Finding Period Old Clothing In Australia Is Impossible

[Mojito]

Only place I managed to find anything much on my last visit home was at an Antique Fair at the Napier Art Deco Weekend. The dealer who was from the South Island that I bought my early 1930s evening dress specialises in clothing and she said she saves all her 20s and 30s stuff to take to Napier as that's where she'll sell it. I did look at the menswear and there wasn't anything pre 1960s. If dealers can't get hold of it, you don't have much chance finding it in a charity shop, that's for sure.

I think I know exactly who you're talking about - I've bought some lovely pieces from her!

 

[Miss Sis]

The lady from Nelson, Mojito? She had quite a few 1930s evening dresses. One I really liked was much too big for me, but I went with another. Not much daywear.

I didn't get to ask whether much of her stuff comes from overseas though. I am curious as to whether much turns up that is actually 'local'.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I guess my ideas of the poverty of Australia come mainly from the stories of spectacular levels of poverty and hardship told by my wife's mother, who grew up in a tent outside Kalgoorlie through the 30s and 40s. It was better than Scotland at the time, I suppose, but that wouldn't be difficult.

Like most parts of the British dominions (including Britain) I have a distinct view of Australia at the time as a deeply unequal place. Even worse if you dared to not be white!

 

[Mojito]

Deeply unequal in some respects, and yet very egalitarian in others. If you were an Indigenous Australian, forget it - they weren't even counted as Australian citizens until the 1967 census. My closest friend and housemate is part-Aboriginal, and she has horror stories about her own family history and how she was taught to turn her back on her Aboriginal heritage. There was a strong nationalist sentiment - particularly from the 1890s, but existing earlier - that was rascist and misogynist.

On the other hand, non-white Europeans have been part of the waves of migration, convict and free-settler, since the First Fleet. Before the White Australia policy there were many Chinese migrants who came here and thrived - I know Australians of Chinese descent whose family came out in the gold rush. They encountered racism and skillfully managed their businesses so as to generally avoid direct competition with white owned businesses, and did extremely well. We've gone through the same sorts of waves of xenophobia as much of the rest of the world where there has been a high migrant population - directed, for example, against the Greeks, Italians etc in turn as they arrived on our shores - but in time they have become part of the fabric of our country.

My own family is full of examples of people who arrived here not only impoverished, but with a criminal background - an Irishman accused of intending to steal from his British employer (sentenced to death for something that never actually left the shop), a political activist originally sentenced to death alongside Edward Despard, and poor Irish, German and Swedish migrants (my own name comes from the Swedish side of the family - represented by a cabin boy who worked his passage here to escape the dire poverty his large family faced in Sweden, he went on to become an extremely wealth hotelier who owned hotels on both sides of the country). Like any nation, there have always been extremes of wealth and poverty - but the wealth is not as polarised as it is elsewhere, the general standard of living has always been high, and there has traditionally been a strong middle class.

Regarding vintage, I wonder if part of the issue is a general aversion to "old" things until fairly recently, unless they were extraordinarily high end antiques. For many of those who came to this country, and for those who were second generation working their way up to prosperity, "old" meant something second rate and had connotations of poverty. The same part-Aboriginal friend I mentioned above said that her mother, who spent a childhood in dire poverty, wanted nothing old in the house. Old things weren't antiques or vintage - they second-rate hand-me-downs, and as her affluence increased she wanted to distance herself from her past. I've found that expressed again and again - "Oh, I used to have one of those dresses that belonged to my mother...it was old, so I threw it out."

 

[Shangas]

Australia started giving up the WAP during the postwar years. They began to realise how stupid it sounded and how ineffectively it was maintained. Basically it became a waste of time and manpower to have it.

 

[The Rag And Bone Man]

This thread is becoming quite a history lesson, I like it. Thanks for the posts.

 

[MikeBravo]

I guess my ideas of the poverty of Australia come mainly from the stories of spectacular levels of poverty and hardship told by my wife's mother, who grew up in a tent outside Kalgoorlie through the 30s and 40s. It was better than Scotland at the time, I suppose, but that wouldn't be difficult.

Like most parts of the British dominions (including Britain) I have a distinct view of Australia at the time as a deeply unequal place. Even worse if you dared to not be white!

People forget how long it took Britain to recover from the war. A friend of mine grew up in Wales and he said there were no jobs and not much food either. Australia was sending food to Britain up to the mid 1950's.

And yes, a tent outside Kalgoorlie in the thirties and forties would have been bloody tough.

 

[Shangas]

Britain was severely effected by WWII. It's a fact that rationing lasted twice as long as the war, or almost twice, at any rate. Entire neighbourhoods and blocks of London, Conventry and other major English cities were completely obliterated by the Blitz.

Don't forget that before the War, Britain imported damn near everything. From Australia, Canada, India, Malaya...all over the Empire. When the war ended, the Empire was pretty much finished off, too. So Britain didn't have the support-system that it used to.