I just found this picture on my phone, which I snapped last September, as I was driving home from Maine. 
It had been a sunny day, but the skies went black, and I was suddenly driving through a torrential rain, the wipers going full-blast and still not giving me much visibility. It was the sort of rain that made drivers pull over to the side of the road. And it got me to thinking (not for the first time) about how different it must have been to travel a hundred years ago, in open automobiles, and before that, carriages and carts.
The automobile changed fashion quickly and dramatically. The first models were open to the air, so passengers wore goggles and “dusters,” and women often wore big, sweeping, net veils over their hats and faces. After all, the first roadsters reached perilous speeds of up to twenty miles an hour.
As motoring grew more popular, women cast aside their huge, floppy hats and cut their hair short. Close-fitting cloches didn’t fly off as easily. A few more early pictures:
