This is from a few years ago in Tombstone when my friend Arlene and I decided to wear 1890s instead of the usual late 1870s. 🙂

When it comes to Tombstone, people tend to focus on 1881 with the gunfight at the OK Corral, the Earps, et al. In reality, the town continued as a mining town all the way up until the 1920s when the local economy began to shift away (Tombstone was the county seat for Cochise County all the way up to 1929). Moreover, people tend to think of Tombstone as a little dusty frontier town in the middle of nowhere…well, in our humble opinion, they’re wrong.

On the fashion front, we have this commentary on Parisian fashions from the September 27, 1893 edition of the Tombstone Epitaph:

Among the new felt hats are sailors of broad brim and low crown. Derby gloves of chamois have the biggest of red buttons and are bound in red. Paris is advocating flesh-colored suede gloves for evening wear in place of the pure white so long worn. A sleeve which is stamped with the approval of Felix is made of frills of three-inch lace from the shoulder to the waist.

It is now quite the fashion to make up the pretty semi-diaphanous muslins and French lawns over light foundations of batiste or sateen. Pretty clusters of horse chestnut blossoms appear upon ecru-colored round hats of “nutmeg” braid, trimmed with russet brown velvet ribbon. Spanish yellow velvet ribbon is a fashionable trimming for cream tinted nuns’s veilings, crepons, clairettes and similar sheer wool fabrics for young ladies’ wear.

Information on the most current was readily available even in the remotest of places, thanks to newspapers, magazines, and catalogs of retailers such as Sears & Roebuck and Tombstone was no exception. In future posts we hope to be able to bring more of this to light so stay tuned! 🙂