Here's to Chicago and its fashion
Razorback Runway
Natalie Johnson
Issue date: 11/5/08 Section: Lifestyles
Chicago is a beautiful portrait of fashion. Engraved with historical development and painted with colorful modern style, the Windy City encompasses the start of modern fashion consumerism and current American fashion.
Home to Sears, Roebuck & Co., Hart Schaffner & Marx, and Marshall Field & Co., Chicago is the birthplace of thriving mail order businesses, men's tailored suits and department stores. These monumental aspects of fashion are still strong in Chicago today.
More than 40 students explored this fashion cornerstone on a study tour through the apparel studies program in October. From production to retail, Chicago gave students a glance beyond facades and into the vital aspects of fashion.
Students were given private tours to see rows of machines and their operators taking bolted fabric through more than 125 specialized processes to create the most well-known men's tailored suit, such as the Hart Schaffner & Marx.
Sen. Barack Obama has been wearing customized suits from the company for his campaign along with the hundreds of people who order custom suits each week from that facility.
"I never thought about all the work that goes into making clothes when I saw them hanging on a rack until now," said senior Kristen Linder, who participated in the tour.
Marshall Field's lives on in its famous flagship store, now Macy's, just blocks from the flashing lights of the theaters and the Merchandising Mart in Chicago. Merely walking in Macy's and glancing up at the Tiffany's mosaic or golden banisters fosters the feeling Chicago was developing in the late 1800s, when the city was emerging from industrial chaos and into sophisticated style.
Chic Chicago, an exhibition at the Chicago History Museum, displays more than 60 couture garments that give light to Chicago's steadfast couture from 1861 to 2004. The walls of the exhibition whispered voices of the nation throughout the times of Chicago fashion.
"Chicago may be a man's town, but its history is emblazoned with the names of women - women whose spirit or charm or accomplishments lent an air of splendor to the sprawling lustiness of the city," said Norma Lee Browning in a 1948 issue of the Chicago Tribune.
Home to Sears, Roebuck & Co., Hart Schaffner & Marx, and Marshall Field & Co., Chicago is the birthplace of thriving mail order businesses, men's tailored suits and department stores. These monumental aspects of fashion are still strong in Chicago today.
More than 40 students explored this fashion cornerstone on a study tour through the apparel studies program in October. From production to retail, Chicago gave students a glance beyond facades and into the vital aspects of fashion.
Students were given private tours to see rows of machines and their operators taking bolted fabric through more than 125 specialized processes to create the most well-known men's tailored suit, such as the Hart Schaffner & Marx.
Sen. Barack Obama has been wearing customized suits from the company for his campaign along with the hundreds of people who order custom suits each week from that facility.
"I never thought about all the work that goes into making clothes when I saw them hanging on a rack until now," said senior Kristen Linder, who participated in the tour.
Marshall Field's lives on in its famous flagship store, now Macy's, just blocks from the flashing lights of the theaters and the Merchandising Mart in Chicago. Merely walking in Macy's and glancing up at the Tiffany's mosaic or golden banisters fosters the feeling Chicago was developing in the late 1800s, when the city was emerging from industrial chaos and into sophisticated style.
Chic Chicago, an exhibition at the Chicago History Museum, displays more than 60 couture garments that give light to Chicago's steadfast couture from 1861 to 2004. The walls of the exhibition whispered voices of the nation throughout the times of Chicago fashion.
"Chicago may be a man's town, but its history is emblazoned with the names of women - women whose spirit or charm or accomplishments lent an air of splendor to the sprawling lustiness of the city," said Norma Lee Browning in a 1948 issue of the Chicago Tribune.
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