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Fashion — North Liberty
North Liberty never made clothing for the nation. It dressed itself, in shops on one street, and its fashion record is a retail record: a millinery store in the town's first trades census, shoe and clothing and beauty shops in its 1940 directory, and a long quiet since. This section prints that record at its size — a few dated snapshots, the counts the directories give, and the gaps named where the count was not pulled.
One millinery store: the 1880 trades census
1880
The town's dress trade enters the record in a single line of Chapman's 1880 census of its businesses: "one millinery store." The Chapman list (spine and businesses legs) counts the whole town in one breath — dry-goods…
1940: shoes, clothing and beauty on one street
1940 directory, as transcribed in the district nomination
The 1940 telephone directory's North Liberty section, transcribed whole in the banks leg, shows the dress trades at their fullest documented spread. On or just off Main Street that year: the Blosser Shoe Store; the Nifty-Thrifty…
War work, school dress, and the present state
Tests run November 2026; present state as of November 2026
The remaining tests of the checklist return negatives, and the present state is thin. War work in cloth: no wartime clothing contract, uniform work or textile war product for a North Liberty firm was found in the record reached …