{"id":21195,"date":"2022-01-24T18:03:17","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T02:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=21195"},"modified":"2022-01-24T18:03:19","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T02:03:19","slug":"take-a-stroll-through-san-franciscos-style-and-fashion-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/01\/24\/take-a-stroll-through-san-franciscos-style-and-fashion-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a stroll through San Francisco’s style and fashion history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>Peter Hartlaub<\/a> March 8, 2015 Updated: May 15, 2019 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Joshua
1of9Joshua A. (“Emperor”) Norton, eccentric of San Francisco.Bettman Archive \/ Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Market<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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San Francisco\u2019s first great fashion legend was a delusional 19th century boardinghouse dweller who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a credit to the city\u2019s people that they loved Emperor Norton and celebrated his quirky style even beyond his 1880 passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHis dress bespoke his royalty,\u201d Norton\u2019s friend Almarin Paul wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle several years after the Emperor\u2019s passing. \u201cHe wore a low stovepipe hat, having at the top in front a low red, white and blue cockade. One especial feature he generally wore was a large-sized buttonhole bouquet supplied by his friends among the florists. His walk was slow and dignified. His friends were legion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any conversation about San Francisco\u2019s best-dressed citizens comes back to a sense of individuality. Looking back at 150 years of San Francisco fashion, there have been many highs and lows. Walk a block or two near one of San Francisco\u2019s new tech companies in 2015, and it\u2019s easy to assume the city has given up on fashion altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one steady quality has remained throughout: San Francisco has been eager to welcome the unexpected and embrace the rebel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as a San Francisco look anymore,\u201d longtime I. Magnin president Norman Wechsler said in 1976. \u201cIt used to be a tailored suit, hat and white gloves. Today\u2019s best dressers are sophisticated, individual, far beyond wearing a uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added local artist Wilfried Satty in the same article: \u201cThe best-dressed women I know are so in tune with their personalities, they only wear clothes they make themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both truths were apparent last month when the Our San Francisco team, with huge help from the pros in The Chronicle\u2019s Style section, tried to determine the city\u2019s best-dressed citizen with an online poll. An eclectic group of nominees was chosen, ranging from smartly dressed politico Nancy Pelosi to the daring and colorful modern flair of philanthropists Norman and Norah Stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked to choose a winner on the SFGate.com blog The Big Event, readers revolted against the old guard and society\u2019s fashion darlings \u2014 Vanessa Getty finished in 10th place out of 14 \u2014 and gave the crown to a comic-book store owner (snazzy suit-clad James Sime) and a fashion blogger (bright and confident Anh Sundstrom).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Franciscans like fashion, but they don\u2019t like style leaders who take themselves too seriously. When Gavin Newsom and his then-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle posed on the carpet of the Getty Mansion for Vanity Fair, the reviews were negative \u2014 not for their style choices but for their look-straight-at-the-camera humorless demeanor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlotte Shultz is the city\u2019s chief of protocol for a reason. She has a track record of more than half a century looking impeccable at formal events, but she wasn\u2019t too stuffy to put on a referee uniform for a recent Chronicle Style section photo shoot, or to don a Superman outfit to fly over the audience at \u201cBeach Blanket Babylon.\u201d Most important, she\u2019s almost always smiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first fashion to arrive in San Francisco literally came right off the boat, when Felix Verdier founded City of Paris Dry Goods Co. by sailing up to the shore in 1850 \u2014 and handing silk goods from France to customers in rowboats. He later settled at Stockton and Geary streets, claiming a choice corner of Union Square, which remains the style epicenter of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fashion as reported by The Chronicle in the early years was mostly viewed through the lens of Paris and New York. But a breakthrough came in the years after the 1906 earthquake, when the city was rebuilding, while fiercely trying to establish its own identity as a world-class destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The San Francisco Fashion Show, on March 2-4, 1911, was billed in The Chronicle as the city\u2019s fashion coming-out party. It was a progressive party that included every major retailer from Union Square to Market Street, including City of Paris, Hale Bros. Inc., Roos Bros. and the Emporium. Rain poured on the first day, but style-hungry residents braved the elements \u2014 and were rewarded with storefronts adorned with live models, flower sculptures and ornate fountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe windows of every one of the fifty-odd firms who joined in promoting the show were thronged from morning \u2019till late at night with crowds of interested femininity,\u201d The Chronicle reported. \u201cThe great question was being answered for them in the most pleasing of concrete forms. ‘What are we going to wear this spring?