Vintage packaging: 1950s ladies and their hairnets

Hairnets were not just worn by the Lunch Ladies immortalized in Saturday Night Live skits. Many women of the 1940s and 1950s went to the beauty shop once a week to have their hair "done," then slept in hairnets every night to keep their "do" in place until the next visit. My grandmother did this, and my 81-year-old mother still does!


I just love packaging that features vintage drawings of women... the hair styles, the makeup, the clothing -- fascinating!  The Barinet and Jac-o-net packaging uses glamorous women, and the Set Snug and Forma brands would seem to appeal to the girl-next-door type.  Want to bet that the Barinet and Jac-o-net brands were more expensive?

Packaging has changed a lot over the years.  Looks like there was a single package design for the brand, with the name of the color added in the upper left corner.  (No matter that the Forma dark brown hairnet package showed a blond, and the grey Set Snug package shows a brunette and a redhead.)  Only the woman on the Jac-o-net package image has the same color hair as the hairnet in the package! A modern-day hair color line might feature 20+ color choices, each with its own matching packaging -- and none of them would be aught dead using plain vanilla names such as "light brown" or "grey."


How do you use ephemera like this in your artwork? I like the trend that has  straight-laced looking apron-clad moms making outrageous statements, such as "After a couple of Vodka Tonics, I just love to vacuum!"  Those always make me laugh. 


Below is a spread from my (under construction) "Remains of the Day" journal, a journal made with scraps and ephemera. I sewed a Barinet hairnet package into my ROD book as a pocket for journaling.  

How are you using ephemera in your art projects?  I'd love to hear from you in the Comments.  


Enjoy!