Canadian history, Hudson’s Bay Co and furs

The C17th fur trade became a major commercial growth in Nth Am­erica, due to Eur­ope’s dem­and for beaver hats. Two French trad­ers pl­an­ned a trad­ing com­pany to reach the inland via Hudson Bay and to gain access to the int­er­ior fur resources. Af­ter not win­n­ing French sup­­port, they went to Prince Rupert in Britain in 1665 where Rup­ert sw­ay­ed cousin King Charles II, mer­ch­­ants and noble men to back the ve­n­ture. Two ships were sent mid 1668 and the royal charter for Rup­ert’s Land. Hudson’s Bay Co./HBC was pr­o­claimed May 1670. The Gov­ernor and Co. of Advent­ur­ers of England received ex­clusive trading rights in Hud­son Bay Terr­it­ory.

Original charter of the HBC, declared in 1670

HBC shareholders at Annual General Court Meeting elected a Governor and comm­ittee to organ­ise fur auctions, order trade goods, hire workers and arr­ange shipping. The London-based Governor set all the basic polic­ies implem­ented in Rup­ert’s Land, using annual reports, journals & accounts supplied by the Bay of­f­icials. 

Prince of Wales and Eddystone, Hudson's Bay Co. Ships

Canadian Encyclopaedia

After trapping beaver pelts when they reached their best quality (win­t­er), Indigenous Peoples trav­elled to the trading posts in sum­m­er. These traders were middlemen, bringing furs from inland communities and trad­ing furs for manufactured goods eg tools, guns, text­il­es, food.

In 1713 France agreed to England’s claim to Hudson Bay with Treaty of Utr­echt. For 60 years, the HBC erected posts largely at major rivers flowing into the bay. This hesit­ance to establish posts in Rupert’s Land all­owed comp­et­itors to out­do the HBC by travel­l­ing into the in­ter­ior to trade with Indigenous peoples. In return, ind­igenous trad­ers extracted greater ret­urns for their furs. 

 

Timber wolf fur sales, Fur Harvesters Auction in North Bay, Ont.

CBC

Until 1763 HBC struggled with the French for control of fur trades in south­ern Rupert’s Land, and naval battles erupted on Hud­son & James Bays. In the Treaty of Paris 1763, the Montreal overland trade network was taken by the British. By 1774 HBC trade had been undercut enough that the Governor designed an aggres­s­ive policy of inland expansion, be­ginning with building facilities on the Saskatch­ewan River.

Intensive competition with the North West Co. spil­l­ed beyond Rup­ert’s Land into the Pac­if­ic slope, combining economic conflict with occasional physical viol­ence. In 1821 the parties merged, and the British Parlia­ment extended the Co.’s monopolies to include the N.W Territories.

Bringing together the different business traditions of the North West Co. and HBC required changes in the new Co’s administrative structure. British North America was divided into trading depart­ments and dist­r­icts. District managers met annual­ly in depart­mental council meetings presided over by the Governor in North Am­erica, Sir George Simpson. Th­ese coun­cils passed reg­ul­ations governing local trade, det­er­mined work­ers’ deployment and established the log­is­tical requirements. The offic­ers also had a vested interest since they shared in the profits, accord­ing to the 1821-71 deed polls. But Sim­pson had considerable power, and the London Governor overruled local decisions. Post-merger, the HBC closed many unprof­itable trading posts, adv­ersely damaging Indigenous groups whose survival relied on fur.

After 1821, independent free Métis traders at the Red River Colony opp­osed the Co’s monopoly rights, which had been renewed in 1838. The issue ended in the famous 1849 Sayer Trial, where Métis man Pierre-Guillaume Sayer was tried and convict­ed of trading with Indigen­ous groups, violating the Co’s legal privileges. The court’s decision to free him effectively opened the trade of Rup­ert’s Land.

To standardise trade between posts, HBC introduced the Made Beav­er as the currency (1857). All furs were valued according to the equivalent of one prime male beaver skin. Hud­s­on's Bay Co. fur trade im­pacted on Indig­en­ous peoples, many of whom ab­andoned th­eir life-styles and economy, and relied on Europ­ean manuf­ac­t­ured goods for survival.

Although the Co.’s primary concern remained the fur trade, it increas­ingly provided government for settlers in Red River Valley and Vanc­ouver Island. Only in 1849 did Britain grant­ the Van­couver Island col­ony to the HBC, to be used as an agricultural sett­lement.

During the Fraser Gold Rush in 1858, the mainland colony of British Co­l­umbia was created out of New Caledonia. Governor James Douglas was requ­ir­ed by the British govern­ment to resign his HBC commission before bec­om­ing Governor of BC. Thus the Co. began to relinquish its colonial res­ponsibilities. It was then Canada’s growing expansionist movement saw the ann­exation and settlement of the NW as essential to Canada’s future.

Expansionists portrayed the HBC as delaying Canada’s growth; they cl­aim­ed that to protect its fur trade interests, the HBC had proclaimed that the NW was a barren waste­land, unsuited to agricultural set­tlement. But this belief was challenged by reports of the Palliser and Hind expedit­ions in 1857-60 which encouraged westward British settlement.

In 1863, International Financial Society bought control in HBC, signal­l­ing a shift in the Co: most new shareholders were less interested in the fur trade than in real estate and economic development in the West. Negotiations held with the Colonial Office and with the Can­adian government DID result in selling Rupert’s Land to Can­ada in 1870. In the agreement the Co retained title to the old trading lands.

Fur trader in Northwest Territories, in the 1890s

Wiki

See the post-1870 growth. By retain­ing large land­holdings on the prair­ies adjacent to its posts, many of which were loc­at­ed in growing ur­ban centres, the HBC became a most im­portant dev­el­opers in western Canada.

As Prairie economic development accelerated post-1870, the Co. expanded retail business with settlers. Initially most of this act­ivity occurred at its trading posts. Since it differed from the trade with Indigenous groups, separate sales shop accounts were kept. Then the HBC’s retail and whole­sale divisions emerged, with outlets separate from fur trade. In 1910 the Co was divided into 1]land, 2]fur & 3]retail. In 1913 HBC helped build new retail shops, recog­nising that this had a greater fut­ure potential than land and fur sales. The first of the 6 stores op­en­ed in Calg­ary and the last in Winnipeg in 1926. From 1965 the shop em­braced the short form of its name, The Bay, and its logo featured the B. And its historic coat of arms nodded to its rich role in Canadian history.

Hudson's Bay Montreal, department store chain acquired by HBC in 1960.

