What to Pack —

According to Emily & Me

In April 1915, Emily Post (yes, that Emily Post) set out from New York City with two companions in her stylish, open-top car, described only as “foreign” (i.e., not a Ford, as advised) to traverse the country on the newly built Lincoln Highway. In her 1916 book By Motor to the Golden Gate, notes that, on the subject of clothes, “We had far too many! They were a perfect nuisance!”

While admitting that “Offering advice on clothes for a motor trip is much like offering advice on what to wear walking up the street, she suggests “a heavy coat, a thin coat or sweater, a duster, and a rug or two … Blue Books, a camera, food paraphernalia, an extra hat … goggles and veils … ” (251).

About those veils. Post’s advice on sun protection is singular and I daresay not entirely backed by science, but bears repeating here if just for entertainment:

“A real suggestion to the woman who minds getting sunburnt, is an orange-colored1 chiffon2 veil. It must be a vivid orange that has a good deal of red in it. Even with the blazing sun of New Mexico and California shining straight in your face, a single thickness of orange-colored chiffon will keep you from burning at all. If you can’t see through chiffon, but mind freckling or burning, to say nothing of blistering, sew an orange-colored veil across the lower rims of your goggles and wear orange-colored glasses. Cut a square out of the top so as to leave no sun space on your temples, and put a few gathers over the nose to allow it to fit your face. Fasten sides over hat like any veil. The Southwestern sun will burn your arms through sleeves of heavy crepe de chine, but the thinnest material of orange—red is next best—protects your skin in the same way that the ruby glass of a lantern in a photographer’s developing room protects a sensitive plate” (255).

1. According to skincancer.org, the website for The Skin Cancer Foundation, “Dark or bright colors keep UV rays from reaching your skin by absorbing them rather than allowing them to penetrate.”

2. Skincancer.org advises, “Densely woven cloth, like denim, canvas, wool or synthetic fibers, are more protective than sheer, thin or loosely woven cloth. Check a fabric’s sun safety by holding it up to the light. If you can see through, UV radiation can easily penetrate the fabric and reach your skin.”

In 1915, Emily Post was 43 and a successful magazine writer, long divorced from the wealthy banker Edwin M. Post, with whom she had two sons. She proposed to her editor that she’d “write the story of our experience, if we had any,” though insisted she meant the trip to be “simply for pleasure, which to us meant a certain degree of comfort, and not to advertise the endurance of a special make of car or tires” (2).

Post’s mother was the daughter of a coal baron, and her father was an architect for the wealthy, but this background had not produced a mindless cheerleader for the American way. “Nor had we any intention of trying to prove that motoring in America was delightful if we should find it was not,” she writes. “As for breaking speed record—that was the last thing we wanted to attempt!” (2).