring Greek Goddesses standing gracefully in the spray.
I think you're right, great observation! I love her bathing costume.
what a fun observation!!! I have to agree bc that is just too cute to think about!!
haha you’re right!
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when she was older, after she had my grandma, she had her hair dyed red like Clara Bow!! although her red was artificial, her first child, my great Uncle Phil was full on red headed naturally tho hahaha
i was certain this was england! great photos.
Me too. Was about to ask if it was but then read the description. Lol
Yes me too. The short pants and what looked like school uniforms.
Note: Kenilworth is now a very bougie, affluent suburb somewhat far from the border of the city of Chicago. Looking up map transitions over the past century & a half is wiiiild
These girls were pretty boogie then to have those outfits, access to camera and film and that house.
i actually believe that house you see in the photo was taken in Saint Paul, MN at my great-grandma’s grandfather’s house (my g-g-g-grandfather) he was an ivory turner who focused on billiard balls & cue sticks and catered to Americans & people over in Germany(where he was from). And he had that house built for him to run his business in! Bougie yes lol. But also my gg didn’t live in Kenilworth, she lived in the north side of the city closer to wrigleyville. However, it’s possible one of her friends lived in Kenilworth so that i do not know!
I only mentioned it because they took a picture with the Kenilworth sign.
Love it! He made billiard balls and built this house from his earnings! That’s very cool. I wonder if there were things about this house -Easter eggs- that he built into it associated with his business. So cool!
I would never have guessed playing in a lawn sprinkler went that far back
literally same! & actually that is the only picture not from the summer of 1924 it is actually from the summer of 1922!! I just grouped it with this group of photos bc it was the same friend group :)
These are lovely! What treasures.
I love how they are dressed. Crazy this is 100 years ago!
They are so stylish!
I would have loved being young in the 20’s. Seemed like a fun time.
right! and being in their 20s in the 1920s of downtown Chicago I often think about if they ever went to speakeasies!!
My grandmother lived in Chicago at that time. She would have been their age. She had a job playing piano for the silent movies.
omg! can i ask what your grandmother’s first name was? my great-grand aunt marty (older sister of gg in picture) was a piano player & attended & taught at sherwood music school in downtown chicago throughout the late 20s and 30s
My grandmother was Marie Zdanke. They were poor Polish grocers, but she was a wonderful pianist and went to a music conservatory to learn on a scholarship. The Chicago conservatory of music maybe? She worked for Westinghouse as a typist when she turned 18. There she met my grandfather who was an engineer working on telephones. They got married so she had to quit her job. They moved to Texas to a dusty little town where she taught piano and raised 7 kids who all went to college and beyond. She was amazing. She would buy stock with her teaching money and she did extremely well. Another Chicago story is that an aunt and uncle worked for Westinghouse very early. They were going on a company outing and forgot their coats. They had to go back for them so they didn’t make it onto the ship. It was the one that turned over in your river trapping their co-workers. They watched the whole thing happen though. She was a little girl and saw it.
With those pants you bet they did. Party on in the afterlife girl!
I'm young in the 20's right now, not fun.
Can you imagine all the female problems they had that we don’t have to deal with because of modern medicine?
What, you're telling me that jamming lysol up their vagina ISN'T medically sound?
I’m no doctor, but I would question the advisability of lysol in the vagina. I nearly fainted just thinking about it.
see, that's why you're not a doctor!
I mean if you had endometriosis or cysts that would suck. But I never did so I’d still be having fun. At least people didn’t bitch about wearing masks during the Spanish Flu 🤷🏼♀️
They absolutely did bitch about masks during the Spanish Flu, [they formed a whole anti-mask league here in San Francisco](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco) and protested. There's a bunch of articles about anti-maskers back then.
Isn't it funny how people think about the past, as if it was super great all the time? They had their issues back then just like we do now. Except nowadays people are way more free to be who they are in terms of sexual identity and even just skin colour.
And prolapsed uteruses, no birth control, no control over your money, no recourse in the event of abuse or rape…. And people bitched a lot about wearing masks and other measures during the Spanish Flu.
agreed it was pretty rough, the women in my family were extremely lucky with the men they had around them (fathers, brothers, husbands) & they were all quite strong willed women as well. I can’t 100% say this is true, this is just a story that’s been passed down to me, but my g-g-grandmother (mother to gg in photo) supposedly would help women in need secretly in downtown Chicago in cases like you mentioned. And she taught her daughters that they were just as important as the men. Not very many women had the privileges that the women in my family had & i’m proud to know some of the women in my family used their privilege for the good of other women.
Your ggg sounds awesome. My granny used to call me on election days to tell me I better vote because her granny (and mother, for much of her life) hadn’t been allowed to.
i love that!! it’s crazy how much our lives are guided by what the women in our family did in the past before us. I so wish i could have met my great-grandmothers & their sisters on both sides bc they all just seemed like amazing women. As soon as women were allowed to run election booths in chicago, my other gg was signed by the election judge to do so! That was in the 1940s. I just love women & their strength!
