Jo's Art School Portfolio, 1940s Fashion Hardcover – March 20, 2022

When Josephine Zuccala Tringale was a girl, she accompanied her mother to fancy downtown Boston department stores, like R.H. Stearns, where they would purchase dresses only to return them days later after they had fashioned dress patterns so they could recreate them. In those days it was easy to blame the return on a forbidding husband who insisted; because the dress cost too much.When I met my husband's mother in 1971 she was the most stylish, impeccably dressed woman I had ever met. She was tall, had sleek hair, a sophisticated demeanor, a college degree, and she had been to Europe. She made her own clothes. Born in 1926 in Boston, Massachusetts, Jo will be 91 this year. In 1944, she enrolled in Massachusetts School of Art, to study fashion design. The following collection of drawings from Jo’s college years have been stored in the basement for decades and under less than ideal conditions. Some drawings have torn edges, smudges, and other markings. Without compromising the work, the drawings appear as they currently are. Long forgotten, they are a joy to behold and it is with a bit of wonder that they survived and were not lost or thrown away during many moves from house to house.The following pages give a time capsule of how Jo saw herself, women, and life at that time. It is an idealized life to be sure and a time worth recording for posterity in the world of fashion. Read more