A fashionable society (Bucharest in the 1940s)

I participated today in a vintage photo contest posted on one of my favourite style blogs – The Sartorialist. It all started when Scott found some beautiful old pictures of the same family in different places of a flea market a few months ago. He was very intrigued and started fantasising about the history of that family.

The photo I sent to this contest was something I found in my own family archive – a photo of my grandmother, Alexandra, while she was a student at the Pharmacy University in Bucharest at the beginning of the 1940s. She must be about 22 years old in this picture. My grandmother is the second woman on the right, the only one wearing a pleated skirt. I was really impressed by her and her friends’ sense of style – the women are very elegant and sleek, they all wear high heels and purses, and the men wear hats and ties. When I think that they are all about the same age as I am and that they are also students, I can’t even believe it! They look so much different than what students are alike now…

During that time it was a great honour to study at a University and not many people could manage to work hard and get the degree. That’s why they were so serious also about the way they were dressed when they went to the University. My grandmother, the daughter of the chief of the train station in Targu Jiu, graduated with a perfect 10.

... and this is the tramway card she had when she was a student.

And I think you've had enough of old pictures :)