 In 1970, 300th year in HBC history, the Queen formally transferred it from U.K to Canada, with new headquarters in Winnipeg. The Co. owned 239 dep­art­ment stores in Canada and U.S then. But  after failing to secure new financing or buyers, the historic 355-year-old retailer permanently closed its last doors in 2025 and completed liquidation.

Thank you to Canadian Encyclopedia

 

Triangle Shirt Fact­ory NY fire tragedy 1911.

Shirtwaist designs, The Modern Priscilla Needlework Magazine, 1906

5 Minute History

Russians Max Blanck and Isaac Harris immigrated to the U.S in the early 1890s and, like hundreds of thousands of other impoverish­ed Jew­ish im­migrants, they began working in the garment industry in sweat­shops. Har­ris became familiar with popular fashion designs while Blanck became a garment contractor. They made a partner­ship, founding the Triangle Waist Co in 1900. In time, The Triangle Shirt­waist Fact­ory was located in the top 3 floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan. They hired 500 work­ers, mostly female Jewish and Italian immigrants, half of them teens. It was a true sweat­shop; the immigrants worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines for 12 hours a day. These young women worked 6-7 days a week for tiny wages and little ventilation. The male owners gave male workers the higher-paid jobs, ass­uming women were less skilled.

In 1909, the USA was advancing towards greater mass production and in­creasingly dangerous working conditions. That year the Uprising of 20,000 Strike was organised mainly by Yiddish-speaking garment workers female due to their horrid conditions, long hours and low wages. Their primary motive was to get attention paid to the mist­r­eat­­ment of imm­igrant work­ers. While there were short term agreements to meet their dem­ands, the strike ultimately failed. How­ever it DID succeed some­what in exposing poor working conditions. Progressives and unionists cal­l­ed for different reforms, but Tammany Hall opposed them; the polit­ical machine stalled any legislation that might have benefitted the workers.

Fire danger in factories was common, but corruption in both the industry and city government generally ensured that few useful precautions were taken. The Triangle factory was burned in 1907 and in 1910, the owners appar­ently torching their own work­places before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not unknown practice in the early C20th. While this did not cause the 1911 fire, it contr­ibuted to the tragedy, as Blanck & Harris refused to install sprinkler systems.

Women workers pre-fire

Barbara's Bookstore

 

In 1911 Triangle Shirt­waist Fact­ory had 4 elevators accessing the fact­ory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to go along a narrow corridor to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but they were locked from the outside to prevent the workers steal­ing.

The fire escape was so narrow, it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even if it had not burned down.

In Mar 1911, there were 600 workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fact­ory when a fire began in a material bin. The manager tried using the fire hose to extin­guish it, but the hose was rotted and its valve rust­ed shut. The fire spread and panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it only held 12 people and the operator could only make four trips before it stopped in flames. Young women bec­ame trapped by bulky equipment as flames enveloped the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building. As people struggled to escape, sev­eral fell into the flames, their bodies piling by blocked exits. In a desper­ate at­tempt to escape, the girls still waiting for the elev­ator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells found the locked door at the bottom of the stairs, and were burned alive.

Fire­fighters arrived & saw their lad­ders reached only 7 floors high but the fire was on the 8th floor. So the girls who did not make it to the stairwells or elevator were trapped by the fire inside the fact­ory; they began jumping from the wind­ows to es­cape and died on the conc­rete below. Within 20 mins they found 49 workers burned to death, 36 died in the elevator shaft, 58 died from jumping from the 8th floor and 3 more died in hospital. 146 people were killed altogether.

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union had fought for better working con­dit­ions for all sweatshop workers. The union didn’t gain real attention until after the Triangle Waist Co owners were indicted for first degree manslaughter, but were found to be not guilty by the grand jury. To settle lawsuits against them, the owners DID pay $75 in compen­sat­ion to each victim’s family, a frac­t­ion of the $400 per death that they were paid by their insurer.

Nonetheless the tragedy led to the growth of a series of laws and regu­l­ations that better protected work-ers’ safety. The fire unified organised labour and reforming polit­icians like NY Gov Alfred Smith  and Sen Ro­b­­ert Wagner, a le­g­isl­ator in Pres Franklin D Roosevelt’s (1933–45) New Deal  agenda. And the Factory Investig­ating Comm­ission in N.Y was set up af­t­er the fire. The workers union set up a march on 5th Ave NY to prot­est the conditions that had led to the fire, attended by 80,000 people.

The huge death toll for which they were responsible DID finally compel the city to enact reform. The Fire Prevention Law passed, and N.Y Democrats took up the workers’ cause; both were crucial in lim­iting similar disasters in the future.

Desperate women threw themselves down from the 8th storey to death

New York Herald

March 1911

Conclusion 

In this era, progressive movements sought to red­uce the impacts of the deplorable working conditions brought by industr­ial­­is­ation and inequality between rich and poor. The 1911 day became the deadliest indust­rial disas­ter in Manhattan history, when 123 women and 23 men died. Workers, union leaders, progressive reformers and political lead­ers all begged for higher environmental standards fitting for US. The Triangle Factory fire DID help create laws for a better workplace to keep employ­ees safer, but at an unthinkable cost for the immigrant families.

The Edwardians: Age of Elegance Exhibit

The Edwardian era was always my favourite to read and write about. Health care services improved, mortality declined, literacy spread widely, women’s rights were debated, New Zealand & Australia women were enfran-chised, trade unionism increased and the arts and sports were now widely available. Canada federated progressively, while Australian & South African states unified.

Royal portraits and coronation cloaks

Visit London

So I was keen to see what The Edwardians: Age of Elegance Exhibition in 2025 in King’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace focused on. The exhibition went back into late Victorian era to examine the patronage of Albert Prince of Wales/King Edward VII & wife Alexandra of Denmark. The couple married in 1863, soon after Queen Victoria was widowed and withdrew from public life. Thus the young royals were leading taste-makers in society, well before 1901.

Winterhalter portraits of Edward and Alexandra, 1864

the year after their wedding.

jennifereremeeva

Queen Victoria’s son reigned on her death but unlike his very elderly mother, he died too soon 1910. Edward’s son King George V & wife Mary of Teck reigned from 1910-36, but the Edwardian Era will be labelled thus until the Golden Age ended with WW1 carnage. Thank you to Visit London & jennifereremeeva.

Court pageantry was seen in fine art eg Danish Laurits Tuxen’s Garden Party at Buckingham Palace 1897-9 and Family of Queen Victoria at her 1887 golden jubilee. The theme then focussed on the lavish court world. Note the opulent coronation robes of George & Mary and jewels.

