The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
FASHION
"Within this garment district are 4,500 women's clothing firms. Three out of every four dresses sold in the country originate in New York, making women's garments the principal industry in the city, with an annual dollar volume of $4.4 billion ... Dozens of new firms pop up each season-and many disappear to try again under another name. "It doesn't take money," said one owner. "It takes guts, gall and creativity." Firms with only 30-40 employees compete with the big trade names in the wild steeplechase that produces over 150,000 separate designs each year."
Life Magazine, October 3, 1960
The fashion drawings on the back wall were prints produced in multiples and hand-colored. They were available to offer ideas of future fashion trends, probably by subscription to manufacturers and buyers. The prints here were collected by The Skyscraper Museum's director's mother, a fashion designer in Cleveland, Ohio, on her trips to New York.
Rear case: Hand-colored fashion drawings from the EDYTH SPARAG STUDIOS at 1450 Broadway, c. late 1930s or early 1940s. Collection of Carol Willis.
Front right: Stock photographs of models in Seventh Avenue showrooms, c. 1940s Collection of Carol Willis.
"Girls Who Want 'That New York Look.'" Advertisement c. 1940s.
"Big Name in Dresses," Life Magazine, April 23, 1951
"Cloak & Suit," Fortune, June 1930, photographs by Margaret Bourke-White.
All above: Collection of the Skyscraper Museum
Dress Labels for Pauline Trig�re. Collection of Jane Trigere.
Patternmaker's Ruler. Collection of Judith Saltzman.
