Child's dress

'School' dress

This dress is part of an extraordinary collection of 21 children's dresses and home-made dress-ups worn in the 1950s and 60s by the O'Brien children – Shelley, Maureen, and David. The dresses represent popular girls' fashion from this period, and include a range of home-made garments, and garments made in New Zealand and USA.

The collection embodies the story of the three children growing up in Tinui, a rural community near Castlepoint in the Wairarapa, with all the rituals, triumphs, hardships, and joys of a rural life.

This dress, made by Grandma Winnie O'Hara, was a 'school' dress worn by both Maureen and Shelley. They would have worn it with a cardigan and red shoes or possibly red sandals. Winnie O'Hara made a town dress and a school dress for each girl every year. She was a skilled home-sewer with a reputation for perfection, who did all her sewing on a treadle sewing machine. Some of the dresses were designated school or everyday wear but many were saved for best, or for a trip to town which occurred three or four times a year.