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A fast-growing upper class in the early part of the century and the city\u2019s love of nighttime spectacle gave a new spotlight to San Francisco\u2019s best-dressed. With the War Memorial Opera House opening in 1932 to host ballet, symphony and opera, a new class of fashion leaders emerged, exemplified by style-conscious society page regulars, including Dodie Rosekrans and Eleanor de Guigne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

De Guigne deserves special notice for lifetime achievement. She received her first positive reviews in a Nov. 24, 1937, Chronicle, wearing a chartreuse frock trimmed with fringe to a Burlingame County Club dinner dance. And she continued to impress until her death in 1983.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne Fleet Streeter here to cover the queen stated ‘in the evening no one woman in the world can hold a candle to the queen. She\u2019s dazzling,\u2019\u201d Chronicle society writer Pat Steger wrote, referencing a visit by Queen Elizabeth II. \u201cActually, San Franciscans know that there was a woman who could have done that easily \u2014 Eleanor de Guigne, who died early Monday morning. She will be missed for her wit, grace and unsurpassed style.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the fashion mavens of the midcentury leave us (Rosekrans died in 2010), there doesn\u2019t seem to be a huge supply of \u2014 or demand for \u2014 replacements. Meanwhile, the city seems to have adopted a \u201ccasual Friday\u201d look seven days per week. Danielle Steel was mocked for her 2011 comments to the Wall Street Journal about dimming San Francisco style, but there was truth buried in her hyperbole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all shorts and hiking boots and Tevas \u2014 it\u2019s as if everyone is dressed to go on a camping trip,\u201d Steel said. \u201cI don\u2019t think people really care how they look there; and I look like a mess when I\u2019m there too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the general population does indeed care a little less than previous years, an eccentric streak remains. The most common complaint in the comments of our best-dressed San Franciscan poll: \u201cI have a friend at work who dresses better than all of these people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not everyone tries in San Francisco, but those who do are spread across many demographics. And they are appreciated for their effort. (Among the mostly schlumpy horde at The Chronicle, several shining fashion lights stand out, with columnist Leah Garchik unchallenged as the newsroom\u2019s pinnacle of class.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco is not New York. San Francisco is not Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s a city that nurtured the style whims of Emperor Norton, and continues to celebrate his nonconformist spirit. It\u2019s a city whose identity is acceptance and reward for risk, in fashion and all things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle pop culture critic. E-mail: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com<\/a> Twitter: @PeterHartlaub<\/em>Chronicle Covers<\/a>Explore the stories behind classic front pages<\/a>More from the Archive<\/a>The Vault<\/a>Home of the San Francisco Chronicle’s archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.<\/a>Written ByPeter Hartlaub<\/a>Reach Peter on<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic and co-host of Total SF. The Bay Area native, a former Chronicle paperboy, has worked at The Chronicle since 2000. He covers Bay Area culture, hosts the Total SF podcast and writes the archive-based Our San Francisco local history column. Hartlaub and columnist Heather Knight co-created the Total SF project and event series, engaging with locals to explore and find new ways to celebrate San Francisco.VIEW COMMENTSTop of the News<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Peter Hartlaub March 8, 2015 Updated: May 15, 2019 (SFChronicle.com) San Francisco\u2019s first great fashion legend was a delusional 19th century boardinghouse dweller who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States. It\u2019s a credit to the city\u2019s people that they loved Emperor Norton and celebrated his quirky style even beyond… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21196,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21195\/revisions\/21196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}