Community Corner
Fashion Show Celebrates Women Who Motor in High Style
Wear your runway-ready fashion from any era to celebration of women and automobiles.
(Originally published Oct. 6, 2016) GROSSE POINTE, MI — If you've been planning to catch the "Women Who Motor" exhibit at the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, your chances are dwindling. The two-year display closes next week, and will do so in style.
“Fashion Through the Decades: A Vintage Fashion Show,” will include a narrated fashion show highlighting clothing from the early years of the automobile through the 1960s.
“It’s the last hurrah for the exhibit,” Colin Bowyer, communications and community outreach specialist for the Ford House, told the Grosse Pointe Times. Gretchen Abrams, education programs coordinator at the Ford House, said the fashion show is being geared to the exhibition.
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The fashion show has been organized by the creators of the touring exhibition “Fashion and the Automobile.”
“The fashion show is a virtual drive down memory lane, an entertaining look at the relationship between fashion and automotive design by decade, and how both were influenced by function, environment, lifestyle and world events,”Victoria Mobley, creator and curator of “Fashion and the Automobile,” said in a prepared statement. “We also show the U-turns that each decade takes, as what’s old becomes new again.”
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The exhibition demonstrates “the impact of cars on women’s roles in society and the impact of women on cars,” Abrams said. “The car gave them independence, and (female drivers) also changed cars.” Comfortable seats, safety features and easier steering mechanisms were some of the changes made to vehicles to entice female drivers, but they ended up improving the automobile for all motorists.
Those who sign up for the fashion show will get a tour of the exhibition as well, giving people who haven’t seen “Women Who Motor” one last chance to get a look at unique artifacts such as the 1914 Detroit Electric once owned and driven by Helen Newberry Joy, wife of Henry Joy, the Packard Motor Car Co. president, and a pink raincoat and hat that came with — and matched — the pink Dodge LeFemme car, which was produced for women from 1955 to 1956.
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Photo by Maria Lisa Militello for summer 2014 Macomb Now Magazine, provided by the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House