Edward and Alexandra were patrons of leading artists: HE owned works by popular Victorian artist Frederic Leighton, while SHE collected art by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne Jones. Alexandra also supported Minton’s Pottery Studio in 1870s, patronising women artists. And Alexandra, like many upper-class Victorian women, was a keen photographer.

Laurits Tuxen, Family of Queen Victoria, 

1887, Historian About Town

Global royal patronage was regular. Alexandra’s Danish heritage was seen in Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Co. art, including a huge porcelain cabinet with an ornamental roof. And objects were also collected on visits and in diplomatic exchange with the colonies: India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Africa. In the late C19th, better travel networks made the world closer, so the royal family travelled further and more often. These visits played an important role in Britain’s imperial identity eg in 1875-6 Edward toured India, producing an array of diplomatic gifts.

In 1871 Waverley Ball commemorated the 100th anniversary of Romantic author Sir Walter Scott and raised funds for the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh. Guests were dressed in costumes inspired by Scott’s Waverley literature. Edward went as Lord of Isles, titular character of an old poem, while Alexandra went as Mary Queen of Scots in the novel The Abbot. Emperor Pedro II of Brazil also attended

Edward and Alexandra hosted a Fancy Ball at Marlborough House in 1874. Actors, artists, aristocrats, musicians, politicians and bankers, called The Marlborough House Set, were invited. Named after their Pall Mall home, they were arbiters of fashion and taste, embracing new movements eg Art Nouveau & Arts and Crafts. Artist Godefroy Durand made a watercolour of the event, which showed Edward in fancy dress as Charles I, with Alexandra in Venetian costume.

A great party was the Devonshire House ball to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee 1897. 700+ invitations went out and James Lafayette photographed the guests. Edward was dressed as a Knight of Malta and Alexandra went as the C16th French queen Marguerite de Valois. Daughters Victoria and Maud, together with Maud’s husband, Prince Charles of Denmark, wore the costumes of her courtiers. And an early royal garden parties was at Buckingham Palace in 1897, marking Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, quickly becoming part of the royal calendar. While keeping strict dress codes, the Prince & Princess of Wales surrounded themselves with fashionable society figures.

A group of artists were portraying members of the set. Philip de László was renowned for his glamorous and natural portraits. In one painting of Princess Andrew of Greece-Denmark/Alice of Battenberg, George V’s cousin, he depicted the Princess in an elegant pose. A highlight of C20th royal portraiture was a striking painting of Queen Alexandra by François Flameng in 1908. In her mid-60s, she was presented as a fashion leader, promoting Cartier choker-necklaces. The best-known society portraitist of the era was by John Singer Sargent who painted Edward’s brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught & wife Duchess Louise 1908. And depicted folds of the Duchess’ dark silk and chiffon sleeves.

The social season also included sporting events eg horse racing during Royal Ascot week in June. The royal stables produced some important racehorses in the 1890s, including the famed Persimmon who won the Epsom Derby and the Ascot Gold Cup. And note the yacht racing at Cowes Isle of Wight. A small seal, enamelled in royal racing colours, marked 1896 when Britannia won 14 yacht races! And the exhibition revealed the royals’ loved dogs!

Fans and jewels

King's Gallery

Visit London

Edward and Alexandra watched theatre goers, actors and musicians in their social set. A bronze inkwell self-portrait by actress Sarah Bernhardt was in Edward’s Marlborough House study. Alexandra was a skilled pianist and Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West of 1910 was dedicated to her.

For the royal family, and everyone, the age of glamour abruptly ended in WW1. By then Edward’s son, King George V, was on the throne. Both George and his wife Queen Mary visited the battlefields of Northern Europe to meet troops and boost morale, the first time a monarch had visited a warzone in over a century. The art collected by the royal family in this wartime period reflected a solemn purpose. George V collected military relics and images of the Western Front, including the bleak landscapes by photographer Olive Edis, Britain’s first female war photographer. She recorded the devastation caused by bombing and artillery to the buildings of France and Belgium

The monarchy which emerged after WW1 ended in late 1918 displayed a strong sense of duty. See Frank Salisbury's image of the first ceremony at the Whitehall Cenotaph Nov 1920, where King George V led the nation in collective mourning.

international gifts to the royals

todaytix

Consumptive chic for women???

Consumptive Chic: History of Beauty, Fashion & Disease 2017 by Dr Carolyn Day examined the connection between fashion and Tuber­culosis/TB. The book was beautifully written and illustrated, but I was angry on women’s behalf while reading. In an era ignorant about TB, the tuber­cular body came to be defined cul­t­urally. During the late 18th-early C19ths this became romant­ic­is­ed i.e people actively redefined notions of the otherwise horrib­le sympt­oms as ideals of beauty.

Dropsy and Consumption flirting outside a mausoleum.
Credit: Wellcome Collection

Illustrated with fashion plates and medical images, this was a clear story of the rise of Consumptive Chic which described the strange link between women’s fashions and medical thinking re TB. Thus two belief systems developed in a connected fashion:

1. Women's in­herent feminine character/way of life rendered them naturally sus­cep­t­ible to contracting TB.

2.  Despite the changing fashions over decades, TB’s symptoms were believed to increase the attractive­ness of its victim over time. Once they contracted TB, patients were indeed more likely to die. But they would be increasingly beautiful as they approached death. The emaciated figure and fev­erish flush of TB victims were positively promoted as a highly desirable appearance. As were the long swan-like necks, large dil­ated eyes, luxurious eye lashes, white teeth, pale comp­lex­ions, blue veins and rosy cheeks.

Women focused on their eyes by painting eye liner and eye shadow onto their faces, even though these eye paints contained dangerous mer­cury (causing kidney damage), radium, lead or antimony oxide (a carcin­ogen). Women placed poisonous nightshade drops in their eyes, to enlargen their pupils. And they bathed in pois­onous arsenic, to make their skin desirably pale. The poison vermillion was worn on the lips as a lush red tint. How brutal, then, that medical writers knew that the fash­ionable way of life of many women actually harmed them.

What would inspire largely educat­ed classes to respond to illness through the channels of fashion? Why would people try to glamorise the symptoms of a deadly disease?? Day showed that consumption was seen to confer beauty on its victim. Yes it was a disease, but one that would become a positive event in women’s lives.

The Victorian corset was a heavy duty clothing apparatus, capable of constricting a woman's waist down to a tiny 17”;  this and an hourglass figure were all the rage in the C19th. Dresses were desig­n­ed to feature the bony wing-like shoulder blades of the consumpt­ive back, emphasising an emaciated frame. Additionally, diaphanous dresses and sandals exposed women to cold weather.

