Miss Sally Victor
18/10/09 15:18
Falling in love with Miss Sally Victor. I share with you my newest vintage addition, 1950’s hat. (not for sale)
Visited Vintage Fair in Sydney over the weekend, and met some lovely people and spent hours drooling over the exquisite gems on display. Today was the day I discovered Miss Sally Victor and her wonderful creations.
Hats in the 1950’s added that little bit of glamour and completed a woman’s outfit. Last seasons dress could be updated with a brand new hat. In the mid fifties hat styles were designed with flowers. In the late fifties hats displayed more organza and nets etc.
I fell in love with this particular piece pictured below and had to have her, this could be a new hobby of mine as I now own 2 designer hats. I am not sure of the vintage, but perhaps it is a 1950’s hat. Simply stunning.
This however, is my prized hat, my first ever vintage hat by the famous New York milliner Sally Victor. It was hard to find some information on Sally, so here is what I could find on the web:
Born: Sally Josephs in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 23 February 1905. Education: Studied painting in Paris. Family: Married Sergiu Victor, 1927; children: Richard.
Career: Saleswoman, then millinery buyer, Macy's, New York, 1923-25; assistant millinery buyer, 1925, and head buyer, 1926, Bamberger's, New Jersey; designer, Serge millinery, New York, 1927-34; opened own made-to-order millinery establishment, 1934; Sally V ready-to-wear line introduced, from 1951; firm closed, 1968.
Exhibitions: The Brooklyn Museum, 1942.
Awards: Fashion Critics Millinery award, 1943; Coty American Fashion Critics award, 1944, 1956.
Died: 14 May 1977, in New York.
Just as the American sportswear designers were establishing the look of mix-and-match separates during the 1930s and 1940s, American milliners, especially Sally Victor, established the look in their own craft. Learning millinery first from the point of view of the buyer and customer, while working at Macy's in New York, Victor focused on "designing pretty hats that make women look prettier."
Victor aspirations were simple and pure; she believed women loved pretty things and liked to be noticed wearing them. Although she was occasionally denigrated for her pursuits, like when Eugenia Sheppard of the New York Herald Tribune (25 March 1964) said Victor was "sometimes accused of designing too pretty, too feminine, too becoming, too matronly hats," Victor was credited for reviving the Ecuadorean economy by making the Panama straw hat popular again, even with the young women of the mid-1960s.
Victor customers read like a who's who of the world's famous, including Mamie Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth II, Judy Garland, and Helen Hayes. In addition to her designs being attractive, they were sophisticated, had clean lines, were considered especially "American." Victor was even called "a magnificent sculptress of straws and felts," by the New Yorker magazine in 1954.
Influences on her work were many and varied, and among those Victor readily acknowledged were art exhibitions and architecture. The 1948 exhibition of art from the museums of Berlin at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art inspired her to create hats in a Franco-Flemish mode, with coifs and beret-like shapes taken from the paintings. In 1952 she did a series, in commemoration of Marco Polo's birth, on oriental themes using shapes inspired by fans, lanterns, and pinwheels. In the late 1950s and early 1960s she looked for inspiration to such buildings as Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, which she interpreted in straw.
From early in her career she was counted with Lilly Daché and John Fredericks among the most important American milliners. Sally Victor hats were used to accessorize the catwalk models of American designers from Hattie Carnegie to Anne Klein. She was not only prolific in the variety of her made-to-order hats for each season, but was also among the first to establish a ready-to-wear line, Sally V. Her retirement in 1968 coincided with the demise of the hat as an essential fashion accessory and the increasing casualness of the American lifestyle. She died in New York in 1977.
—Jean Druesedow
Finding a photo of Sally was very hard, but I did manage to find this one, see below:
Milliner Sally Victor designing a hat for actress Kyle MacDonnell. Location: New York, NY, US Date taken: May 1948 Photographer: George Silk
Hats in the 1950’s added that little bit of glamour and completed a woman’s outfit. Last seasons dress could be updated with a brand new hat. In the mid fifties hat styles were designed with flowers. In the late fifties hats displayed more organza and nets etc.
I fell in love with this particular piece pictured below and had to have her, this could be a new hobby of mine as I now own 2 designer hats. I am not sure of the vintage, but perhaps it is a 1950’s hat. Simply stunning.
This however, is my prized hat, my first ever vintage hat by the famous New York milliner Sally Victor. It was hard to find some information on Sally, so here is what I could find on the web:
Born: Sally Josephs in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 23 February 1905. Education: Studied painting in Paris. Family: Married Sergiu Victor, 1927; children: Richard.
Career: Saleswoman, then millinery buyer, Macy's, New York, 1923-25; assistant millinery buyer, 1925, and head buyer, 1926, Bamberger's, New Jersey; designer, Serge millinery, New York, 1927-34; opened own made-to-order millinery establishment, 1934; Sally V ready-to-wear line introduced, from 1951; firm closed, 1968.
Exhibitions: The Brooklyn Museum, 1942.
Awards: Fashion Critics Millinery award, 1943; Coty American Fashion Critics award, 1944, 1956.
Died: 14 May 1977, in New York.
Just as the American sportswear designers were establishing the look of mix-and-match separates during the 1930s and 1940s, American milliners, especially Sally Victor, established the look in their own craft. Learning millinery first from the point of view of the buyer and customer, while working at Macy's in New York, Victor focused on "designing pretty hats that make women look prettier."
Victor aspirations were simple and pure; she believed women loved pretty things and liked to be noticed wearing them. Although she was occasionally denigrated for her pursuits, like when Eugenia Sheppard of the New York Herald Tribune (25 March 1964) said Victor was "sometimes accused of designing too pretty, too feminine, too becoming, too matronly hats," Victor was credited for reviving the Ecuadorean economy by making the Panama straw hat popular again, even with the young women of the mid-1960s.
Victor customers read like a who's who of the world's famous, including Mamie Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth II, Judy Garland, and Helen Hayes. In addition to her designs being attractive, they were sophisticated, had clean lines, were considered especially "American." Victor was even called "a magnificent sculptress of straws and felts," by the New Yorker magazine in 1954.
Influences on her work were many and varied, and among those Victor readily acknowledged were art exhibitions and architecture. The 1948 exhibition of art from the museums of Berlin at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art inspired her to create hats in a Franco-Flemish mode, with coifs and beret-like shapes taken from the paintings. In 1952 she did a series, in commemoration of Marco Polo's birth, on oriental themes using shapes inspired by fans, lanterns, and pinwheels. In the late 1950s and early 1960s she looked for inspiration to such buildings as Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum, which she interpreted in straw.
From early in her career she was counted with Lilly Daché and John Fredericks among the most important American milliners. Sally Victor hats were used to accessorize the catwalk models of American designers from Hattie Carnegie to Anne Klein. She was not only prolific in the variety of her made-to-order hats for each season, but was also among the first to establish a ready-to-wear line, Sally V. Her retirement in 1968 coincided with the demise of the hat as an essential fashion accessory and the increasing casualness of the American lifestyle. She died in New York in 1977.
—Jean Druesedow
Finding a photo of Sally was very hard, but I did manage to find this one, see below:
Milliner Sally Victor designing a hat for actress Kyle MacDonnell. Location: New York, NY, US Date taken: May 1948 Photographer: George Silk
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