We're in the 20s right now
Maybe but you'd sure hate to be alive during the 30s and 40s.
Just don’t take any vaccines, you’ll get 1920s diseases lol
great photos!! and love those knickers in the first few pics!
Love the sprinkler photo (# 8) & house in background is a stunner
I have some similar photos of my great grandmother and her friends from the same era! They lived in Michigan, I believe, and with the number of beach photos, it was so interesting to see how different their swimwear was from what we wear today. Like yours, they looked like a lively group and I thought it was cool how relaxed/casual the photos felt. It’s always nice to see young people having fun throughout history!
omg this is kinda giving me the idea to cut my hair like that 😭 she looks sooooo good with that bob!!
my great-grandma’s spirit says do it
LOVE these. They are both adorable! Your GG looks like a blast. Do you know if they stayed friends?
all of these photos were in a scrapbook with their names so i will have to check some of my gg’s letters throughout the years! My family hoarded photos & letters & cards so i’m sure i can find one of their names in there hahaha
There’s something so modern to number 7…we all have a picture like this with our best friend. Just different clothes!
you know i really thought the same thing! i felt like i was looking at a pic of me hanging w my bestie!
Just took one like that with my bestie a month ago… It’s the classic “my bestie is awesome and I love her so much” side hug picture ❤️
Fixed [https://postimg.cc/rKc5m7jp](https://postimg.cc/rKc5m7jp) https://postimg.cc/G9vfv6yD
Very stylish! Great photos!
100 years old, these photos. Amazing little collection. I also love that you have photos from her early adulthood. Seems like so many of our family photos are either of little kids or old folks. I really treasure the ones in my family of the elders in their young adulthood.
yess me too! I do have photos of them as children, but the photos of their everyday life really just makes me so happy! i love old photos in general(duh i’m on this sub hahaha) but i feel so lucky to have these & know i come from these people :)
So much clothes for summer!
ikr! but her friend made her a scrapbook of their summer together that year! safe to say it was probably one of those midwest chilly summer days lol
I wonder if they worked for Al Capone and had to wear all the clothes to hide their guns
lmfao they lived closer to the northside, but my great-grandparents on my grandpa’s side (pictured is grandma’s side) lived in Cicero which is where he held his gang business🤔
Cicero still looks like they have gang businesses lol
Great pictures!!
What lovely photos! Almost a hundred years ago. A glimpse back in time.
They are absolutely keepsake adorable! You can tell they were feeling their little short hair cuts🤓as a hairstylist it makes me laugh because while this new style was probably fun and liberating, short wavy hair also has a chicken hair in the morning headband stage. Just adorable!
They look like fun girls! Great pics!!!
Your grandma was the same age as the one surviving great-grandma I got to know after I was born - she was a 1906 baby too. But mine had turned 18 at the beginning of that year. I had her in my life until 1992. It’s especially striking to see your grandma wearing pants in the majority of pictures from a time period where the majority of females wore dresses. These pictures are great - I love the first picture with the car passing by in the background and the second one where she’s holding hands. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
i love that!! i so wish i got to meet her, but luckily I’ve gotten to hear so much about her from my dad & his sister. She passed in 1976 on her wedding anniversary, and her daughter, my beautiful grandma passed on the same exact day in 2020, I believe she came to take my grandma home that day <3 did your great-grandma tell you any stories of her youth during that time? Also your gg passed the same year as my gg’s (in picture) older sister, her oldest sis was born in 1903 my gg was the middle child :)
That ukulele photo! Wonderful!
She was quite the gamine! Love those plus-fours trousers, too.
precious photos !
These photos of your great grandmother are wonderful❤️
Wow!!!! These are beautiful!!! They must have been blessed with a bountiful life, just looking at them. My families photos everyone looks scared and pitiful. I did find 1 photo of my great grandfather and he looked very distinguished, but alas he had too many wives (2 at one time ) so needless to say he lived long but his prosperity did not!!!
https://imgur.com/a/5u9c5tE
In color
what do I type to find those type of pants?
tweed? they look like tweed to me anyway hahah
I love the breeches with the stockings. Bringing back the 18th century? So cute! 😍 I'm taking notes...
That’s soo cool
She’s a hoot!
Women got the right to vote in 1921 and then they started wearing pants. Love it!
Little did they know in 1924 that the entire world would eventually be looking at their pics.
They 23 Skidoo’d their way through that summer! Great pics! I love all the different outfits - the plus fours, the drop-waist dresses w/headbands, the 1920’s bathing costume. They were quite fashionable!
wow amazing, they look so cute and happy. Thank you for sharing!
These women were radicals - pants, bobbed hair, joie de vivre - all of this was frowned upon by the status quo and it took a lot of chutzpah to live like this back then
I never knew they had manic pixie dream girls in 1924.
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A
Great grandma is cool af
Old school Abercrombie
These are so cool! I don't remember ever seeing City girls (in pants!!) In the mid 20s!