American Style and Spirit: The Fashions and Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850–1995

This book was published to accompany the exhibition “American Style and Spirit: 130 Years of Fashions and Lives of an Entrepreneurial Family”, presented at Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI, U.S.A., from Nov 5, 2016 to Apr 2, 2017. Shown here for the first time outside the attic in which they were stored for generations are more than 200 garments and accessories, beautifully preserved and complemented by archival objects, family photographs, and letters, spanning almost 150 years, as well as evocative descriptions of whom the garments belonged to, when they were made or bought, and even where they were worn-all by members of the Roddis family of Marshfield, Wisconsin. Author Jane Bradbury describes the joy of discovering the clothes when her aunt, Augusta Denton Roddis, showed her the astonishing collection. A remarkable resource, the book presents the garments and their designers in the context of the various eras in which they were created, from the turn of the 20th century through the 1920s and the Depression to the mid-1990s. Beautifully designed, this is a must-have for every fashion enthusiast.