Depression Era Dress

Clara’s Depression Era Dress is a very simple outfit with big pockets and a zipper down the front. This dress has a style reminiscent of the sailor suits popular around the turn of the century (like Clara's dress here). The dress would have been made of calico or any type of cotton fabric. The large pockets are stylish, but practical, since Clara can stash many things in the deep pockets.

This particular dress is unusual because it was on the cutting edge of children's fashion for 1937. The unique thing about this dress is the zipper down the front. Although a sort of zipper-type fastener was invented in about 1850, the modern zipper wasn't invented until 1913. The zipper took a while to catch on, and was not commonly found in clothing until the late 1930s, so this dress is one of the first ready-made items of clothing to have a zipper.

Clara also has some wedge heel shoes with a little ribbon-style trim, although she might have spent many summer days barefoot.

And since peaches are just ripening in Arizona, Clara has a big basket of peaches she picked to bottle or make into jam. Mason jars full of peaches or other fruit were “put up” for the winter by many industrious families in this era.

The original dress is a bright pink with a white hawaiian print. The shoes were sea green with white, red, orange, yellow, and blue ribbon trim. They only match in black and white!

You may also be interested to know that along with white, brown, tan, and ivory, these were some of the popular colors for clothing during the depression:


To print Clara's Dress, use this PDF file:
Clara's Dress 12 (644k)

Clara is a free, printable paper doll. Clara will be available on this blog as long as I continue to post new fashion pages for her. You can read the introduction for the Clara paper doll here.

To print the Clara paper doll, use this PDF file:
The Clara Paper Doll (718k)

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