THE CHAPEL VEIL IN OLD GUAM

I have been going through hundreds of old Guam photos and started to notice how women wore different styles of chapel veils down through the years.

In this photo above, taken in the 1920s, the older women were still wearing black, or at least dark colored, shawls. These women grew up in Spanish times when there were no stores selling lace veils. Perhaps the women from the few affluent families had lace veils imported from Manila and elsewhere brought to them by traveling spouses, relatives or friends.

This photo from the 1960s shows older women again, but this time wearing lace veils. Much cooler than the shawls of older times, yet these women generally preferred the long veils.

This photo from the 1950s shows a kind of veil women on Guam were famous for wearing - the ordinary hanky!  There is a definite trend toward smaller veils (for coolness?) by this time among the younger women. If no lace veil were available, they simply used a clean hanky usually kept just for church use.