Ballroom dancer. Silent film star. Fashion designer. Animal rights advocate. Irene Castle wore many hats – and donned countless dazzling costumes – as a celebrity during the early twentieth century.

Irene Castle was known for playing strong and stylish female leads such as the title character in the serial “Patria,” a swashbuckling, gun-toting munitions factory heiress who helps thwart a foreign invasion. Off-screen, Castle was also a pioneering entrepreneur who designed many of her own costumes and skillfully cultivated her image to become a household brand […]

“She was a very astute businesswoman,” Green said. “She knew the value of her name as a brand and so she branded all of her fashion innovations.” In 1917, Castle collaborated with Corticelli Silk Mills to develop “Patria”-themed fabrics, and started her own clothing line, Irene Castle Corticelli Fashions, in 1923. She also applied her moniker to everything from her “Castle Bob” haircut in 1913 that sparked a trend in the ’20s to the “Castle Band” of jewelry around her forehead that later resurfaced in hippie fashions of the ’60s, according to Green. / quoted from Cornell news