A Few of Loretta's Favorite Nerdy History Books

Globe-Wernicke, ad in American Homes & Gardens c 1905

Loretta reports:

Readers often ask which books we recommend on this, that, or the other subject. For this holiday season, it seemed like a good idea to mention some favorites. They might become gifts for the nerdy history person in your life or for yourself. Many are still in print and easily available. Some are trickier to find. While I could recommend hundreds, I winnowed it down to the following, which I often turn to for information and inspiration.

Adams, Samuel & Sarah. The Complete Servant (1825). You can read this online, or can buy your own copy. Details about not only the servant hierarchy, servants’ duties, but also the economics of maintaining household staff.

Black, A&C (publishers) Titles and Forms of Address: A Guide to Correct Use. This or Debrett’s Correct Form will help readers understand titles and forms of address they encounter in books as well as prevent writers’ committing social atrocities in their stories.

Bradfield, Nancy. Costume in Detail: Women's Dress 1730-1930. A detailed look, inside and out, of the way clothes were constructed. Extremely helpful for dressing and undressing our heroines.

Cunnington, C. Willitt. English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century and Cunnington, C. Willett and Cunnington, Phillis. The History of Underclothes (1992).  The Cunnington books, written in the early part of the 20th century, feature some outdated viewpoints. However, they still offer a wealth of examples as well as amusing and enlightening quotations from primary sources.

Gill, Gillian. We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals. My favorite biography to date, and I’ve read quite a few. It reads like fiction. I originally hesitated to buy it because my sense was that Victoria lost the most fun and interesting part of herself when she wed, and that just depressed the daylights out of me. But this book offers a rather different perspective, bringing two strong personalities into sharp focus, and the compelling story starts well before she was born, with an almost operatic account of the events leading to her becoming Queen.

Grimble, Frances. The Lady's Stratagem: A Repository of 1820s Directions for the Toilet, Mantua-Making, Stay-Making, Millinery & Etiquette. Exactly as described in subtitle, it’s a marvelous compilation of information from various sources.

Inglis, John R. and Sanders, Jill. Panorama of the Thames: A Riverside View of Georgian London. A beautiful book and a labor of love that takes us on a voyage up and down the Thames during the Regency.

Rylance, Ralph. The Epicure’s Almanack. A moment in the Regency captured, as the author takes us on a detailed tour of all London’s eating establishments, and tells us what foods are in season when.

Félix Vallotton, La bibliothèque 1915 

Salisbury, Deb. Elephant’s Breath & London Smoke. A sort of OED of historical color, including dates for color names, and descriptions, it also offers advice on what colors for what complexions and occasions, among other fascinating details.

A Member of the Aristocracy. Manners and Rules of Good Society. A helpful etiquette book, as long as we remember it’s late Victorian to Edwardian (depending on the edition), when rules were more complicated and rigid than in earlier generations.

For more books we've referred to in our work and blogging, please click on the NHG library tag.

Images: Globe-Wernicke, advertisement in American Homes & Gardens c 1905;  Félix Vallotton, 1915  La bibliothèque.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

Eighteenth-Century Fashion: A Trio of Petticoats on Display at the Massachusetts Historical Society

Susan reporting,

I've already written here about the current exhibition, Fashioning the New England Family,  at Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, MA. Among the first pieces greeting visitors in the exhibition are a trio of petticoats, each with a different story to tell. (As always, please click on the images to enlarge them.)

Regardless of their status, all 18thc women in New England wore some form of a petticoat: a straight, full garment that covered the lower body and legs, and gathered and tied at the waist. In its most basic form, a petticoat could be made of rough linen, and worn alone like a modern skirt. At the other luxurious extreme, a petticoat could be made of silk and richly embroidered as the lower half of a costly, stylish gown. Some petticoats were also quilted, a welcome layer of warmth against a cold Massachusetts winter as well as another way to display a costly textile and decorative stitching.

The most elaborate of the petticoats on display was part of a wedding dress, detail right, worn by nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Bull at her marriage to Rev. Roger Price in Boston in 1735. The daughter of a wealthy merchant, Elizabeth had access not only to the celadon silk for the gown, but also both the leisure time to devote to designing and stitching the elaborate motifs and the budget to purchase the imported silk threads used in the embroidery.  I've featured this petticoat and the rest of the dress in three earlier posts here, here, and here, where there are many more photographs.