The coughing, emaciation, endless diarrhoea, fever and coughing of phlegm and blood became both a sign of beauty and also a fashion­ab­le disease. As obscene as it seems now, TB was depicted as an easy and beautiful way to fade into death. It was neither!!

Day noted the dis­ease’s connections to the Romantic poets and to scholars in the early C19th. Literary influence was important for educated women; most Romantic writers, artists and composers with TB created a myth that consumption drove male artistic genius. The link coincided with the ideolog­ies of Romanticism, a philosophical movement that opposed the En­lighten­ment through its emphasis on emotion and imag­ination. These men were the best, most intelligent & brightest members of society. Lord Byron (1788-1824), the most notorious of the Romantic poets, noted that his TB affliction caused ladies to look at him with heartbreak. The poet John Keats (1795-1821) embod­ied an example of the refined tubercular artistic genius, doom­ed to a very early death. He was a body too delicate to endure earthly life, but one whose intellect indelibly imprinted on culture.

And artistic women too. The link between TB and ideal femininity was played up by Alexandre Dumas fils whose novel La Dame aux Camélias (1848) presented redemption for immor­al­ity via the suffering of TB. The consumptive model Elizabeth Siddal, the drowned Ophelia in John Everett Millais’ pre-Raphaelite painting of 1851, became an icon for her generation.

There was less interest in the appearance of TB in the lower classes. Not because working women and prostitutes deserved a miserable and painful death, but because the lower classes showed how women real­ly suff­ered TB’s brutal realities. TB was explained away rather realistically in the working classes: miserable living cond­itions, pollution, poor hygiene, poverty, promis­cuity and drunkedness. TB was not romantic and beautiful for working women.

Tuberculosis shaped Victorian fashion
Furman News, 1888

Could the different reactions to TB, the glamorisation of the ill­ness for upper class women Vs the bleak experience of TB in impov­erished Victorian communities, be there to maintain class order in Britain? Perhaps fashion-setters elevated TB as an elegant form of suffering for the upper classes, specifically to create a psychological dis­tance from the unsavoury realities of lower-class disease? No won­der TB victims from the British upper classes were lauded while poor vic­t­ims were stigmatised.

My blog-partner-doctor wanted to know why other diseases like cholera did not have the same cultural impact? Because, Day said, in­fectious diseases followed an epidemic pattern. First they inc­r­eased very quickly; then they slowly faded in intensity and incidence. The course of TB was less flashy than other contagious illnesses, but it still followed a ve ry slow epidemic cycle of infection.

New Medical Knowledge 

A much better understanding of TB came in 1882 when germ theory was described by Louis Pasteur. In that year Robert Koch announced he'd discovered and isolated the micro­­sc­opic bac­teria that cause the disease. Koch’s discovery helped convince public health experts that TB was contagious. And that the victim’s sparkling or dilated eyes, rosy cheeks and red lips were caused by frequent low-grade fever

Preventing the spread of TB led to some of the first large-scale public health campaigns. Doctors began to define long, trailing skirts as causes of disease because they swept up germs from the street. Corsets were also believed to exacerbate TB by limiting move­ment of the lungs and blood circulation. And doctors began prescribing sunbathing as a treatment for TB. Eventually TB was viewed as a pernicious biological force requiring control. The weak and susceptible female gave way to a model of health and strength. 

NB Emily Mullin How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion

  

Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, c1852, Tate 

The tubercular model Elizabeth Siddal became an icon for her generation.

Ralph Lauren, still a luxury life!

Born Ralph Lipschitz in 1939 to Jewish immigrant parents Frank (from Belarus) and Frieda Lipschitz (from Poland), Ralph was the youngest of 4 siblings. The family wasn’t rich, living in a poor Bronx neighbourhood. So Ralph occupied himself in the cinema world to escape boredom.

Despite his humble origins, he was thinking big. In his 1957 High School yearbook, he wrote being a millionaire was his life goal! Was this the lad behind the fashion house fortune?   

Left: daughter Dylan Lauren, Ralph, Ricky, sons Andrew and David

at the Ralph Lauren in NY City.

people.com

 

Michael Gross* described how the youth used his vivid imagination to step into the fictional world of cinema greats like Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Lipschitz changed his name to Lauren in his late teens, after reportedly enduring years of teasing from his surname. In 1962, at 23, he joined the US Army and served until 1964, when he took a clerk job at Brooks Brothers, the oldest men’s clothing American brand.

In Dec 1964, Lauren married Ricky Loew-Beer in NY, dance teacher and author. They remained members of Park Ave Synagogue Manhattan, and had 3 children. [In 2011, their son David married Lauren Bush, granddaughter of ex-Pres George H Bush and the niece of ex-Pres George W Bush].

Lauren then worked for Beau Brummell, a famous tie manufacturer. Ralph persuaded the company president to let him design his own line of ties; hence the Ralph Lauren Corporation was born in 1967. His interest in sport then led to the launch of his iconic brand Polo. Watching his first polo match had activated his entrepreneurial spirit. He went with friend Warren Helstein who described how they were exposed to fabulous things; horses, silver, leather, tall blondes in hats and high society.

Ralph Lauren opened luxury flagship in Miami

in 2023

It spurred Lauren into developing an elegant and high-class brand, which later became known as Polo Ralph Lauren. It was a massive risk launching the company, as he had only a high school diploma and some business classes, never finishing studies at the City Uni of New York.

His next big risk was designing wide, colourful ties, in an era when plain and narrow was the fashion. His radical approach paid dividends – Bloomingdale’s loved it and bought $500,000 of ties in his first year.

Polo Ralph Lauren pure silk tie

Reddit

Lauren continued expanding his company. He believed in enjoying the moment, constantly moving forward. When it came to designing clothing, he came up with designs that he would want to wear himself. He imagined clothing fit for movie stars. “The things that I made, you could not find them anywhere,” he said.

He had started out in menswear, not launching his first tailored shirts for women until 1971, with his now-famous Polo player emblem. He also opened his ship on Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills, that year! His signature cotton Polo short was launched in 1972, while his range of fragrances made their debut at Bloomingdale’s in March 1978.

                                             

His outfits for men and women were unfussy and very smart. Denim was very popular.

                          

He opened his flagship store on Madison Avenue and 72nd St in New York in 1986. In 1992, Lauren launched his iconic Polo Sport line, followed by additional lines and acquired brands eg Ralph Lauren Purple Label in 1995. His company was publicly traded on the NY Stock Exchange in June 1997.

