Soap Opera

These twins may dress alike, but apparently they have very different tastes in textiles. One favors 'regular' fabrics, while the other prefers synthetics. The latter was an emerging class of material in 1955; with names straight out of the chemistry lab—Orlon, Dacron, and the like—they were presented as modern fabric miracles, resistant to wrinkling, staining, and fading. It's curious to see that these test-tube textiles were relegated to the delicate cycle in the washer. I suspect that then, as now, the detergent manufacturers had a say in this decision.