A First Lady A Day : Barbara Bush, 1989

You will have noticed I am not doing mini bios on the more recent First Ladies. You know who they are. You may well remember what they wore.I must say that Barbara Bush successfully presented herself as a soft, grandmotherly figure. I suspect there is a lot more steel in there than my grandmothers had, but hey. She was smart not to try to glamorize her look. The white hair, the fuller figure, the

A First Lady a Day: Crete, 1881

Lucretia Rudolph Garfield definitely wins the Best Nickname of any American First Lady Award. Crete. I think that’s cool. A Very interesting woman. She was well educated, studying French, Greek and Latin languages and classical, British and French literature. She was an independent woman , a teacher and an intellectual. Crete was also a fine hostess, although not at all interested in publicity.

A First Lady a Day: Laura Bush

Lizzie, our cohort in vintage fashion blogdom, gave us a shout out on her wonderful ( and top rated) blog, The Vintage Traveler the other day. She mentioned that we had not yet covered Laura Bush's inaugural gowns. Well, let’s have at it shall we? from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1322353/postsFirst up is the 2001 red lace Michael Faircloth gown. This is the most flattering photo I

Rainy,Grey Tuesday and Mollie Parnis

We just can't be fair to the remaining First Ladies on a grey, rainy, dreary, cold January day.So in a tangential feature to our First Ladies A Day series, here’s 3 Mollie Parnis dress and coat sets we have at available. Don’t they look warm and chic on a January day? Yes, indeed they do. What’s the Mollie Parnis and First Lady connection, you ask? She probably dressed more First Ladies than any

A First Lady a Day: Julia Dent Grant

from www.wikimedia.org: Library of Congress description: "Grant, Mrs. U.S. and son (Jesse) and daughter (Nellie) also her father Mr. Dent" photo by Mathew Brady or Levin Handy, ca 1865 - 1869.After Ida McKinley, we need a Happy story. Julia loved being First Lady. She loved the White House. But she was always adaptable. She traveled to army camps, she moved to Illinois, she switched from Army

A First Lady a Day: Ida McKinley, 1897 & 1901

This is a sad story. Poor Ida. She had a very difficult time of it. Her childhood and younger years were fine. But she lost both her children and her mother within in few years, and after that - she seems to have become very delicate both emotionally and physically. It is thought now that she had phlebitis and epilepsy. She certainly had seizures, some of them in public. She spent her days as a

A First Lady a Day: Bess

Bess Truman was an intensely private woman. She has seen what the press could do. And she was having none of it. She had no intentions of being an activist First Lady like Eleanor Roosevelt. That was one hard act to follow. Bess was an active partner in Harry Truman’s career, she supported him in 1948 when no one thought he could win, she was a shrewd judge of character, and she even helped write