The 98-seat restaurant RL opened in 1999 in Chicago in a newly built building adjacent to the largest Ralph Lauren store at cnr Chicago and Michigan Avenues. It was followed by the opening of two additional restaurants, Ralph's in Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris flagship shop in 2010 and The Polo Bar at Polo's flagship shop in New York in 2015. I have never been in any of these 3 restaurants.

The marketing genius is that his brand conjured romantic, nostalgic visions of rugged wranglers, and clean, Ivy League privilege, yet Lauren made billions from polo shirts and denim. But in 2016 Ralph Lauren brand seemed to be stressed. Analysts criticised discounting, claiming they cheapened its image, while a failure to attract younger buyers was also relevant. In 2017 the designer responded by launching wearable tech in a fitness technology shirt, combined with a mobile app. The Polo Tech Smartshirt athletic apparel pioneered physical tracking technology. It was embedded with sensors, tracking heart rates, breathing, stress level and calories burned. Data were streamed to an app that generated workout programmes, enabling Polo Sport to compete with sports brands eg Nike and Adidas.

Ralph Lauren's Celeb-Packed Show in the Hamptons

2024, Getty

Summary
Amassing a fortune, fashion designer Ralph Lauren went from rags to riches. The army veteran and former clerk earned his fortune through building an empire with his Polo clothing brand, launched in 1968. Thus the Bronx lad who dreamed of becoming rich is a multi-billionaire, with homes in Long Island, Jamaica and Manhattan, plus a huge Colorado range. He stepped down as CEO in Sept 2015, remaining executive chairman. In April 2024, his net worth was cUS$9 billion.

photo credit: Ralph Lauren Corporation.

In Jan 2025 President Joe Biden awarded Lauren the Presidential Medal of Freedom, making him the first fashion designer ever to receive the highest civilian honour. 

*Read Biographer Michael Gross’ Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren, 2003.

Australia's national hat, the akubra.

Australian Army hat, wool felt 

Rising sun badge and puggaree 

Everything Australian

The origin of the slouch hat began with the Victorian Mounted Rifles in 1885. The Victorian hat was an ordinary bush felt hat turned up on the right side so it would not be caught during the drill movement of shoulder arms. By 1890, State military commandants had agreed that all Australian forces should wear a looped-up hat of uniform pattern turned up on the right side in Victoria and Tasmania, and on the left in other States, depending on drill movements. The slouch hat became standardised headdress in 1903, a famous symbol of Australian soldiers in WW1 and WW2. Now, as we will see, it is a national symbol.

Soldiers parade on Anzac Day

Facebook 

Slouch hats worn by Armoured Corps men were adorned with emu plumes. This tradition originated with the Queensland Mounted Infantry during the great shearers’ strike in 1891 when the Infantry came to aid the civil power. The soldier rode his horse alongside emus, plucked a breast feather, and placed it on the hats. The Gympie Squadron was the first to wear feathers and the rest of the regiment soon followed. The Queensland government permitted the Regiment to adopt the plume as part of its uniform, in thanks for service. In 1915, Minister for Defence granted all Australian Light Horse units permission to wear the plume.

When killed at Gallipoli, Commander General of Australia’s Imperial Force was found wearing his slouch hat reversed. From then, when the hat was worn at Royal Military College Duntroon, it became usual to wear the chinstrap buckle on the right side and the brim down. Plus wearing the brim down provided additional protection from the sun.

The puggaree originated from the Hindu pagri i.e a thin scarf of muslin. Intended for insulation, the puggaree was a traditional Indian head-wrap, adapted by the British and worn in hot regions. In WW1, a plain khaki cloth band was added and this practice continued until in 1930, new puggarees were issued to Commonwealth Military Force with different coloured folds, denoting Arm or Service. The puggaree has 8 pleats, with 7 representing each state and 1 for the Australian Territories. Made from light khaki cotton it is worn on the slouch hat with a unit colour patch on the right side. Troops who were on active service in the Middle East wore a folded puggaree as a mark of active service.

The word Akubra was ?derived from an Aboriginal word for head covering. Wide-brimmed, fur-felt Akubra hats are a traditional part of outdoor clothing in the Australian bush, protecting wearers from sun and rain. They are still worn by stockmen, hunters, graziers, farmers and horsemen, the rural community accounting for 70% of sales. It was closely associated with Australian identity.

Australian cattle men on horses

Austockphoto

Akubra has been producing high-quality hats since 1874. Founded by Benjamin Dunkerley the company started in Hobart where they created new pieces of machinery for hat making. Workers on the factory floor use traditional felting methods that were available then. But in 1904 they were joined by Stephen Keir who brought his great experience. After Dunkerley died in 1918, ownership of the company shifted to Keir I. Since then the Akubra brand passed down the generations of his family in Kempsey (North Coast NSW).

Hat sales declined in the Depression so the 200+ staff took a 10% pay cut to avoid redundancies. The business re-grew with staff numbers peaking in the 1940s, thanks to ongoing military contracts. When Stephen Keir retired in 1952, production was at a record high. He was succeeded as Managing Director by eldest son, Herbert. 2nd son, Stephen Keir II, became Managing Director 20 years later.

Olympics and films

Australian team, 1988

Opening ceremony Seoul Olympics

In 1956, Akubra supplied the Panama straw hats worn by the Australian team at the Melbourne Olympics. By the 1960s consumer production was made of 60% city hats, but when the price of wool rose, the company focused on fur felt hats instead. The purpose-built factory in Kempsey was built in 1972, establishing Akubra as the region’s major employer. In 1982 The Man From Snowy River released and the hat inspired by the film became a staple in the range. It was estimated that 21+ mill hats were made by then. Stephen Keir III became Managing Director in 1980. Son Graham joined in 1972, later as National Sales Manager.

  

Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee 1986 made the Akubra even more sexy.  

The film remains the top-earning Australian film at the box office. 

Everything Australian

In 1988, Kempsey became The Akubra Home but variations were introduced. The Aussie Gold hat was made for the Australians at LA Games 1984. Greg Norman signed on with Akubra in 1987 and the Great White Shark hat went into production. The Aussie team wore Akubra hats at the Seoul Olympics and another Olympic version for Barcelona Olympics. The Spirit of Australia style arrived for 2000 Sydney Olympics. Another great example of the quality workmanship was found in the Banjo Paterson Akubra, named for the famous Australian poet.

Stephen Keir III retired as Managing Director in Dec 2007, allowing the 4th generation, Stephen Keir IV, to become Managing Director. In 2010, after working with the company for 56+ years, Stephen Keir III stepped down as Chairman of the Board and Stephen Keir IV became Chairman of the Board of Directors. In May 2012 Stephen Keir III died, survived by his wife and former Director Wendy, daughters Stacey and Nikki (both directors of Akubra Hats), son and Chairman of the Board of Directors Stephen Maitland Keir IV.

