Pittsburgh PA
1926
Privuznak Family Photos


cousin Mary Antolik

A sun umbrella is a small, lightweight umbrella used to protect people from the sun's direct rays. They are also known as parasols, which is Spanish for "sun".

https://vintagedancer.com/1920s/1920s-parasols-beach-umbrella-fashion-history/

All that fun in the sun from the popularity of swimming and beach vacations made the suntan fashionable in the 1920s. CoCo Chanel claims she made it trendy for the wealthy to have a tan instead of it being a sign of poverty. Men and women in the 1920s played in the sun with little regard to sun damage. They wore colored glasses to shade their eyes and a sun hat if their hair was unsightly after a swim.

The parasol was a frequent item taken to the beach — or more likely, picked up from a vendor on the beach in the early 1920s. They were fun, fashionable, and trendy. Holding one and posing for the camera was something every young woman had to do. They had little to do with sun protection.


Pittsburgh is a city in western Pennsylvania at the junction of 3 rivers. Its Gilded Age sites, including the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, speak to its history as an early-20th-century industrial capital.