Bella Steinmetz as a young woman

This was taken in Marosvasarhely. This was a wonderful, mustard-yellow dress, with smooth dots, sized like peas. Well, if you passed your hand over, you could feel it, so it wasn’t completely smooth. A costume: a simple dress and an short open jacket over it. They still make clothes like this. I bought the hat here. I didn’t wear such hats while I was girl, only when I was a married woman. I suppose I was 25-26 here. This is a large straw hat with all kinds of flowers on it. I ordered it from the milliner, there were ribbons, and one put single-colored ribbons, the other something else..., mine had flowers. The straw hat was fashionable at that time. And winter hats were made of different materials than the summer ones. It was interesting that we started to wear spring hats at the end or at the beginning of April. At the end of April one could see spring hats. Caps were put aside at the end of February. So it was still cold, but women wore straw hats, and let’s say a warm coat. This was the fashion those times.

The dress was made in Pest. There was a large clothes shop, where one could find ready-to-wear clothes, but could order as well. I ordered this costume there. I even tried it on, like at the dressmaker’s. The owner was from Vienna, he had a saloon in Vienna as well. One could find ready-to-wear clothes too, for all seasons. But one could order too, and I had a common, not a special stature, I wasn’t very fat or very slim, so I said I needed a dress number 36, and it suited me perfectly.

I came all along the centre at noon, well I was dressed up.. [nicely]. Every Sunday morning people sauntered in the centre. There was a large... I would call it a bodega, at the corner, I think it was called something like Berdo. One could find there the finest liqueurs. It had a Romanian owner, one could have there aperetifs in the morning, for example anchovy-rings. That’s a fish-meal. Its box was slim, and there were little slices, that was the fish, it was saulted, and an olive in the middle, in oil. It’s like sardine, and beer was very good after that. So if the weather was fine, they put tables out on the pavement, one sat down and asked something like this, beer was good for men, but women drank it too. It’s tasty. This was on Sunday morning, because in the after-noon there was sunshine. People went there in the after-noon too, there was a larhe hall inside, so there. It was something elegant, and the chap spoke Hungarian well.

On the other side was the Citi confectioner’s, it was a very elegant, it was the largest confectioner’s. One coud find there cakes. I went in there rarely.