Brrrrr!!!! The staff of Hagley Library are returning from our long holiday weekend to find that December is greeting us with a chilly Monday. This weather calls for a warm coat, perhaps even a ski parka by Ernst Engel in RSL Everglaze sasheen cotton like the one being modeled by Miss America pageant winner Nancy Anne Fleming in this 1961 photograph.
This photograph is part of our Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co. Miss America photographs (Accession 1972.430) collection. The company, incorporated in 1889, manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. After World War I, it added synthetics to its production, and these included rayon and nylon fabrics.
In 1929, the Bancroft Company merged with the Eddystone Manufacturing Company and soon after, it began producing a line of rayon goods and a cotton finishing process that were marketed under the trade names of "Ban-Lon" and "Everglaze" respectively.
This image was part of a series of fashion photographs commissioned by the company to promote Everglaze, tied to Bancroft's sponsorship of the Miss America Pageant from the mid-1940s through the late 1960s. The company helped finance the pageant and provided money towards scholarships awarded to pageant winners. In exchange, Bancroft was able to promote its products using the image of Miss America.
The collection largely consists of general advertising and product information for "Ban-Lon" and "Everglaze" fashions. In particular, the collection documents the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company's sponsorship of the Miss America Pageant and the promotion of fabrics by Miss America from the years 1953 to 1967. More images from this collection can be found online in our Digital Archive by clicking here.