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Fashion · Dress, Cloth, and the Clothing Trades
Mishawaka's fashion record is a footwear record before it is anything else. The town's garment industry was boots — knitted wool, felted wool, then rubber — and the federal census, which gave South Bend's clothing trades a page of detail, gave Mishawaka one sentence and a total it refused to break down. What the record does carry whole is the selling and the wearing: two city directories, thirty-five years apart, name the clothiers, the dressmakers, the milliners, and the dry-goods houses street by street, and two of the clothiers can be followed at the same addresses across both volumes. The schools' dress record is unusually well kept, because the town's high-school yearbook printed its own dress code's abolition the year it happened — a December morning in 1970 when more than a hundred girls wore slacks to school, and the code was gone by January. This section prints the record at the size the record reaches: one documented fashion show, one census sentence, no shirt or overall factory where the brief expected one, and no designer of national standing on this ground.
The census that named the trade in one sentence: manufactures, 1909
Thirteenth Census, Vol. IX · the Indiana chapter, read first-hand
The structural fact. The 1909 Census of Manufactures printed industry-by-industry detail only for cities of 50,000 or more. Mishawaka — 11,886 people in 1910, up from 5,560 in 1900, one of five Indiana cities that crossed 10,000…
Boots of three cloths: the felt works, the knit boot, and the missing shirt factory
1880–1909 · the garment manufacture at documented size
The second house. Before the knit boot, there was felt. Dempster Beatty — born in Sandusky City, Ohio, in 1828, and carried in the 1893 county memoirs as "the first man to organize a company for the manufacture of felt boots in…
War work in cloth: raincoats, diving suits, aviator boots
1941–1945 · at anchor — the rationing record stands in the Wars section
What the works made to wear. The documented wartime production of the Ball Band works, as Peter De Kever's city history itemizes it and this history's Ball Band file carries it, ran beyond the fuel cells the plant is remembered…
The custom trades at the directory's count, 1921
Polk's Mishawaka City Directory 1921 · sampled year, never extrapolated
The book. The 1921 Polk directory for Mishawaka — its own volume, bound inside the South Bend book — closes with a classified list of the city's trades. Read for dress, it counts the clothing business whole, and its geography is…
The clothiers and their courses, 1921–1956
Two directories, thirty-five years apart · the same street
The street's own clothier. The 1921 directory gives one Mishawaka clothing house a display entry, and it is the one named for the town: "Mishawaka Clothiers, Morris Boorda Propr, Louis A. Kekko Mgr, Men's, Young Mens and Boys'…
The trades at mid-century, 1956
Polk's South Bend–Mishawaka Directory 1956 · the second sample
The selling, whole. The 1956 classified sorts the clothing trade by wearer. Men's clothing, five houses: Brown's Store for Men & Boys, 110 Lincoln Way W.; Maurice M. Nevel, 107 N. Main; Harry Rosen, 201 E. Mishawaka Ave.; Stein's…
Dress on show: the Julianna Club bridal fashion show, 1967
April 1967 · from PARADE, the Wheelabrator Corporation's employee magazine
The one show of record. In the issue of May–June 1967 (Vol. 26, No. 3), the magazine reported the annual card party of the Julianna Club, the company's women's club, held that April, and named its highlight: a bridal fashion…
The school dress record: a code abolished, a code kept, two uniforms
1970–2026 · from the schools' own record
Mishawaka High School: the December of the slacks. The fullest dress document in this section is a yearbook. The Miskodeed of 1971, Mishawaka High School's own annual, records under the headline "Dr. Koger abolish MHS dress code"…
The Red Ball as worn
1891–today · at anchor — the device's design record stands in the Arts section
The mark. The Red Ball device's design and registration record stands in this history's Arts section; what belongs here is the mark as a thing worn. The knit boot carried a black band at its top — the band of the Ball-Band name …
The present state
Verified November 2026 · at closing size
Making. No clothing or footwear manufacture stands documented operating in Mishawaka today. The works that the census of 1909 called the city's most important manufacture closed in 1997, and its ground is the riverfront park and…