A brilliant yellow silk petticoat, middle left, from the 1750s was worn by Temperance Pickering (1732-1823) of Newington, NH. (The petticoat is displayed with c1780 stays, or corset, made from wool, linen, kidskin, and whalebone.) While the petticoat's maker is today unknown, the bold geometric design of the quilting remains as a testament to her skill. Beneath the yellow silk is an interlining of flax, quilted to the lining of yellow and white checked wool that make the petticoat both elegant and warm. The nearly 300-year-old silk has begun to break down, or shatter, near the waist, detail left, revealing the downy flax interlining.

The third petticoat, upper left and lower right, is a modern reproduction, commissioned by the MHS and beautifully hand-sewn and hand-quilted by our good friends from the Historic Trades program at Colonial Williamsburg: Janea Whitacre, Christina Johnson, Rebecca Starkins, and Sarah Woodyard. (For a brief video about their process, click here.) The petticoat is made of pale blue silk with wool wadding as an interlining and a linen lining.

Yet while new, this petticoat also has a New England history. Family tradition linked the original petticoat to a 17thc Massachusetts ancestor, Hannah Hudson, and was said to have been passed down through her family. The quilting design was traced from this original through a pricked paper pattern in 1896 by a descendent, Alice (Scott) Brown Knight Smith. Sadly the original silk petticoat was destroyed in the fires that followed the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Realizing the value of the surviving pattern, Mrs. Smith had it transferred to muslin, and then gave it to the MHS. That pattern, lower right, was the one followed by the CW mantua-makers to make their stunning reproduction. (The petticoat is shown with mid-18thc stays, or corset, made of brocaded silk, linen, and leather.)

The quilting pattern and the reproduction are typical of wide quilted petticoats worn over hoops in the 1720s-1730s. However, as the exhibition's placard notes:

"Like many stories connected to family relics, Alice Smith's account of the original petticoat proved problematic as we began to examine it in detail. The purported original owner, Hannah Hudson Leverett, died between 1643 and 1646. How then can we explain the fact that, at present, the earliest documented extant petticoats with this type of quilted design in North America date from c1720-1730s, more than seven decades after Hannah's death? This is a mystery that begs to be unraveled - and so our research continues."

Regardless, the new petticoat not only recreates the one that was lost, but also proves that the tradition of 18thc fine hand stitching demonstrated in the other two original petticoats on display is still continuing today.

Many thanks to Anne Bentley and Kimberly Alexander for giving me a special tour of the exhibition, and for including me in the planning from the earliest stages. 

The book that accompanies the exhibition - generously illustrated with many full-color photographs - is being published by the University of Virginia Press. It can be pre-ordered here.

Middle right: Petticoat, detail, embroidered by Elizabeth Bull, c1731-1735, Boston Society.
Lower left: Petticoat, unknown maker, c1750s, University Museum, University of New Hampshire.
Stays, unknown maker, c1780, University Museum, University of New Hampshire
Upper left and lower right: Quilted petticoat from a pattern given by Alice (Scott Brown Knight Smith, 1953. Made in 2018 by Janea Whitacre and Christina Johnson, with Rebecca Starkins and Sarah Woodyard, Historic Trades & Skills Milliners & Mantua-makers of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Courtesy of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Fashions for December 1922

December 1922 fashions

Loretta reports:

We complete this year's historical fashion plate cycle with a set of patterns and fashion news from the Delineator for December 1922.

The New in New York by Evelyn Dodge

“The jacket blouse and the blouse jacket have elbowed their way well to the front of the Fifth Avenue windows and New York almost killed a very charming style with the kindness of its enthusiastic reception. The jacket and the blouse are twins so much alike that their own mother-designer has difficulty in telling them apart. In many cases they can be used interchangeably, but as the weather grows colder the blouse jacked is more and more made of the fur cloths and heavier clokies, while the jacket blouse appears in the matelassés, crêpe silks and velvets.

"The best Fifth Avenue houses are making their separate skirts quite generally with camisole bodies instead of inside belts. There are two reasons why the camisole is a better bet than the belt with the present styles. If the belt is large enough to rest low on the hip, it is almost impossible to keep in its proper place. If it fits the normal waistline, it has a curiously high-waisted look, an optical delusion produced by the very general acceptance of the lowered waistline.  Practically all blouses, except the under-the-sweater type, are worn outside the skirt. If the blouse is white or partially transparent, the upper part of the skirt shows through when it is mounted on a belt. The camisole does not bring the skirt above the low waistline and it can be made of white China silk if it is to be worn under light, transparent blouses. The camisole top also make an excellent foundation for the jerseys or open-work sweaters that are worn so much in place of blouses ...

