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Short Stuff: The Paper Dress Fad · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck. And this is short stuff stuff stuff about
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: a really amazing fad that I hadn't heard of until
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: fairly recently. Chuck, I somehow knew about this, and I'm
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: not sure how, Huh do you think your mom might
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: have worn a paper dress and told you about it
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: or something. I don't think so, but we're talking about
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: paper dresses. In the mid nineteen sixties, Uh, the Scott
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Paper Company had a new product to promote called Dura weave.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: It's basically mostly paper. And then about Rayon and it
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: was sort of just like a little more durable napkin
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: that they were super stoked about. Plastic was all the rage.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that has to do with rayon.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Rayon's a kind of plastic. I believe it's like a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: plastic fiber. Okay, great, Plastic was all the rage, like
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I said, And they said, all right, here's what we're
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: gonna do to try and market this thing. We're gonna
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  Speaker 1: show how durable it is by making clothing, making some
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: dresses out of paper. And it was literally just a
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: marketing thing, and you you like sent out like clip
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: clip something off and mail it in and then like
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: a dollar in a quarter to get your paper dress
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: mail back. And then a few weeks later you might
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: have like a little red bandana print paper dress to
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  Speaker 1: wear around. And it went off like gangbusters. It just
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: blew up. Like they had two dresses to choose from.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Scott called the dresses paper papers, and they both wear
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  Speaker 1: the same cut there like a frame like mod mini
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  Speaker 1: dress um. And like you said, one was red bandana,
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  Speaker 1: the other's black and white op art and um. For
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: some reason, they just happened to touch a nerve and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: like you said, it took off like Gangbusters, so much
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: so that Scott suddenly pivoted and started advertising in magazine
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: it's like mad Moiselle um for their paper dresses and
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  Speaker 1: got just a huge response from it. I think they
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: sold half a million of them in the less than
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the year that they were producing these things. Yeah, and
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you may think, I'm in what a what a funny
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: boon for the Scott Paper company making all this money
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: on these dresses. It was a marketing thing, so they
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: never they sold them for so cheap. They weren't really
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: even making any money. They're kind of covering their costs
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: because it was only meant to be an advertisement anyway,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: So they basically couldn't say, all right, well, now we're
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: going to charge eight bucks a pop forums oh you
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: like those, hukay. But other companies did catch on and
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: think they could make more than a dollar apiece. Yeah.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: So when I said Scott touched something off, um, which
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: is a really weird way to put it now that
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I say it out loud, Um, that's kind of an understatement.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: They somehow managed to say, Um, let's try this marketing thing.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: It'll be cute, it'll be fun or whatever, but really,
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  Speaker 1: what we're doing showing off how durable or dura weave
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: paper line is, Like, it's so durable you can wear
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: it as a dress. But they managed to stumble backwards
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  Speaker 1: into this like the exactly where the fashion industry was
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: at that moment, and then this burgeoning like um kind
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of ethos or zeitgeist of popular culture just wanting everything
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: plastic and disposable and and just handy. Um. And they
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: put them together accidentally in these paper dresses. And I
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: think that's from everything I saw, that's why historians think
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: it took off and became a fad like it did.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: That's right, and they were I think there was about
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: three and a half a million dollars worth of these
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  Speaker 1: paper garments. And we'll get to after the break, all
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the different kinds they had. Um at the close of
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  Speaker 1: n that's a lot of money in nineteen I'm sorry,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. It's a lot of money in sixty six.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And I think, um, the Waste bast Kit Boutique, which
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: is one of the paper design houses, were making a
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand of these a week at one point. Yeah, nut, nuts,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: it is good nuts. We're going to take a good
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: break and be right get back mm hmm and shock. Okay, silly,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: so we're back. We're back. Um, you were talking about
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Waste Basket Boutique making a hundred thousand dresses a week.
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  Speaker 1: One of the great things about these things, these paper
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  Speaker 1: dresses that were sudden fat in the mid sixties, UM,
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  Speaker 1: is that they were easy to produce, which is how
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  Speaker 1: you could create like a new business to make them
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  Speaker 1: and make a hundred thousand a week. But that also
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: meant that you could come up with all sorts of
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  Speaker 1: different desig lines for these things. They were really easy
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: to print on because they were paper and um it
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: really tied in nicely. I think another reason why they
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: took off as a fat um because they were They
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  Speaker 1: came along at a time when commercialism was big in art,
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  Speaker 1: when pop art was becoming a thing, when op art
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  Speaker 1: was really established. Like those big, bold, chunky, um colorful,
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  Speaker 1: weird prints. UM, all of these things were just ready
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  Speaker 1: made to be put on to print it onto a
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: paper dress. That's right. If you think of Andy Warhol,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: then you're on the right track. Because they had uh
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Campbell soup dresses. They had jolly green giant can vegetable dresses.
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  Speaker 1: I mean just literally look up image search paper dresses
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and you'll see candy bars, You'll see the
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  Speaker 1: yellow pages, um, like you name it. Kind of any
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: um graphic print that you could print on a poster
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  Speaker 1: they were putting on dresses. Yeah. There was one big, big,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: giant Bob Dylan face, which is pretty cool. Richard Nixon
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: had one, which is like the opposite of what the
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  Speaker 1: paper dresses were all about. Bobby Kennedy had one which
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: was much more in line with it. UM. The that
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  Speaker 1: that green giant one I thought was pretty cute. It
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  Speaker 1: was it was um. The tunic that the jolly green
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  Speaker 1: Giant wore that leafy tunic. That's what the that's what
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  Speaker 1: the dress looked like. Um, what else was there, Chuck?
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  Speaker 1: I could see these coming back now, Uh yeah, right.
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  Speaker 1: If they were recyclable, biodegradable, all that stuff, I could
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  Speaker 1: totally see it. But that was one of the things,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: like nobody cared about that stuff in in nineteen sixty six.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It was you can put these things on, you can
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  Speaker 1: buy them for cheap, you can wear him a few
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: times and you throw them away. And they were like
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: really um like it was. It was such a big
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: fad that people were starting to rethink how we like
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: do things like travel. Like apparently hotel chains we're having
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: meetings about how they were going to start selling entire
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: lines of paper clothing so that when you went to
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  Speaker 1: a hotel or like a resort or something for like
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  Speaker 1: a week, you didn't pack a suitcase. You just showed up,
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  Speaker 1: bought whatever clothes you needed out of their gift shop
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  Speaker 1: and that's what you wore, and you threw it away
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  Speaker 1: and then you put the clothes that you arrived and
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: back on to go home. And that was it. Easy peasy,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: beautiful covered girl. Yeah, it's kind of funny to look
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: like every great idea in history has so many bad
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: ideas attached to it. I feel like like people won't
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: want to wear their own clothes that they shopped for
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and like just for the benefit of leaving their suitcase
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: at home. Uh, that one didn't take off. They did
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  Speaker 1: make other clothes that they made men's suits. Uh you can.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: There are kind of hard to find images of these,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: but I finally dug one up. Um it looks like
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: a wrinkled napkin. Basically, Yeah, this dirt we've stuff. You
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: almost certainly experienced it anytime they put a bib on
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you at the dentist for like a cleaning that is
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: basic derwee if not actual dirahweave, it's it's like a
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: competitor todrahweeve. That's that's what these dresses were made out of. Yeah,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: get they get very wrinkly. But again, in terms of
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: these young women who were sort of out on the
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  Speaker 1: town and these things, there were a bunch of benefits.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: They could they always had something new that they could
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  Speaker 1: put on, which was a big deal. They could, uh,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: they could tell mom to go stick that selling machine
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  Speaker 1: where the sun don't shine. Because I've got tape in
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  Speaker 1: a pair of scissors. I can alter this thing however
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  Speaker 1: I want. I can. I can be a little risque
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  Speaker 1: and cut the cut the belly out of one of them,
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  Speaker 1: or cut a really low back if I want to. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: It was sort of, you know, the time of the
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  Speaker 1: sexual revolution. So all of these different things came together
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  Speaker 1: to make these super popular. Yes, And like any good fad,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: it ran its course and just went away almost as
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: fast as it came on and let quickly people saying
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: what just happened? Right, But this was one of those
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  Speaker 1: fads where a lot of people have some ideas about
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: why it went away so quickly. There's some pretty good theories. Um.
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  Speaker 1: One of the first ones is that they were almost
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: exclusively um super mod mini dresses, and those were no
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  Speaker 1: longer in by the end of the sixties. They were
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  Speaker 1: super in in nineteen sixty six, but they were not
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  Speaker 1: so in. It's a sixty eight or sixty nine, right,
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  Speaker 1: that was a big one. Yeah, there's not a lot
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  Speaker 1: you can do style wise, but that is one shape
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  Speaker 1: that you could definitely make a paper dress out of
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  Speaker 1: and it and it just happened to be popular for
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: a few years. There was also there's a guy named
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Walford who I saw interviewed in I believe, Oh
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I don't remember. But also, by the way, shout out
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to History's Dumpster Textiles and context Groovy History and Timeline
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: for giving me these, uh, these ideas. Um. But in
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: one of those, um, Jonathan Walford, who's a curator of
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the Fashion History Museum in Ontario, he's like, probably the
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  Speaker 1: biggest reason why they went away is because they were
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: not particularly comfortable to wear. No, they don't look super comfortable. Um,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and like I said, they get really really wrinkly, So
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: it's it's sort of a one night affair, I would imagine. Um,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the other kind of downside, there's always been terrible men
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and men got into a habit at parties of like, oops,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: I spilled my drink all over your dress. That's now
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  Speaker 1: like a dissolving in front of my eyes. Sorry a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: boomer would do that. Yeah, no way. So that was
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: another one too. But um, one of the ones that
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: you like in almost any article you'll ever find about
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: paper dresses that explain why they went away is that
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: people became much more environmentally conscious a little bit that's
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: entirely possible that that was a big driver of it.
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  Speaker 1: You know, the first Earth Day was in nineteen seventy,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: so that was around the time these things faded out.
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  Speaker 1: So it probably would have seemed pretty ghost to wear,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: like a disposable, plastic paper dress that you were going
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: to throw away after a couple of wars. But I
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: saw some articles somewhere that said, that may be true,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: but the stuff that we replaced it with is not
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: much better, because it's almost as disposable. It's much more
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: durable than a paper dress. But we throw our clothes
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: away way more than we probably should. And I thought
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that was a pretty good ending for this short stuff,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: don't you think. Yeah, And when you know, when we
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: were talking about if they could do this today to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: make them out of recycling materials and recyclable, they would
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  Speaker 1: also have to do a comparison that said, by the way,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the thing you're wearing had this sort of impact on
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: the environment. By the way, well look for chuck and
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: iron matching Canadian tuxedos made out of paper in the
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: near future someday. Don't spill your drink on me, uh,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And that's it everybody, of course, for short Stuff, which
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: means short Stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is
• 11:47
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• 11:53
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