We're getting a #FashionFriday visit today from Miss America 1954, Evelyn Ay, modeling a custom design by Ialongo in Herbert Meyers Everglaze cotton twill.
This 1954 image is part of a series of fashion photographs commissioned by the Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company. In the mid-1930s, the textile manufacturer had begun producing a line of rayon goods, marketed under the trade name of Ban-Lon, and a cotton finishing process, marketed as Everglaze.
Beginning in the mid-1940s, Bancroft entered into a cooperative agreement with the Miss America Pageant in which the company became the primary sponsor of the event, providing financing for the pageant itself and scholarship funds for pageant winners. In return, pageant contestants and winners became part of Bancroft's marketing strategy and provided modeling services for their products. This cooperative agreement was maintained in one form or another up until around the year 1967.
The photograph is part of Hagley Library's Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company, Miss America collection (Accession 1972.430) collection. More images from this collection can be found online in our Digital Archive by clicking here.