"With longer skirts and the more formal type of draped dress the bobbed-hair girl has had to grow up overnight. The closer hair-dressing is partly responsible for the vogue of the long earring, which for evening reaches almost to the shoulder. Some of them seen in the Fifth Avenue windows are made of heavy red gold in long, narrow Egyptian designs triangular in shape. Crystal is very smart for evening or afternoon. Very large hoop earrings are also worn in fine lines of jet or jade or amber.”

December 1922 fashion descriptions

The Delineator, which sells Butterick patterns, offers pages and pages of fashions each month, including children’s clothes, underwear, and sleepwear, as well as ideas for low-cost gifts. If you’re interested in this era, it’s well worth a look.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Dressing Queen Elizabeth I

Loretta reports:

We’ve been doing quite a few “getting dressed” videos, yet I don’t hesitate to offer one more because, well, historical clothing. And then, too, it’s Lucy Worsley!

Video: Does my bum look big in this? - Tales from the Royal Wardrobe with Lucy Worsley - BBC One

Image is a screen shot of the video.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be. To watch the video, please click on the title to this post (which will take you to our blog) or the video title (which will take you to YouTube).

A Sparkling Length of 18thc Gold Lace from the Massachusetts Historical Society

Susan reporting,

Earlier this month I visited the latest exhibition at one of my favorite places for research and inspiration, the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, MA. Called Fashioning the New England Family, it's a truly breathtaking exhibition, featuring clothing, accessories, textiles, and embroidery worn and made by New Englanders.

The majority of the pieces are drawn from the MHS collections, and many have never before or only rarely been seen by the public. There's so much here: Abigail Adams's copper-colored silk gown (on loan from the Adams Historical Park); Thomas Hancock's walking stick crowned by a clenched ivory fist; Governor John Leverett's 17thc buff coat worn to fight under Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War; Rachael Hartwell's light-as-air 1890s wedding dress. The history of the wearers is woven into each piece, and the presentation is thoughtful and beautifully displayed. The exhibition is free to the public, and runs through April 6, 2019. See here for more information.

I'll be featuring highlights from the exhibition in upcoming blog posts, and I'm starting with one of the smaller items. It's also among the most stunning. Some time during the mid-18thc, this length (unfolded, it measures 283 cm x 5 cm) of gold wire bobbin lace was made in Europe. Whether bought by an individual there or imported to the American colonies to be sold in a shop here, the lace was purchased and carefully wrapped in blue paper with the price written in iron gall ink. For whatever reason, the lace was never used, but instead put away in its original paper wrapping.

Metallic lace was a costly and luxurious trim, designed to sparkle in 18thc candlelit rooms. It could be used to adorn a woman's gown or a man's waistcoat, or even the cap of a special baby. (I immediately thought of the similar gold bobbin lace that was incorporated in this mat embroidered c1780 by Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.) Metallic lace was usually a blend of gold and silver or other metals, and over time and wear often tarnished and lost its shine.

But this particular length of lace remains as bright as new, the intricate woven gold glowing against the blue paper.  When the lace was given to the MHS, it was accompanied by a handwritten note from Susan Holmes Upham (1804-1877): "Gold lace given me with other old-fashioned things by my mother." It must indeed have been an old-fashioned curiosity by the mid-19thc. Today it's a sparkling link through the centuries to the shop of the now-forgotten milliner or mantua-maker who made the sale, tallied the price, and wrapped the lace, and the (I hope!) satisfied customer who carried the new purchase home.

Many thanks to Anne Bentley and Kimberly Alexander for giving me a special tour of the exhibition, and for including me in the planning from the earliest stages. 

The book that accompanies the exhibition - generously illustrated with many full-color photographs - is being published by the University of Virginia Press. It can be pre-ordered here.

Gold Wire Bobbin Lace, mid-18thc, European. Massachusetts Historical Society. 
Photographs courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society.

From the Archives: How (Not) to Dress a 17thc Puritan Maid

Susan reporting,

With Thanksgiving just round the corner and festive Pilgrims featured in every advertisement, let's revisit one of our most popular posts with a "Puritan maid."

Historical clothing is one of our favorite topics on this blog, and readers of both our posts and books will know how hard we try to get things *right* when in comes to what people were wearing in the past. Yet I'm also willing to concede that there can be considerable wiggle-room when it comes to theatrical costumes (no one really expects Cinderella to wear a perfect replica 18th c. gown, do they?) and other artistic expressions of past fashion.

But what happens when that artist's vision becomes such a potent image that it wipes the real thing clear away?

