Description

Kenneth Hayes Miller was drawn to the bustling neighborhood around Fourteenth Street and Union Square. In this scene, he conveyed some of the social fun and friendship associated with shopping, which had become a new leisure activity in the 1910s due to a growing number of shops that sold ready-to-wear, rather than custom-made, fashions. A new dress or hat could declare a working woman modern, especially in contrast to the modest dress of her mother, who may have been an immigrant from the Old World (Europe).