This thread got me curious about Earhart’s clothing line and I spent WAY too much time looking around in cyberspace. Apparently her fashion business was short lived, but the luggage supposedly continues to this day. Somewhere I read that her clothing disappeared from department stores after one season.
This first ad is from 1947 and is from “Vintage Ads by Dee.”
This is her leather jacket at the Smithsonian - Jonathan - check out the scarf, above right.
The following is from an earlier blog article in Huffington Post written by Gioia Diliberto
Earhart and her husband (a publicist) “...convinced the US Rubber Company that her name would sell. Amelia Earhart fashion... debuted in 1934. The clothes were offered in special Amelia Earhart shops in a single department store per city (in New York, Macy’s and in Chicago, Marshall Fields.)
The label, sewn into each garment, featured the aviator’s signature in black with a thin red line streaking through it to a little red plane soaring in the right corner.
(I found a reference to a ‘skyway’ raincoat by Earhart, so perhaps this is the name on the label?)
...
Many of the fashions, a windbreaker and a leather trench coat for example, mimicked her flying clothes and were made in washable, practical fabrics like Grenfell cotton, a staple of English riding wear. Other styles included tweed suits and coats in neutral tones and deep pocketed raincoats in “parachute” silk with buttons shaped like propellers.
She told one newspaper that she nearly always incorporated in the styles “something characteristic of aviation, a parachute cord or tie or belt,, a ball bearing belt buckle, wing bolts and nuts for buttons.”
... Despite a blizzard of publicity her fashion line failed to catch on with the public and it disappeared from America’s stores even before the woman herself vanished.”
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Well, there may have been a “blizzard” of publicity, but all I could find was reference to one piece in a 1934 newspaper - an Amelia Earhart tweed coat $35 marked down to $19.90. Lynne - maybe you could find someting from her fashion line?
The following is from the book, “On Fashion,” by Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss
“For a number of years she had sewn her own clothes, but the ‘active living’ lines that were sold in 50 stores such as Macy's in metropolitan areas were an expression of a new Earhart image...
The luggage line that she promoted (marketed as Modernaire Earhart Luggage) also bore her unmistakable stamp. She ensured that the luggage met the demands of air travel; it is still being produced today.
Luggage photo from adclassix.com - 1953
