Dressing for the Camera: Rules Our Foremothers Followed (and Sometimes Broke)

The Photo Detective

In amateur snapshots and selfies we don’t take care with our fashion. We pose in what we decided to wear that day. Now think about when you go to a photo studio. That’s entirely different. We dress up and our ancestors did too. They wore their best dress and perhaps a new hat to look their finest, the epitome of the fashion they could afford. Women’s magazines told them how to capture a good image and rules often came down to color, fashion, and the skill of the photographer.

Related Episodes:

Episode 72: A Modern Woman’s Fascination with Period Dress

Episode 85: Pin Up Photos and Modern Women

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About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada. She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira). She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

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