Jan 26th is Australia Day, the day the nation celebrates the founding of the first British colony in Sydney in 1788. By 2015 Akubra has produced 2 mill hats, still proudly made in Kempsey NSW, and still worn in Australian parades. Thank you to Akubra Story for dates and family names.

Helen in an akubra and spouse

introductory photo in Art and Architecture, mainly

2024 - great year for Tamara de Lempicka!

Madonna will showcase Lempicka’s art on her Celebration Concert Tour, Lempicka The Musical on Broadway in Mar 2024. An exhibit­ion at San Francisco’s Legion of Honour Museum will reevaluate her style in art history by int­rod­ucing 1920-30s Paris culture. And a documentary The True Story of Tamara De Lempicka & the Art of Survival will appear in 2024! What a year!! 

Portrait Of Dr Boucard 1929

with test tube and microscope.

Maria Gorzka (1898-1980) was born in ?Moscow, dau­ghter of a Russian Jew­ish solicitor for a French trading comp­any, Boris Górs­ki. After her parents divorc­ed, Maria lived with grand­ma on the French Riv­ie­ra. In a St Pe­t­­ersburg opera in 1914, Maria met Tad­eusz Lempicki (1888–1951), a hand­some law­y­er of noble family. 2 years later they mar­­r­ied in St Pet­ersburg with her banker-uncle giving the dowry. A year later Tad­uesz was arrested by the Bolsheviks; Tamara got him freed and the couple and baby fled to Paris, with other wealthy White Russ­ians. 

Mad­ame Bouc­ard in  lavish silk, jew­els and mink

1931

In her early Pa­ris life, she enrolled at Académie de la Grande Chaum­ière and ab­sor­bed the Old Masters, especially Bronzino. She drew on the Cubism of her Paris con­tempor­aries and French Deco cr­eated a glam­orous Paris epitomising Tamara's life and art. Her mentor was artist-critic André Lhote, creator of a gent­ly coloured Cub­ism.

Deco made great progress in fine arts and industrial designs, bas­ed on simple format, clean lines and viv­id colours. The improve­ment of tech­nology, in industries like cars, ships and tr­ains, emp­h­asised stylised angular forms. Lempicka found soul mates in fas­h­­ion illustrator Erte, glass artist Rene Lalique and designer Cass­an­d­re. Lempicka found her place as a port­raitist of the era's beaut­iful peop­le, mixing with André Gide, Col­­ette and Jean Cocteau. Although marr­ied with a daugh­ter, Tamara was busy having romantic involve­ments with both genders, patrons and models. And because tourism was ma­king Montmartre too crowded and expensive, most art­ists gradually moved to Mont­parnasse with its wide boul­ev­ards and small courtyards. Pablo Pic­asso, Con­stantin Bran­cu­si, Jac­ques Lipchitz, Tris­tan Tzara & Piet Mondrian we­re Tamara's neigh­bours in this cen­tre of art studios.

By 1923 she exhibited in small galleries. Her work was shown at the 1924 Pa­r­is Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes, and in 1925 she had her first Milan solo. Her soc­ial life also blos­somed, displaying Tamara’s skill in winning many men and women lovers, her models and patrons. See the wo­men reclin­ing, bath­ing, hug­ging or stroking.

En­cour­ag­ed by Coco Chanel  and the Fl­appers, Tamara went to ch­ap­er­­one-free parties, sm­oked and drove cars. The 1920s flat dresses provid­ed an ideal canvas to dis­play Deco taste. In 1927 Lemp­icka re­ceived 1st prize at the Exposition Internat­ionale des Beaux-Arts for the portrait of her daughter Kizette on the Balcony, and divorced.

The Girl In Green With Glov­es (1929 Musée Nat­ional d'Art Moderne Paris) was a fam­ous work that cl­early epit­omised Deco and flowing curves. See the self-portrait Tamara in the Green Bug­atti (1929), in leather helmet and gloves. It was the cover of a Ger­man Women's Li­berat­ion magazine Die Dame: tight, post-cubist des­ign; muted col­our; sp­eed; glamour; Her­mès helmet; leather driving gloves! F Scott Fitz­g­er­ald popularised sporty outfits; and clothes and hats were desig­ned for ships, trains or cars. Jean Patou, Ma­d­­eleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiap­­ar­elli created excellent moving styles.

Examine Lempicka's males. The huge portrait of Duke Gabriel Const­ant­inov­ich (1926) wore a gold-braid­ed un­iform and empty face. Count Fürstenberg Herd­ringen 1928 was a glass-eyed monster in a French navy beret. In the late 1920s her most import­ant patron was flashy medico Dr Pierre Boucard (1929) who already owned some Lempicka nudes. Boucard gave her a 2-year contract to paint family portr­aits.

This new income bought a Left Bank 3-sorey studio house in Rue Me­ch­ain; grey int­er­ior, chrome fittings & American cock­tail bar gave Lempicka her sett­ing. On the easel was the port­r­ait of Mad­ame Bouc­ard (1931), a complex work done by this connoisseur of text­iles, jew­els, hairstyles and mink boa. In Port­rait of Madame M 1931, Tam­ara showed sleekness .  

Tamara sold her expensive portraits to Paris’ rich aristocracy. She painted writ­ers, entert­ainers, artists and Eastern Eur­ope's ex­iled nobility. One of her wea­l­thiest patrons Baron Raoul Kuff­ner (1886–1961) owned vast estates donat­ed to his brewer family by Emp­eror Franz-Josef for supplying the Hapsb­urg court. Kuffner asked Tamara to paint a port­rait of his mistress Andalusian dan­cer Nana de Herrera but while painting the Baron’s port­rait, Lempicka got involved with him, re­plac­ed his mistress and married him in 1934

La Music­ienne 1929

Lempicka understood political chaos, and enc­ouraged her husband to secure his assets. So Kuffner sold his Hungarian estates. When WW2 started in 1939, the coup­le left Paris and moved to Holly­wood. They lived in film director King Vidor’s old home, and Tamara soon bec­ame an artist of Hollywood's screen stars. Lempicka also bus­ied herself with war relief work and after an ext­ended st­ruggle, resc­ued her daughter Kizette from Nazi-occupied Par­is in 1941. In 1943 they cont­inued to soc­ialise in N.Y, al­though her art out­put reduced; conservatism st­arted to ch­allenge the fem­in­ist ad­van­ces she’d championed. Nonethe­less when WW2 end­ed, she reop­ened her famous Paris studio.