That was my thought while reading one of my favorite blogs, historian Donna Seger's Streets of Salem. A recent post featured the 19th c. Anglo-American painter George Henry Boughton (1833-1905), and how his paintings of 17th c. New England Puritans have influenced how we today imagine those early settlers. (Read her post here.) She's right: Boughton's paintings have illustrated countless school history books, and his version of Puritan dress is still widely accepted as the real thing. In fact, when I did a search for the painting, left, the Google best guess that comes up is "Puritan fashion", followed by links to a teaching site that labels this as an example of "colonial clothing."

Except that it isn't. Like most history-painters, Boughton's intentions were the best, but what this young woman is wearing bears no more real resemblance to 17th c. clothing than the sturdy stone walls and substantial brick buildings in the background do to mid-17th c. architecture in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Boughton painted his Puritan maiden in 1875, and to me her expression and posture seem more akin to a fashionable lady of that era; compare her with the lady in James Tissot's Portrait, also painted in 1875.

But it's the costume that Boughton contrived for his model that fascinates me the most. I'm guessing that, like many artists, he had a collection of antique and fancy-dress clothing in his studio, and he assembled an outfit from bits and pieces that looked right to him. To be fair to Boughton, he was trying to create an artistic mood, a somber, thoughtful reverie set in the past, rather than a 17th c. fashion plate. In 1875, people regarded historical clothing as old clothes to be worn to masquerades (no one loved fancy-dress more than the Victorians), and the academic study of dress and fashion was in its infancy.

Still, I'd like to offer a challenge to you. Among our readers, there are many art historians, re-enactors, costume historians, historic seamstresses and tailors, and others of you who know your historical fashion. How many different elements and eras can you see represented in this young woman's costume?

Above: A Puritan Maiden, by George Henry Boughton, 1875, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute.

Friday Video: Getting Dressed in 1816

Susan reporting,

Another wonderful video from our friends at CrowsEyeProductions - and this one also tells the story of how author Mary Shelley came to write her legendary novel Frankenstein. Many people believe that women's clothing of the early 19thc was breezy and uncomplicated. In comparison to the more structured clothing of the 18thc, perhaps it was; but as this video showed, there were still a good many layers involved, and a lady's maid continued to be useful.

Many thanks to Pauline Loven for sharing the latest in the "Getting Dressed" series with us.

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Fashions for November 1913

Dresses November 1913

Loretta reports:

Let's read over the shoulder of a lady in 1913 who's just picked up the latest copy of Ladies Home Journal.

  What I See on Fifth Avenue by Alice Long: With Drawings by Jessie Gillespie.

“From the top of one of those lumbering, top-heavy busses that wheeze ponderously along Fifth Avenue is really the best place to get a good view, not alone of the shops that line the avenue, but also of the kaleidoscopic mass of color formed by the hurrying streams of woman shoppers. And if you are looking for what is new in fashion you are just as apt to see it on some of these same shoppers, many of whom have names that are household words because of their prominence socially or because of the financial rating of their men folks, as in even the most exclusive shops...

“I SPENT several days going through the more important Fifth Avenue shops and dressmaking places, and of one thing I am convinced: The fashionable silhouette demands fullness at the hips and a narrowing in at the foot; and be it peplum or tunic—call it what you please—some sort of flounce arrangement must be shown on the skirt of a fussy dress anywhere between the waistline and the feet. A strikingly pretty model of this sort of composite type formed the dress of one of the season’s débutantes, and was intended for a luncheon to be given in her honor. It was of a dull watermelon pink shade of silk crepe, with a. blouse of pale lilac chiffon over flesh-colored malines.* The Medici frill is wired with fine silk wire, so fine as to be invisible, and the plaited tunic, which is of the lilac chiffon, is also wired on the edge, so that it stands out the tiniest little bit.—Ladies’ Home Journal, Volume 30, November 1913 

 The whole article is an interesting read: the color red's popularity, the puzzle of wearing summer weight fashion in November and heavy fabrics in summer, etc.

*Malines in this context appears to refer to "Malines Lace—Bobbin lace with sprigs or dots outlined with a heavier cordonnet over a hexagonal or round mesh ground.  It is made in one piece of white flax thread."—Dictionary of Textiles, Harmuth 1915. Aka Mechlin Lace. You can read a history of lace here.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Dressing the Women's Land Army During World War II

Susan reporting,

Due to some technical difficulties - looking at you, Comcast - our Friday Video is appearing for Saturday instead this week.

Here's another short video from our friends at CrowsEye Productions. Active during both the First and Second World Wars, the Women's Land Army was a British civilian organization created to fill agriculture jobs with women workers and therefore free more men for military service. While this video does show the kind of uniforms worn by the women in the 1940s, it also gives a glimpse of their lives as country laborers - a life that was likely new to many of the women who were from cities. