“Tuxes don’t come in a size two,” the shop attendant said after observing the two-and-a half-year old ring-bearer. “But we can alter a size three.” He smiled at my little grandson. “We need to measure you. Can you fly?”

Instantly Carter’s little arms made wings, his hands full of the Matchbox cars he never leaves home without. After the attendant measured his chest, he yelled confidently in his baby way, “Again. Again.”

 The male-bonding occasion of father, son and grandson getting fitted for my daughter Christi’s wedding went swimmingly, with me along as historian to record the event. If you know the Steve Martin version of Father of the Bride, you’ll understand why my son and husband joked about not finding navy blue Armanis as they examined racks of suits.

     Although the bride hoped her ring bearer would wear tiny Chuck Taylor sneakers with his tux (his daddy wore Chucks at his wedding five years ago), I don’t think Chucks stand a chance. When Carter tried on his tuxedo shoes, he said rapturously, “Oh, my shiny shoes,” and after they were off,  held them tight against his little chest.  

     Well, whatever he wears on his feet, he’ll be adorable. But the whole excursion reminded me that I knew nothing about tuxedos.  Why does the tuxedo look the way it does? Who designed it? And most of all, just where does the name “tuxedo” come from?

    We owe the name to the Algonquin sachems, or chiefs, who in the 17^th Century ruled vast areas of land in what is today the northeastern United States. Often they named regions after themselves. One region, 40 miles northwest of New York City, was named for Chief P’tauk-seet-tough, and meant “home of the bear.”

     In 1852, the land came into the possession of the Lorillards, a wealthy New York City tobacconist family. Thirty years later, Pierre Lorillard IV made the 13,000 acres of lush wooded wilderness into an exclusive hunting resort. Keeping the phonetics of the original name, the “Tuxedo” Club was formed for the wealthy social elite who sported there.

     Tuxedo Club member James Brown Potter traveled to London in 1885 and befriended the Prince of Wales. Foregoing standard eveningwear at a formal dinner, the Prince appeared in a tail-less “dinner jacket” lined in satin, essentially a version of the English riding/hunting jacket. Potter was smitten with the style and had his own made at Savile Row by the prince’s own tailor.   

     At first ridiculed back home, Potter’s new duds quickly became the trend among Tuxedo Club members, and the name “tuxedo” began to stick. However, no one dared ignore traditional coattails at the Tuxedo Club’s first annual Autumn Ball in October 1886. 

      Even Potter left his beloved tux at home. However, Griswold Lorillard—grandson of Pierre IV—brought a group of friends to the ball, all mockingly dressed in standard evening jackets whose tails they’d slashed off, and scarlet lapels and waistcoats. Red was an unheard-of color for the upper crust.

      When criticized that they appeared ready for a fox hunt, Griswold retorted, “Yes, we are indeed hunting foxes,” and turned on his heel to hang out with a lovely young lady. Nonetheless, the young men so charmed the guests their style soon became the rage, rather than a fashion scandal. The waistcoats were the harbinger of today’s stylish vests.  After that ground-breaking Autumn Ball, the “tuxedo” and its variations segued into the elegant garment worn ever after by men, rich and poor, at formal occasions and celebrations.                                                                         

     In 1920, the Prince of Wales, the future Duke of Windsor, was the first man to wear a navy blue tuxedo, beating Steve Martin by seventy years! We fillies even have our own tuxedo mascot…Charlene Sands’ adorable Skittles!                                      

     Share some tuxedo stories today! Your senior prom? A family member’s wedding, or your own? Tails?  Cummerbund? Vest and matching tie?  My brother-in-law wore an all-white tux at his wedding. A friend’s brother got married twenty years ago in one of lime green. Horrors! Come on!  Surely somebody can top that!  

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Hey everyone, I’m Jeannie Watt and I write western romance for Harlequin Superromance, and I’m here today to talk about my favorite kind of cowboy—the buckaroo.

When most people hear the word “buckaroo” they think it’s an amusing term for a cowboy. Actually, it comes from the Spanish word for cowboy, vaquero. Buckaroos are cowboys who work the ION—Idaho, Oregon, Nevada. They are also known as Great Basin cowboys. Their cultural influences come from the early settlers in the region, many of whom were Hispanic.

Buckaroos have a very distinctive style about them. Their outfits are, without a doubt, the showiest of the working cowboys. A buckaroo will work for $700 a month, plus room and board, then go and buy a $500 silver bit. Their gear and clothing are an important part of the culture. In this blog I wanted to show off the local buckaroos, so I took my camera to the local Ranch Hand rodeo (in Winnemucca, Nevada) and stalked cowboys.

Now I should mention that I make custom cowboy gear out of hitched horsehair—a favorite type of gear for buckaroos—so I do have a legitimate reason for hanging around, taking photos of cowboy butts and the gear surrounding those butts.

I’ll start with hats. Buckaroos favor either a flat-top, wide-brim hat, such as this one, or a small-brimmed, Owyhee style hat, such as the one I’m wearing in my author photo. The lady in this photo is also wearing a wild rag, which is a silk scarf, usually 36 inches square. She is wearing a very sedate wild rag. Most buckaroos like bright colors and floral prints. You can also (just barely) see the silver concho on the wild rag. Buckaroos like to wear a lot of silver.

Here’s another buckaroo, this one dressed up for town—or the rodeo. He has his wild rag and is wearing the most amazing chinks I’ve ever seen on a buckaroo. Chinks are the knee length chaps that the buckaroos wear to protect their legs when they work. Usually they are not this colorful. A pair of chinks like this are custom made and probably cost $600-700. This buckaroo also has a mecate, which is a rope made from twisted horse hair that is tied so that part of the rope makes a round rein, and the rest is a lead rope, coiled on the saddle.. It’s pronounced meh-caw-tay in Spanish, but the buckaroos call the reins a McCarty.

As you can see from this picture, and the one above, buckaroos are not afraid of pink. He has the flat top hat and more sedate chinks than the previous guy. I love that he dresses flashier than his girlfriend. He’s also wearing an important part of buckaroo arraignment—the vest. Buckaroos haunt thrift stores looking for old suit vests to wear. At rodeos you can find vendors with racks of used vests for sale. A buckaroo likes a nice brand new Pendleton if he can afford it, but a used vest works just fine.

This is what a buckaroo looks like in the morning when he’s about to head out to do a day’s work. He’s still wearing chinks, and there is probably a wild rag under that coat, since silk is one of the warmest things a cowboy can wear around his neck (it’s cold in the ION country) but other than that, he’s left the showy stuff at home.

Buckaroos also have specific taste in gear. Saddles are the old fashioned kind with the high cantle and pommel.

They like silver on their bridles and favor custom-made silver bits. Makers are very important. Garcia is a well-known old-time brand of silver bits and spurs.

Finally, they often tie a special knot in both the wild rag and their horse’s tail that ends up looking like four little squares with the ends hanging out. It’s called, appropriately enough, the buckaroo knot. It may be hard to see the knot in the horse’s tail in this photo, but it’s there.

Now you may be surprised to know that there is a Buckaroo Hall of Fame and every year they induct two or three old time buckaroos. It’s fascinating to hear the stories of the men being honored. If you ever drive through Winnemucca, try to stop and check it out. If you can’t do that, then take a look at the webpage—some of these guys in the photo on the homepage are my neighbors. http://www.buckaroohalloffame.com/index.html There is additional information on buckaroos on the About Link at the bottom.

I’m looking forward to chatting with everyone and I’ll be giving away three copies of my July Superromance Cowboy Comes Back—part of the Cowboy Country promotion

Thanks for having me,

Jeannie Watt

Last weekend I lost my favorite wristwatch.  I’d noticed earlier that the band was beginning to show signs of wear and had planned to take care of it ‘soon’, but like most other things in my life these days, I put it off until it was too late.  I do have other watches, several in fact.  I collect ones that reflect different aspects of my mood and personality.  I have one with a dragonfly on it and one that is for ‘dress up’ occasions and one that is very bold and colorful for when I’m in a fun mood.  But, while this particular watch was not an especially showy or expensive piece, it did have a lot of sentimental value and was the one I wore most often.  My mom gave it to me as a Christmas gift about eighteen years ago and I have treasured it ever since.

As luck would have it, I was about 300 miles from my home when I discovered my watch had gone missing.  Since I’m lost as a goose without a watch, I immediately rushed out to the nearest department store and picked up a replacement.  And because this has become such an indispensible accessory for me, it got me to wondering about just when folks started wearing timepieces on their wrist.  I did a bit of research and it turns out that, historically speaking, wristwatches have not been in general use for all that long.

While there are some examples as early as 1500, and Queen Elizabeth I was supposedly given one as a special gift, they were few and far between and were specially commissioned pieces most often for royalty until the mid to late nineteenth century.

Even then men still clung to their pocket watches, viewing wristlets, as they were called at that time, as a feminine and somewhat faddish adornment.  In fact, men were quoted as saying they would  “sooner wear a skirt as wear a wristwatch”.

The established watch making community was partly to blame for this.  They looked down on them as inferior timepieces.  Because of their size, few believed they could achieve an acceptable level of accuracy and the vast majority of those being produced were made as decorative pieces with delicate fixed wire or chain link bracelets.

That began to change when soldiers discovered how useful wristwatches could be in battle situations.  Military men found pocket watches difficult to handle while engaged in physical combat and began to fit them into makeshift leather straps to wear on their wrists. Not only did this leave their hands free for other things, but being able to check the time at a glance instead of having to dig through pockets gave soldiers a strategic advantage over those less well equipped, especially when synchronization of activities was critical.  

Officers in the South African Boer war (1899-1902) were among the first to use wristwatches extensively and the veterans were not afraid to sing their praises both during and after.  By World War I, the military not only encouraged the use of wristwatches but began to demand them for the soldiers. 

By the 1920s, wristwatches had become the most popular type of personal timepiece among both men and women.  Rolex is credited with creating the first water resistant watch, a model of which was worn in 1927 by a female channel swimmer.  Both Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh wore wristwatches for their celebrated transatlantic flights.  Today, wristwatches have become as much a symbol of status and style as a utilitarian instrument to tell time.

As for my own lost wristwatch, I still cling to the hope that I’ll find it wedged down in some nook or cranny in my car or purse or some such.  In the meantime, I’ll use one of the others I own.

So what about you?  Do you select your watch(es) for their function, or do you look for one that reflects something of your style and personality?

And just a quick note – To celebrate my very first day at Wildflower junction as an official filly I’d like to give away a signed copy of my March release, The Hand-Me-Down Family (or one of my backlist if you prefer).  I’ll be drawing a name of one poster sometime Monday evening.

In western romance bloomers often refers to a woman’s undergarment. I’ve been guilty of this and have used bloomers on more than one occasion. While they were originally a type of women’s trousers, bloomers have since become synonymous with under drawers and pantaloons. But in Amelia Bloomer’s day they were baggy pants gathered tightly and buttoned at the ankle. They were worn under a skirt of a shorter length that allowed the lacy bloomers to show.

Bloomers released women from their tightly laced corsets, layers upon layers of petticoats that could weigh over ten pounds, and long dresses that dragged the ground. Bloomers allowed freedom of movement. Women could at last ride bicycles and indulge in sporting activities. And it was all because of free-thinkers like Fanny Wright who first advocated a type of bloomer in the early 1800′s and Amelia Bloomer who made the garment fashionable in the 1850′s.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894) married an attorney by the name of Dexter Bloomer. He was also a newspaper editor. She began writing a few articles for his paper pertaining to women’s issues. After attending the Women’s Rights Convention in Senaca Falls in 1848 she founded her own bi-weekly newspaper called “The Lily” and became a voice for many women reformers such as Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Initially, the newspaper focused on temperance and the women’s suffrage movement. But as the times progressed the articles became more about marriage law reform, higher education for women, the right to vote, and women’s right to employment without having to ask for her husband’s permission. The health and well-being of women were also a primary focus and that’s when Amelia advocated clothing for women’s comfort and the bloomers in particular.

She fashioned them after the Turkish women’s trousers. They were intended to preserve Victorian decency while being less of a hindrance. Here’s Amelia in her outfit.

She said, “The costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once her health, comfort, and usefulness; and while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.”

As you can imagine, she was met with overwhelming ridicule. The garment was deemed unfeminine and a moral outrage. Gradually, the bloomers faded away. Amelia herself gave up the fight after eight years and stopped wearing them, citing that it shifted the focus away from more important women’s issues.

I can only imagine that these bloomers were a forerunner of today’s jeans. I love the comfort, freedom, and casual look of jeans. And they’re form-fitting and feminine.

How many of you are a jeans and shorts kind of gal? And do you think you would’ve worn bloomers in public if you lived back in Amelia’s day?

It’s spring!  My thoughts turn to planting and what I’m going to do with my flowerbeds this year.

I can well imagine how much joy the gardens brought to the settlers of the Old West as they tried to scratch something valuable out of the soil.

In my novels, I’ve mentioned all types of gardens. Or thought I had. There were those belonging to apothecaries and doctors – the herb gardens they planted to create remedies and cures.  There were those belonging to florists, who would plant their flowers for market. Restaurant cooks planted vegetables and herbs to use in their dishes. Private citizens grew produce, too, not to mention orchards for fruit wherever the land could sustain it.

But recently in my research, I came across a type of garden that took me by surprise. I’d simply never thought of it:  the town weaver and his or her special garden where they planted a spectrum of plants to create powders and liquids for the dyeing of fabrics.

That must have been fun! Wild bursts of color, rich seeds that started out pink and ripened to a rich berry, roots that dyed fabrics blue or black, or maybe some exotic plant from China that grew from fragrant seeds passed along from some stranger on a wagon train.

The town weaver was a valuable asset to any growing Western town.  From their maze of looms, they produced blankets and coverlets, shawls and rugs. No scraps went to waste here. They collected rags from the community and produced cloth balls that had a dozen uses around the house—anything from knotting rope to hanging laundry to creating rag rugs.

The photos of this weaver’s shop are circa 1860s.

The color of the plant or flower doesn’t necessarily correlate to the end result of dye color. There are hundreds of plant choices. Here’s a sampling of some common ones, a few of which surprised me:

sunflower – pressing the seeds creates a bright yellow oil; combining different plant parts produces dyes in the color of tan, gray, and green

indigo – rich blue color obtained from the leaves– the dye is colorfast, very desirable

goldenrod – root contains a brilliant yellow dye

white birch tree – leaves give a yellow dye; inner bark creates lavender, tan, or purple

elderberry – purples and blues

bloodroot – juice of the stem and roots for the color red

flowering dogwood – bark produces a red dye; root produces violet

Have you started your gardening yet? Do you prefer planting vegetables or flowers? Or neither? Have you ever hand-dyed an object? When I was younger, some of my friends dyed their leather shoes (ie. for dance class). I tried it once but they didn’t turn out right.

There must have been something special about the town weaver – a professional craftsman who knew what he was doing.

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The lost art of ironing—I say this tongue-in-cheek because I’m glad those days are gone. But does anyone else remember growing up and helping their mom create wonderful, crisp little piles of folded sleeves and collars, and warm linens that draped so beautifully you could hang them in a store window?

And remember how good they smelled, coming in off the clothes line?

I was the only girl in the house, and as soon as I was tall enough to stand behind an ironing board, it was my job to press the tea towels and bed sheets. This usually took place once a week in the evening, in front of our black-and-white TV, watching Carol Burnett.

Tea towels were my favorite because I could easily manage their size. I’d fold one in thirds along the length, press the two seams, then fold it horizontally in thirds again, and press it. Those were the days before automatic steam irons, so I hand-sprinkled water onto the cloth, then lowered the iron to sear them, fully enjoying the sizzling and popping sounds I received as my reward. My mom’s tea towels came in all colors. I admired and appreciated each one, and noticed instantly if she ever bought a new pattern.

I guess it was a girl thing. 

We never had a lot growing up, in fact I think we only had one set of sheets for each bed, but they were always freshly laundered and pressed. Today, my mom would cringe at the state of my own linens, if I allowed her to look. But then, she never worked full time as a writer like I do, so it’s NOT MY FAULT. 

Recently on a visit to a pioneer museum, I stopped in the kitchen and marveled at the irons they had on display, resting on the stove where they were heating. There was more than one type? You could have several irons of various sizes and shapes? How decadent! 

I wanted each one!

I’m not sure what I would do with them. Maybe, since I’m a writer, I’d just sit and gaze at the clunky irons and wonder about the mother-daughter stories behind them.

See the one with the ridges? It’s called a rocking style fluting iron and was used to ruffle, crimp, or press little pleats into starched fabric. It also gave the fabric a special sheen. Fluting irons were often used for collars and cuffs to give added distinction—and were in their heyday in the mid to late 1800s. Blacksmiths often forged cast iron stands, called trivets, for the fancier irons.

There were dozens and dozens of different types of irons. Slender ones for hard-to-reach places like sleeves, irons used just for hats, delicate laces, or for pressing flowers, or for billiard tables. And—I would have loved this—small irons made for children. I’ll never take my single iron for granted again!

Times have changed and I’m glad we no longer have to iron everything we wear. I’m in love with poly-cotton blends. My husband, God bless him, irons his own shirts and laundry. Yet, there’s still this little niggling of guilt that I don’t do it for him. It’s NOT MY JOB, I tell myself, and wonder where the guilt comes from. Probably because growing up in a house full of boys, I was the only girl and the only one assigned to ironing chores.

They turned out to be wonderful memories….

Have you seen the recent remake of the movie Hairspray, and John Travolta’s character as the mom who is the professional laundress? I would have loved that job!

Do you have happy ironing memories? Do you still love a good crease? <g> Did you ever make your own starch? My mom had a store-bought spray starch she used once in a while, but I was never allowed near it. What chores were you responsible for as a kid, and which ones did you enjoy the most?

I’m giving away a book! WESTERN WEDDINGS, an anthology I share with Jillian Hart and our very own Filly, Charlene Sands, to one lucky person who posts a comment today.

And my new book is in bookstores now! 

Click on the link to Amazon.  Wanted In Alaska (Harlequin Historical Series)

Visit me at www.katebridges.com

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to live without your lipstick?

Cosmetics have been around for thousands of years, promising to make our lips rosier, eyes brighter and complexions clearer.

In 4,000 B.C., Egyptian women lined their eyes with leaded paints and copper. This was poisonous to their health but they didn’t know it. For nail polish, the Chinese used beeswax, egg whites and gelatin, dating back to 3,000 B.C.. Certain colors were restricted to royalty. Using the wrong color nail polish was punishable by death.

In Greco-Roman times, the Middle Ages, and Elizabethan times, pale faces were much more desirable for women than any skin touched by the sun. A tan was considered crude and reserved for women who worked the fields. Unfortunately, this led to various creams applied to the face to reduce blood flow, such as lead paint or arsenic face powder, which caused illness.

In the mid 1800s, Queen Victoria declared that wearing makeup was vulgar, and should be reserved only for actors. Prostitutes used it, too. This rigid attitude carried over to North America, and so women rarely wore cosmetics until the late 1800s, toward the end of her reign. By the time her son King Edward VII became king in 1901, makeup and its manufacture was beginning to flourish.

On the Western frontier in the 1800s, wearing no makeup was often the preferred look, but there were little tricks women used to make themselves look better. Makeup that looked natural was usually the goal.

Blush: Pinching the cheeks made them rosier, also pinching the lips. Rouge was available to buy in small tins.

Mascara: Some women used beeswax on their lashes to make them look thicker. Kohl is a mixture of soot and other ingredients and was used on the eyelids and eyelashes to darken them—first used by  Egyptian queens. Darkening the area around the eyes also helped protect the eyes from sun glare.

In France, Eugene Rimmel was the first to develop a non-toxic mascara in the late 1800s, sometime before his death in 1887. It was a cake-like substance. Modern mascara as we know it was invented in 1913 by  T.L. Williams, a chemist, for his sister Mabel. He saw his sister applying coal dust and Vaseline to her lashes, and so he made and marketed the stuff. He named his company Mabelline as a combination of her name and Vaseline.

Eyeliner:  Some women used burnt matches once they cooled.

Petroleum jelly:  Vaseline petroleum jelly was patented in the 1870s.

