2025.1.376

The dress was purchased at the former Woolworth's "Ten Cent" department store on Calle 23 in Havana — the Vedado branch (23 y 10) — after it had become state property. Woolworth's Ten Cent stores were nationalized in 1960 and renamed "Variedades," with a much reduced stock. The owner's daughter specifies it was sold off the ration ("non-rationed" / por la libre), situating it in the state retail economy of the 1970s–1980s. The chain-and-crest print and shirtwaist cut place it stylistically in the 1970s. The provenance notes that the same dress was owned by multiple women across the island — Gertrudis and her daughter purchased each one in Havana, and Mirta Martínez in Pinar del Río — a telling indicator of standardized, mass-distributed state retail clothing (limited variety meant "everyone had the same dress"). In the 1990s, the Período Especial, Gertrudis's granddaughter refashioned her mother's example into a mini tank dress.

The Cabrera Arús family collection

Gertrudis Caraballo Gálvez collecition