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My favorite exhibit at the Museum of American History is the first ladies' dresses, in the natural girly way of things. This time I also took the time to read the rest of the exhibit about the first ladies, and it was fascinating. We also saw a marvelous exhibit on the history of the women's movement. These are not my pictures of the dresses, since they are fragile things best not exposed to flashbulbs. I did buy a charming postcard, but these samples I found online, saving me some scanning. Here are (L to R) Martha Washington's 1780s handpainted gown, the all-American inaugural gown of Caroline Scott Harrison (1889), Mamie Eisenhower's 1953 inaugural gown with 2,000 rhinestones, and, below, the originally lavender inaugural gown of Lucretia Randolph Garfield (1881), Jacqueline Kennedy's self-designed 1961 inaugural gown, and Eleanor Roosevelt's velvet day dress in "Eleanor blue" (worn for FDR's first inauguration in 1933).
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