Hair removal: From about 3,000 B.C. women were removing body hair with scary ingredients they made from things like arsenic and starch. By 500 B.C. Roman women were removing body hair with razor blades and pumice stones, and using tweezers to pluck their eyebrows. By the early 1800s, European women were making homemade depilatories—walnut oil was one popular ingredient. From 1895 to 1904, Mr. Gillette perfected the development of his safety razor.

Underarm deodorant:  Mum deodorant was the first invented in 1888 by an unknown inventor from Philadelphia.

Lipstick: Egyptians used a type of henna to stain their lips—back then it was a poisonous substance made of plant dye, iodine and bromine. Cleopatra wore lipstick made from crushed carmine beetles, which gave her a deep red pigment. Lipstick became popular as we know it during the 16^th century by Queen Elizabeth I, where lipstick was made from a combination of beeswax and red plant stains.

Acne fighters: Pharaohs in Egypt used a combination of mineral water mixed with sulphur. Ancient Romans bathed in hot sulphurous mineral water. During the 1800s, sulphur treatments were applied to the skin but it was very drying and didn’t always work.

Hair: Sheen was created by brushing the hair a hundred times at night; using lemon rinses; adding eggs to shampoo. Hennas have been very popular since Egyptian times to color the hair. Hair dyes were often used discreetly in England and America during the 1800s, although one didn’t admit it in public.

Max Factor is often referred to as the father of modern makeup. He was born in Poland in the 1870s (original name was spelled Faktor). Later, he moved to Moscow and worked with theatrical groups, where he created cosmetics, fragrances and wigs. He became the cosmetic expert for the Russian royal family. In 1904, he immigrated to New York with his family, and that year at the St. Louis World’s Fair, he introduced his handmade rouges, lipsticks, wigs and creams to American women. His items became so popular he developed his own line of cosmetics.

Besides my list, do you know of anything else women used for personal makeup and grooming? Do you recall anything your grandmother used? I once found an old curling iron in a trunk that didn’t have an electrical cord, but it was obviously intended to be heated in coals. I was shocked they thought of that way back then.

Is there a certain cosmetic that you couldn’t live without?

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Click on the cover to link to Amazon.

Today I’ll be taking a peek into some cowboy boot history and will be giving away this cowboy 
boot ornament to one of our comment posters. I have always had a boot fetish, from combat to cowboy, boots are one of my guilty pleasures.  My favorite pair at present are these brown moch side-button boots which I love dearly. The rest are a variety of tall, short and mid-calf boots. Tug on, side-zip and lace-up–I love them all! When it comes to cowboys, boots aren’t just fashion, they’re a necessity and contrary to a certain country song, they’re boots AREN’T made for walking. In fact, the wedged heal and narrow toe encourage them to stay in the saddle   

So why do cowboy boots have those wedge heels? While in the saddle, the tall heel minimized the risk of the foot sliding forward through the stirrup, which could be life-threatening if it happened and the rider were to be unseated. There was often considerable risk that a cowboy would fall from a horse, both because he often had to ride young, unpredictable horses, but also because he had to do challenging ranch work in difficult terrain, that often meant that he could accidentally become unseated by a quick-moving horse. If a rider fell from a horse but had a boot get caught in the stirrup, there arose a very great risk that the horse could panic and run off, dragging the cowboy, causing severe injury and possible death. The tall shaft, comfortably loose fit, and lack of lacing all were additional features that helped prevent a cowboy from being dragged since his body weight could pull his foot out of the boot if he fell off while the boot remained stuck in the stirrup.

When mounting and, especially, dismounting, the slick, treadless leather sole of the boot allowed easy insertion and removal of the foot into the stirrup of the Western saddle. The original toe was rounded and a bit narrowed at the toe to make it easier to insert.

The cowboy boot is often described as descended from the Hessian boot, a boot style that which was common among cavalry in Europe in the 18th century. However, the northern European cavalry boot was not necessarily a direct predecessor. As the working cowboy was often underpaid, a mass-produced boot style, the Wellington boot (named after the Duke of Wellington) was popular with cowboys in the USA until the 1860s..

