A Day to Debut Your Best New Spring Fashions
Spring is here. Flowers are blooming, trees are budding, and the orchestra of lawn maintenance machinery is now an integral part of our morning wake up routines as scenes of winter fade from collective memory.
With a new spring comes the return of vibrant colors to plants budding after a long winter slumber. This same transformation is also reflected in spring fashion. Out with the neutral colored, warm, heavy winter clothing, and in with a new lighter and brighter wardrobe to welcome fair weather and rebirth of Spring!
And what would be a better day than Easter Sunday to show off your fresh, colorful, new clothes? In particular, a great event to show off your new threads would be on the fashion runway of an Easter Parade.
One Easter during the 1870s, an impromptu parade occurred down New York’s famous Fifth Avenue. Socialites from the area attended Easter mass at one of the nearby churches and subsequently paraded down the street after donning their fabulous new dresses and shoes. This parade grew larger with each year and subsequently became a nationally known event where onlookers waited in anticipation to see the new latest fashion trends
Due to the proliferation and ubiquity of Easter fashion in American culture through events such as the New York Easter Parade, no matter how you celebrate the season, debuting one’s best new spring attire on the holiday has become part of our culture.
Below we have curated a small collection of Easter fashion advertisements from a few of the historical New Jersey newspaper titles available on Chronicling America. As you will see, retailers seized the Easter holiday as an opportunity to sell the latest spring trends to their customers. As the Regal Shoe Store would have you know, “Easter calls for the newest and smartest in attire.”
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(Contributed by Giovanna Ligato-Pugliese and Jacob Paul)