The DuPont employees in this photograph were part of the company's Lycra production and testing staff. This ca. 1962 photograph shows Jean Craun (foreground) and Florence Clark as testing Lycra fiber as it came off the production line at the company's Waynesboro plant in Virginia.
Photographed for inclusion in the company's magazine, Better Living (where it appeared in this March/April 1962 issue), this image is now part of Hagley Library's DuPont Company Product Information Collection (Accession 1972.371).
In 1952, the DuPont Company organized a Product Information section within the Public Relations Department. Its main purpose was to create news releases accompanied by photographs that would be run editorially by trade journals and newspapers to create inexpensive publicity and indirect advertising.
To be used, the news releases had to include interesting information about a DuPont product, its development, manufacture, or applications. They could not be direct commercial promotions of a product itself as that would be the work of the Advertising Department. Product Information photographs and their news releases told the reader what DuPont did, why it was important, and sometimes, how it was done.
This collection has not been digitized in its entirety, but a selection of materials from it, mostly photographs taken from the 1930s through the 1950s, are available to view in our Digital Archive. Click here to take a look!