"Famous Amos" Shirt
date: label: Date made
content: ca 1980
name: label: referenced
content: Amos, Wally
notes: label: Description
content: In 1975, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, Wally Amos opened his first chocolate chip cookie bakery. For years, this agent for performers such as Marvin Gaye, Bobby Goldsboro, and Dionne Warwicke had loved making cookies, using his Aunt Della's recipe. The little cookies with pecans and lots of chocolate bits were favorites among Amos's Hollywood clients and friends in the entertainment industry. They convinced him to open his own cookie business, giving birth to Famous Amos Cookies.
label: Description
content: Within a few years over two dozen Famous Amos cookie outlets had opened across the country. Retail cookie tins featured Wally Amos wearing a trademark straw hat and cotton shirt, clothing that he donated to the Smithsonian in 1980. The hat and shirt had become symbols of grass roots entrepreneurship and a mainstream African-American business.
label: Description
content: By the mid–1980s, Famous Amos Cookies had outgrown their founder. The business went through a series of new owners before its purchase by Keebler in 1998. Years earlier Wally Amos had turned to another interest, making personal appearances as a motivational speaker and writer, using the skills he had learned in the entertainment and baking industries to inspire audiences to follow their dreams, wherever they might lead.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Blacks
label: Subject
content: Food Culture
label: Subject
content: African American
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Occupations
label: See more items in
content: Advertising
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1980.0886.02
label: catalog number
content: 1980.0886.02
label: accession number
content: 1980.0886
objectType: label: Object Name
content: shirt
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: cotton (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 30 in x 24 in; 76.2 cm x 60.96 cm