I have a lot of familiarity with Adelaar. My uncles were the jobbers that made most of the blouses that were sold in the US. One shop was in Brooklyn. The second was on Long Island. They started making them right after WWII. The height was in the 1950's and 1960's. At that time I would venture that my uncles employed about 150 people, mostly first generation and immigrant Italian-American women. They were producing thousands of dozens a month. The blouses were very high quality material--silks, cottons, some linens (although they really didn't like working with linen). They had a lot of style and wore very well. In fact, my aunt (my uncles' youngest sister) passed away last year. Cleaning out her closet we discovered a number of Adelaar blouses including some that never came out of the box. They looked and felt brand new.
When a new run of blouses came in my uncles would sit down with Manny Adelaar and "make prices"--negotiate the wholesale cost of putting the blouses together. They had a great relationship with the Adelaar's. There were no contracts. Everything was done on a handshake and an invoice. Adelaar would then ship the material, the buttons and the thread. Then the cutters would use the patterns and make all the sizes. Eventually some of the blouses were coming pre-cut. Toward the late 1970's there were several trends occurring: women weren't wearing those style blouses as much (didn't quite fit the Woodstock generation profile); Adelaar was moving more into man-made material; US production costs were rising; and overseas competition was able to shave significant costs. The cost differential was too much for Adelaar to ignore so they had to move production overseas. One of my uncles passed away in 1979. The other one closed the second shop in about 1986. During the mid-70's on Saturdays my cousins and I would occasionally help out as sweepers, packers, etc.
The reason I ended up on this blog is that I just came across some Christmas Party pictures from the Brooklyn shop that was in my mother's boxes. My cousins and I had gotten together to talk about the old days, and I brought out the old pictures. We had some great laughs and a few tears. I can remember a number of family parties where most of the women were wearing Adelaar blouses
