Rosie the Riveter’s Bandana

Post #14 - Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story by Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Rosie the Riveter, as portrayed in Howard Miller’s iconic poster, is shown wearing a red and white polka-dot bandana. And yes, women working in factories during World War II did wear bandanas to keep their hair out of the machines and equipment that they used. 

After our collective memoir Rosie’s Daughters was published, Kendra and I wanted red bandanas with white polka dots. We thought they’d be lots of fun to wear and a wonderful way to share Rosie the Riveter’s legacy of strength, courage, and empowerment that she passed on to her daughters. 

Then we started our search. We couldn’t find any bandana that was even close. We couldn’t even find a good fabric to make them from. Rosie’s bandana clearly was a random pattern while most fabric shows a regular set of rows and columns for the white dots. Hum. What to do? 

We finally decided to design our own Rosie bandana. As soon as we began to show it, everyone wanted one. We created a Limited Edition I Rosie the Riveter bandana, which is now sold out. One of the last ones was purchased by photographer Gina Addison. In a recent email, she wrote, “The bandana I purchased on you website was used for a photoshoot to re-create the Rosie the Riveter image for the May ‘09 issue of Military Spouse Magazine” Gina sent us a copy of the cover and gave us permission to share it with you. Hope you enjoy seeing it as much as we did. 

By the way, we have just introduced our Rosie the Riveter bandana, Limited Edition II. Same great polka dots, but this time we’ve embedded a profile of Rosie along with the inspirational words: We Can Do It! Pass It On! If you are interested, visit our STORE for more information.