The Centennial Dress Project: Potential Patterns

For starters, a closer look at that original photo --

The two young ladies here have two very different dresses -- it seems to me that the girl on the right has a much more modern cut to her dress with a wide skirt and drop waist. The girl on the left seems to be wearing the lace armlets specified for use with short-sleeved dresses. Not sure about the wingspan on those sleeves, but I  really like her belt though.

This girl seems to have  a sort of tunic -style skirt and shirtwaist. Love the skirt.

Another really fab belt.  I dig the three-quarter sleeves, because unlike the other sleeve in this picture, they do not look like something your grandmother would wear to bed.

These girls are seated, making it harder to see the exact  'fall' of the dress, but both  also seem to have three-quarter sleeves on their dresses. Two very different collars, too -- on the left she has a sort of embroidered bit at the front, while on the right she has a square neck and what looks like a middy collar. (I like both of these dresses a lot.) Also, we can see Left-girl's SHOES. They look like plain black pumps to me.

So, in summary, we're seeing a lot of three-quarter sleeves and more dresses in the older style (longer, slimmer cut, higher, nipped in waist) than the new dropped waists and full skirts of the late teens. Some of these girls appear to be wearing skirts and shirt-waists. Dress or skirt, some have wide belts in a contrasting color. A wide mix of collars are in view, from the higher straight collars of the early 1900s to a sort of ruffly short collar on out through a soft, flat collar very much like a middle or sailor collar. 

And honestly, the girl in the drop-waist in that first picture looks awful. Let's not do that.

Oh, and I have an introduction to make: Everyone, I want you to meet my new best friend for the duration of this project -- May Knupp.

I don't actually have a photo of May, but the archives did send me a copy of one of her letters, which is what this is taken from. It is dated September 1st of 1913, and in it, May reports back to her family that "I arrived here just fine. Everything has gone off splendidly so far." She has not, unfortunately, made it to college yet -- she and her traveling companion expect to be there tomorrow for dinner. 

It is not, in the main, a terribly interesting letter, but apparently the archives has a whole BOX of her correspondence, as well as several poems she wrote while away at school. Not helpful to the dress project in the least, although for the sake of price comparisons, I am sure they will be helpful -- May reports having three dollars and eighty cents left after car fare and hotel fees, and promptly tells her family not to worry about her. (I think my mother might worry a lot if I left the house with nothing but three dollars and eighty cents, let alone go off to college with it.)