During the cattle drive era of 1866–1884 when the pay for cowboys rose somewhat due to overall increases in the price of meat, better wages, combined with a cowboy’s often-nomadic lifestyle, led the cowboy to invest in quality leather saddles and boots. While a cowboy was not apt to ruin a good pair of dress boots while working, basic style elements permeated even working boots, and made the Wellington obsolete. Thus, the style commonly known as the cowboy boot appeared in the mid 19th century, with the higher heel, elaborate stitching, and other decorative features distinguishing the new style from the military issue boots that preceded them.

This is a fun tidbit I got off the Hyer Boot site:

“The Hyer Boot Company was founded circa 1880 by brothers Charles and Edward Hyer. As boys they learned boot making from their father, William, a German immigrant who began practicing shoemaking after he came to the United States in the mid-1800s. Charles moved to Olathe in 1872 where he found work at the Olathe School for the Deaf teaching shoe and harness making. He opened a small cobbling shop on the side and hired his brother Edward to help him run it.

Tradition credits Charles Hyer as one of the first to invent the cowboy boot. Company promotional materials state that a Colorado cowboy stopped by the Hyer shop on his way home from the Kansas City stockyards in 1875, requesting a new pair of boots that were different from his Civil War-style boots. He wanted a boot with a pointed toe that would slide more easily into a stirrup, a high, slanted heel that would hold a stirrup, and a high top with scalloped front and back so he could get in and out of his boots more easily. Charles accepted the challenge. The unknown cowboy was so pleased with Hyer’s work that he returned to Colorado and told others about his new boots.”

So there you have it, some cowboy boot evolution—a style that’s still going strong today!

Anyone else remember tugging off your dad’s boots at night?  He’d drop into a chair and sometimes my brother and I would see who could get a boot off first—it wasn’t easy!  Anyone have cowboy boots kickin’ round in their closet?

Throughout American history until the early twentieth century, women’s clothing was restrictive and cumbersome.  Corsettes, stiff petticoats, crinolines, hoop skirts, bustles and busks were all designed to cinch, pad, flounce and lift, sometimes in layers, often in uncomfortable fabrics, draped and shirred and pleated to add even more weight.  Some of those styles were downright unhealthy!

One of the first women who chose more comfortable clothing was British-born Fanny Kemble, daughter of touring actors who married a plantation owner.  Critics were outraged over Fanny’s loose fitting pants that she wore under a skirt that came to her knees.  But coming to her defense on the pages of her Senecca, NY newspaper The Lily was Amelia Bloomer.

Born Amelia Jenks, she married Dexter Bloomer in 1840.  Dexter was an attourney and a publisher of a county newspaper.  When Amelia first wrote for his paper, she took up the cause of temperance.  In 1849 Amelia took over The Lily, a temperance newspaper.  Influenced by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia addressed issues of women’s rights, educating women about unequality and the possibility of social reform.  The paper became a model for other suffrage periodicals. 

Amelia, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, adopted the mode of dress sometimes called the new American Costume.  The style was also referred to as Turkish pantaloons.  When Amelia staunchly defended the clothing, other papers picked up the story, referring to their clothing as bloomers.  Eventually Stanton and Anthony agreed to forego wearing bloomers so that their cause wasn’t seen as a mere dispute over clothing.

You might recall another woman who started a trend nearly a century later: the lovely Kathryn Hepburn wore trousers with stylish disregard for what was considered appropriate.  However Hepburn’s popularity and intelligence soon aided a style revolution that the country–and women–were ready for.

Later Amelia and her husband moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio and in 1855 to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she continued to write and speak on the issues of women’s rights.  When age caught up with her, she left the battle for equal rights to her successors. 

Throughout the Village of Seneca Falls, NY there are bronze statues and monuments that bring the women’s movement to life.  One in particular is a real car stopper: Life sized sculptured figures of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Amelia Bloomer.  I would love to see these in person!

Not only are these women shining examples of the courage and tenacity it took to win equal rights for the sexes, but they pointed out the foolishness of nonfunctional clothing and changed the way people thought about fashion.

Thanks for dropping by Wildflower Junction!  I’ll draw a name from your comments today and send the winner a copy of my December anthology, THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS.

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