Maddy Bill, a resident of Ambler, Pennsylvania, is 27 years old. She recorded a video for her TikTok account to show off the bag that her maternal grandmother Marie D’Alessandro Donato, 91, had given her.
The contents of the suitcase are quite intriguing. It includes every dress her grandma donned while visiting New York in 1952 on her honeymoon. According to the video, this is the first time someone else has opened the luggage in seventy years!
In order to preserve it for her children and grandkids, her grandmother, who had traveled on her honeymoon with her late husband Anthony James Donato, washed every item of clothing she had on. Well, it succeeded! Thousands of people are still appreciating her contributions on the internet 70 years later.
“I’ve always known about this suitcase ever since I was a little girl. My mom discovered it when she was a little older and she told me about it and she selflessly saved it for me and my sister for when we were of age,” said in an interview.
“I opened it up and I was just like, ‘This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ because it really just brought back everything to me, especially memories — my grandfather passed about 21 years ago — so just those memories of my grandparents in that time in their life, it’s just really cool,” she added.
Her grandparents, the Donatos, were married in 1952 and spent their honeymoon in New York City that May, visiting places in Manhattan like The New Yorker Hotel.
“She was like, ‘I did not care because I was with my honey’ — that’s what she called my pop pop,” Bill said. “And she had just a wonderful time just being with him and really just taking it all in — that there was this time in their life where they could start a family and all these things she’d always dreamed of,” she ended.
Her grandparents, the Donatos, were married in 1952 and spent their honeymoon in New York City that May, visiting places in Manhattan like The New Yorker Hotel.
She received hundreds of responses after posting a video with just the luggage, encouraging her to try on the gowns, so she did. She tried on her grandmother’s gowns and her jewelry.
She fit everything well. She also remarked on how well-preserved the clothing was.
“It’s pretty cool how they’ve been so intact to this day, like it was 70 years ago [and] there’s elastic on some of the pieces and [they’re] still springy,” Madeline said.
She modeled her first item for her followers, a piece that has intrigued her ever since she was a young girl. Short sleeves and a waist-cinching black dress. She reveals that while she was staying at the New Yorker hotel, she had always noticed a picture of her grandma wearing the garment, and it had always captivated her attention.
She additionally tried on an elegant gray jacket, skirt, and sleeveless top that she claimed her grandma had worn on the train to the major city. She has excellent fashion sense, no doubt!
She is excited to introduce the world to a facet of her grandmother and demonstrate the kind of woman she is.
Madeline Bill claims to have told her grandma about how well-known she has become and how the entire world admires her sense of style.
“I definitely want to save it for someone. Maybe my future kid or someone special in my life that’s younger than me, because I mean, I don’t want it to just to be a current piece that is being worn, I want it to be savored for someone in my future too, like my grandmother did for me,” she said.
What a wonderful tale that highlights the unique relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter!
Share this tale to demonstrate to everyone how fashionable we were in the 1950s!
