American Style and Spirit

American Style and Spirit: Fashions and Lives of the Roddis Family, 1850–1995 presents “more than 200 perfectly preserved garments and accessories, along with other materials, from a century and half of collecting. The story of the family that saved them and photographs of the items, along with notes on fashion salons and a helpful glossary, make this book something special” (St. Louis Post Dispatch).

Brought to life for the first time outside the attic in which they were stored for generations, here are more than 300 garments and accessories, beautifully preserved and complemented by archival objects, family photographs, and letters, 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.

“An extraordinary trove of clothing unearthed from the attic of a chic but thrifty lumber scion named Augusta Roddis . . . Jane Bradbury wrote the substantive and mesmerizing book.” —New York Times