From nuns’ habits to Playboy Bunny costumes, Bradenton exhibits working women’s uniforms

Ninety years ago or so, there was an occupation called “tuna nurse.”

Ken Erickson was calling contacts around the country trying to find uniforms for his latest exhibit at State College of Florida in Bradenton. A friend in California was telling him about a few she had. She mentioned in passing that she had a tuna nurse uniform.

Erickson had no idea what a tuna nurse was, but he knew he had to have that uniform.

His exhibit is titled “Art of the Costume: Working Women in Uniform.” It opens Friday and runs through late October in SCF’s Fine Art Gallery. The tuna nurse uniform is one of dozens of uniforms and costumes from various professions that will be on display.

It’s the latest in a series of SCF exhibits that look at clothing as art. Previous entries in the series have focused on costumes from Asolo Repertory Theatre, theatrical costumes made from recycled materials and wedding dresses.

The new exhibit includes more than 60 uniforms. The costumes on display include nuns’ habits, women’s uniforms from all branches of the American military, outfits worn by waitresses and housekeepers, a judge’s robe and a prison uniform, vintage flight attendant uniforms, and one that Erickson calls “the Holy Grail.”

The Playboy Bunny costume was the first uniform that was ever copyrighted, Erickson says. The outfits were custom-made for each woman. They each got a few, and when the employee left the Playboy Club she was supposed to turn all of hers in to be destroyed. But one Bradenton woman, who decades ago was a Playboy Bunny in Omaha, managed to abscond with hers.

Flight attendants’ uniforms went through many changes over the decades. They first were modeled after military uniforms to impart a sense of authority. But during World War II, they were made more form-fitting mostly to save on fabric, which was needed by the actual military. Form-fitting costumes may have led to the more suggestive flight attendant uniforms of the ’60s and ’70s. One airline, Erickson says, had its stewardesses wearing hot pants at one point. But then the women’s movement helped spawn discrimination lawsuits against airlines that had been hiring only pretty, thin young women to be flight attendants, and later uniforms took on a more formal and even old-fashioned look.

Erickson managed to find uniforms from women who had been in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy, but he had trouble finding a Marine uniform.

“I went to the VFW Hall, right there on Manatee Avenue,’he said. “That’s where you go if you need to find a veteran.”

He announced that he was looking for a female Marine veteran, and someone pointed out an elderly woman having lunch with her son. She had been a Marine in World War II.

Erickson asked if she still had her uniform. She said yes. He asked if he might borrow it for an art exhibit. She asked how long he would need it. Until late October, he said. Her son thought it was a great idea, but she was reluctant.

“I was planning on being buried in it,” the 92-year-old woman told Erickson.

But she relented. The uniform she wore when she helped transport Marines 70 years ago is now part of the exhibit.

(The woman is in no imminent danger of dying, Erickson says. She’s healthy and energetic. If she should pass away in the next couple of months, he’ll of course return her uniform.)

A lot of the individual costumes tell stories even if you don’t know their history. The judge’s robe shows some wear around the midsection, where the judge would be pressed up against her bench, and holes on the elbows from leaning on her desktop. The jail uniform is made of scratchy, uncomfortable material and has no zippers, buttons, belts or cords that an inmate could use to harm herself or someone else. Nurses’ uniforms from the past were made from synthetic materials that wouldn’t readily absorb blood. Nurses always used to wear hats, but now never do, because it turns out the hats were a healthy environment for germs, and not so healthy for nurses and patients.

The Playboy Bunny outfit may be the rarest, but other uniforms were even harder to secure. Erickson couldn’t find a nun or a convent willing to donate a habit, so he had to borrow a couple from the Asolo. (They’re the only two replicas in the exhibit; all other uniforms are authentic.) And a mermaid costume from Weeki Wachee was, as of last week, still swimming its way to SCF through bureaucratic red tape.

Some of the items on display stretch the definition of “uniform.” There’s a chimp mask that an area woman wore when she was an extra in the film “Planet of the Apes.” There’s one of the spectacular costumes worn by Sarasota Circus legend Dolly Jacobs. They’re all clothes that women wore while they were working, so they’re appropriate for the exhibit.

But back to that tuna nurse uniform. It’s a plain white dress, with some rust-colored stains that look to have resulted from decades of storage.

Tuna nurses weren’t actually nurses at all, Erickson explains. They were just plant workers in places that canned tuna. But without them, you might not have that can of Bumble Bee in your cabinet right now.

“In the 1920s, when the canned tuna industry was starting, people had the image that the plants were dirty and unsanitary,” Erickson said. “The industry was struggling. So they had the idea to dress all the women workers like nurses to make the plants look healthy. And it worked.”

Details: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Aug. 26-Oct. 26, State College of Florida, 5840 26th St. W., Bradendton. Free. 941-752-5225, www.scf.edu.

This story was originally published August 19, 2016 at 5:11 PM with the headline "From nuns’ habits to Playboy Bunny costumes, Bradenton exhibits working women’s uniforms."