When the Baron died in 1961, Tamara sold up and sailed away. Then she moved to Houston Tx to be closer to her daught­er and produced abstract paint­ings to remain in-step with cur­rent art. Only in 1966 did Musee des Arts Decorat­ifs open her memor­ial exh­ib­ition, then Al­ain Blondel open­ed Galerie du Lux­embourg with a major Lempicka re­tr­ospective in 1972. But in 1978 she moved to Mex­ico, bought a special house and died in 1980.

Madame M sold for $6.13 million at Christie's NY in 2009. Lempicka's auc­t­ion record, $9.1m, was set by Chris­tie’s in 2018 for La Music­ienne (1929) showing a mandolin player in vivid blue. A new record was set when La Tun­ique Rose (1927) earned $13.3m at Sotheby’s N.Y in 2019. Now Por­trait de Marjorie Fer­ry (Paris, 1932) earned £16.4 in Chris­­t­ie’s London in 2020!! Many thanks to theartstory. 

 stylish Bar Lempicka in Amsterdam

See the Art Deco glass mosaic on the ceiling

and the Lempicka name on the facade

Straw hat riots of New York, 1922: a teenage prank or dangerous riots?

A baseball crowd showed how popular straw boaters were in summer. 

Ripley's

Throughout history, social mores have helped dictate per­sonal styl­es. Straw hats in America appeared in the 1890s and early C20th, largely as summertime wear related to sporting events like boating (hence boater). Initially the hat was not con­sidered good form for soph­isticated, big-city-men, even at the height of summer. But that too changed. By the early C20th, straw boaters were considered acceptable day attire in American cit­ies in summer, even for professionals and businessmen, but note there was the 15th Sept rule when felt hats became mandatory.

This date seemed arbitrary; earlier it had been 1st Sept, but it event­ually shifted to mid-month. And summer doesn’t officially end until 21st Sept in the USA! Nonetheless if any man was seen wear­ing a straw hat after the cut-off date, he KNEW youths would knock the hat off and stomp on it. 

A Pittsburgh Press article (15/9/1910) noted that pol­ice had to in­tervene occasionally to “protect straw-lidded pedest­r­ians.” They ex­plained that it was socially ac­ceptable for stock­brokers to dest­roy each other’s hats because they are among friends, but not right for a stranger to do so. If the in­form­­ality should become general, there will sure to be a number of obstinate gentlemen (with English blood in their veins) who would coolly proceed to treat the fun-making as a physical assault and defend themselves in a manner which would spoil the fun for all concerned. 

This tradition became well established, and newspap­ers of the day would often warn people of the impending approach of the 15th, when men would have to switch hats. As the New York Times ?joked, any man who wore a straw hat after this date “may even be a Bolsh­evik, a com­munal enemy, a potential sub­verter of the social order.

 
Boaters were still popular in the Roaring 20s. Few cities took the change-over date more seriously than fashion-conscious New Yorkers; these street-smart men knew bet­ter than to be seen wearing a straw hat out of season. But if the straw hat story had merely been letting off adolescent steam, the tradit­ion suddenly became very dangerous.

A full-blown N.Y riot started on 13th Sept 1922, two days before the straw hat ban would take effect. The Straw Hat Riot started when the lads got a jump-start on the trad­it­ion by grabbing and stomping on the hats of fact­ory workers in Manhattan’s Mulberry Bend section. The more innocent stomping turned into a brawl when the rowdy hoodlums attacked a group of dock work­ers, and the dock workers fought back. The 1922 brawl, which  totally stop­ped traffic on the Manhattan Bridge, lasted for days!

No literate New Yorker could claim ignorance of the riots.

The New York Tribune and other papers were full of the details

I was interested to read contemporary newspaper reports, to see if they under-stated the boyish conflict that had been underway. New York Times reported that hundreds of boys terrorised straw-lidded cit­iz­ens, forcing them to run through a gauntlet. To make the job of rip­ping off hats easier, many lads were pre-armed with large sticks. Some had nails protruding on the ends, to help hook the straw hats off peop­le’s heads, often leaving victims with serious injuries and hospitalisation. Police claimed 1,000 teens were part of a roaming mob on Amst­er­dam Ave, continuing the riot the following night. But only seven men were convicted of disorderly conduct in the Men’s Night Court.

New York Tribune said: Boys who were guided by the calendar rat­her the weather, and by their own trouble-making procl­iv­ities, indulged in a straw hat-smashing orgy through­out the city. NYC police off­icers were told to be on guard for hoodlums and did so with ext­reme prej­ud­ice, but the police were often outnumbered. 12 were arrested and 7 were spanked ignomin­ious­ly by their parents, on the order of the East 104th St police. Many of those arrested and taken to court were too young to be gaoled, so most opted to be fined instead.

Even if 17 year old boys were illiterate immature morons, did they not know about the riots and bombs that were ruining Americans’ lives in 1920 and 1921? Foreign anarchists were thought to be re­sponsible for bombings and mass deaths in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago etc. The police could not have known yet about the 1927 bombing massacre in Bath Mi, of course, but the atmosphere of fear was well and truly in place.

Sept 1922 saw the worst part of the straw hat riots, although no one died in the riot that year. Even in 1923 & 24, the police were slow to respond to the riots, but several off-duty police off­icers found themselves caught up in the brawl. In any case, more workers were hosp­it­alised from the beatings they received and many arrests were made. And note that in 1924, a man did indeed die during the riots.

In 1925 the U.S President Coolidge was seen wearing a straw hat on 18th Sept, a “shocking” move which received front page cover­age from the Times: Discard Date for Straw Hats Ig­nored by Pres Calvin Coolidge. Note the riots were a boon for hat shops, which stayed open late to provide soft head-wear for those who feared being attacked. In any case, after the U.S President rejected the ritual, straw hat-smashing did event­ually die out. 

Come Sept each year, ads for the new autumn hats started appearing

Credit: Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog

Was anything learned from this bit of post-WW1 history?

Frida Kahlo's house museum, Mexico City

Australia is presenting a wonder­ful exhib­ition, Frida & Diego: Love & Revolution (Jun-Sep 2023) in South Aust­ralia’s Art Gallery from Jacques and Natasha Gelman's collection of Mexican modernism. But what about Kahl­o’s own Mexican home, la Casa Azul/Blue House?

