A Vintage Shopping Surprise
Before visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, this summer, I looked online for fun things to do and interesting places to shop. At the top of my list was Santa Fe Vintage, an eclectic store filled with clothing from past decades.
The moment I walked in, I spotted an amazing dress made entirely out of paper. I immediately went over to Josh, the man working there, and asked him what it was.
“It’s a Yellow Pages Paper Dress!” he said, smiling.
From the confused look on my face, Josh realized that I had no idea what he was talking about. The only “yellow pages” I knew were the ones in a legal pad, but those were clearly not the ones Josh was referring to. After I told him what I had pictured, he explained that the Yellow Pages were a printed directory people once used to find the telephone numbers of businesses and that the dress, created in the 1960s—when the Yellow Pages were a fixture in American households—was made from paper designed to resemble its pages.
Fascinated by the dress and its story, I decided to learn more.
When I began researching it, I discovered that this paper dress had a surprisingly rich history. During the 1960s, paper clothing became extremely popular, and companies began using paper dresses as advertisements. As part of this trend, the Waste Basket Boutique of Mars Manufacturing Company in Asheville, North Carolina created the Yellow Pages Paper Dress. The dresses were sent to people free of charge to promote the Yellow Pages phone book. Imagine receiving an advertisement you could actually wear! The dress gained even more attention after appearing in a 1967 Mademoiselle magazine article called “The Big Paper Craze.”
I’ve always been drawn to 1960s fashion, especially the clothing in Mad Men and singer Sienna Spiro’s 1960s-inspired style. That made it especially exciting to delve into the history of this dress and learn more about the fashion of that era.
My sister, who is an art lover, bought the dress and is having it framed. As soon as it’s ready, I’ll share how it looks in a future post! I love the idea of displaying fashion as a work of art rather than simply wearing it.
Besides teaching me more about 1960s fashion, the dress introduced me to paper art, a form of both art and fashion that I hadn’t known existed. I knew that paper could be used to make countless things, but I had never imagined it could be turned into clothing.
I walked into Santa Fe Vintage expecting simply to admire some beautiful old clothes. Instead, I discovered so much more: a 1960s fashion craze, a new form of art, an unexpected piece of advertising history, and, finally, what the Yellow Pages actually were!
