Nissly's, as old-timers are well-aware, was a dry goods shop (later a hat shop om the 50s) on 16 N. Washington, the current site of Biggie's restaurant. This ad is from May 19, 1949. I find "It Pays to Make Your Own Garments" notable. That used to be the norm of course, but the fact that they feel the need to remind folks of that suggests to me that making one's own garments was going out of style at this time; I could be wrong. One thing I have noticed in old dry goods ads is that there are often a plethora of names for various fabrics that are completely foreign to me. At one time, all the nuances of fabrics were lexicalized--each variation was important enough to have its own word. Now, we just buy an off-the-rack shirt or what have you, without necessarily knowing what kind of fabric it is (and there are far fewer fabrics in general today in the general pool of clothes for sale). If I were given samples of organdy, dotted swiss, taffeta, Indian head suiting, White Indian head, and faille, I truly doubt I could label them all correctly. Just the taffeta...maybe. Why is this? It's a curious hemming-down of what used to be a luxuriously wide world of fabrics. Odd.
At any rate, you can see that one of the items available at Nissly's was "Holeproof Hosiery." Dusty D is not sure how one would make as evanescent a thing as hose "holeproof" but I'll take their word for it. At any rate, Nissly's had a hosiery customer loyalty program. They specially printed up coupons that you could save up for free hose. They're beautiful little artifacts, nicely printed. I got to handle them today, wondering which lady of Ypsilanti's past had them in her purse, long ago, as she walked up to Nissly's front door.