Visitors queuing to enter Frida Kahlo Museum

 

The house was built in 1904 with a French-inspired design in the Coyoacán neighbourhood, a rural and arty part of the Fed­eral District of Mexico City. Guillermo Kahlo completed the fam­ily home there before Matilde gave birth to their daughter Frida (1907-54).

Frida contracted polio at 6 and was bedridden for 9 months. The di­s­­ease caused her right leg to losing weight, limp­ing forever. So she wore long skirts for life! Her beloved fat­her encour­aged her to do sports to help her recover: so­ccer, swimm­ing, wrest­l­ing!

She attended Mexico City’s famous National Preparat­ory School in 1922 where only 35 female students were enrolled. This con­fid­ent lass first met and admired the famous Mexican Diego Riv­era who was working on the school’s assembly hall mural.

That year, Kahlo joined students who shared leftwing political views, loving the leader Alejandro Gomez Ar­ias. She and Ar­ias were on a bus when it collided with a tram and a steel handrail imp­al­ed Frida's hip. Her spine and pelvis were fractured, leaving endless pain. She had to stay in the Red Cross Hospital Mexico, then went home in a full-body cast for months. Her parents loved art, bought her br­ushes and paints, and made her a special bed-based easel. So she painted her first self-portrait in bed.

Frida's bed

with a mirror above, set into the canopy

Kahlo re-found Rivera in 1928, asking him to ev­al­uate her work and he encouraged her, professionally and rom­antically. Frida was young (21), dressy, physically handicapped and living with her parents. Rivera was middle-aged (42), totally famous and messy. Despite parental ob­jec­t­ion, Frida and Diego married in 1929 then moved around, based on Diego's work in the US.

In 1932, Kahlo painted more surrealistic components. In Henry Ford Hospital (1932) she was lying on a hospital bed naked, surr­ounded by a foetus, flow­er and pelvis, connect­ed by veins and floating. She  was pregnant but suf­fered a heart-breaking miscarr­iage from ear­lier injuries.

In 1933, Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to paint a mural at Rockefeller Centre. Rivera included Vladimir Lenin, but Rockefel­ler had Lenin painted over and the couple quickly escaped to Mexico!

Frieda and Diego Rivera, married in 1929,

She painted this wedding portrait in 1931

The couple were keeping separate homes and studios for years, yet despite the many affairs, they always returned together. In 1937 they helped Leon (and wife) Trotsky, exiled rival of insane Soviet lead­er Joseph Stalin. The Riv­er­as welcomed the Trotskys into their Blue House where Frida and Leon had a brief affair. But when the Trot­skys relocated, Leon was tragically assassinated.

In 1938 Kahlo befriended Andre Breton, a Surreal­ist who helped her create a successful gallery exhibition in N.Y. In 1939 Kahlo was in­vited by Br­eton to Paris to exhib­it her work. There she was befriended artists Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian, Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso, and loved it.

The couple divorced in Nov 1939, then remarried in Dec 1940 when she showed her per­spective in Diego on My Mind (1940). Even then they had separate lives, both of them cheating. Kahlo painted some of her most famous paintings after her homecoming, in­clud­ing The Two Fridas (1939) and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace & Hummingbird (1940).

Be­fore Frida’s father Guill­ermo's death in 1941, the couple moved to the Blue House, and quickly adapted it. The Blue House was given a bigger garden and brighter colours, especially the blue painted walls seen today, enclosing the courtyard completely. Juan O’Gorman did the redesign work in 1946. To separate the new from the old, a stone wall divided the patio area in two, with a foun­tain, stepped pyr­amid, pre-Columbian artefacts, pool and their arch­aeological collect­ion. They built a sunny art studio and covered its white faç­ade in cob­alt blue paint.

Diagnosed with foot gan­­g­rene in 1950, Frida was bedridden for another 9 months, in hosp­ital for sur­g­eries. Still, she contin­ued to work in her par­ents’ home,  her biographical paintings revealing a new approach to exploring feminism. The Blue House welcomed intel­l­ectual and avant-garde act­ivity; the couple hos­ted a special array of stars from Mexico and abroad. The house together had some of her most famous works eg Portrait of My Father (1951). 

Some of Frida's old Mexican clothes

hanging in the Museum

She had a solo exhibition and despite the pain, Frida arrived by ambulance, welcomed the at­t­endees and opened the 1953 ceremony from bed. Months later, her right leg was partly amputated to stop the gangrene. Thus her last political outing was in 1954! 

They lived in the house for the rest of Kahlo's short life. At 47, Frida died in 1954 at her beloved Blue House from a pul­monary em­bolism. The Blue House physically displayed the col­our­ful life she left and rep­res­ented her admiration for the indigen­ous Mexic­ans. Cr­utches and med­icine displayed her years of suffering, plus toys, jewellery and cloth­ing. Was she a hoarder? Probably - after all, it took years to discover the 6,500 photos and c22,000 documents left in the Blue House, along with magazines, books, paintings, drawings etc.

Frida and Diego's kitchen

 
Frida and Diego had wanted to leave her house as a museum for all Mex­ic­ans to enjoy. So the widower paid out the mortgage, and paid off the health debts for them both. Rivera set up a foundation for to preserv­e the house and con­vert­ it to a Museum dedicated to her life and works. Its administrat­ion was assigned to a trust under the central Banco de México, and constit­uted by Rivera in 1957. He had the Museum formally dedicated to her life in 1958, including its gardens.

Kahlo gardens

Museo Frida Kahlo presents the house how it was in the 1950s. In addition to the couple’s works, the museum also collects their Mexican folk art and pre-Hispanic artefacts. There are ten rooms. On the ground floor is the kit­chen where her Mex­ican culture was really vis­ible. It was trad­it­ion­ally decorated with clay pots, in bright ind­ig­enous Mexican co­lours. The second room has Frida’s let­t­ers, notes and photos, while on the walls are Frida’s trade­mark pre-Hispanic neck­laces and folk dresses. The third room has Rivera’s art. The fourth room has cont­emporary paint­ings by Paul Klee, José María Vel­asco and others. The fifth room has monsters from Teotih­uacan cul­ture that Kahlo used in her art. Her top bedroom-studio was in the wing Rivera built, with a painted plaster corset worn to sup­port her damaged spine, and a mirror still facing down.

In the 1970s inter­est in her work and life was renewed due to fem­in­­ism; she was viewed as an icon of female creat­iv­­ity. In 1983, Hayd­en Herrera published the excellent Biography of Frida Kahlo. And from 1995, read The Diary of Frida Kah­lo:  and The Letters of Frida Kahlo. 

Today, the Blue House is one of the most visited museums in Mexico City.

Self portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird, 

www.FridaKahlo.org, 1940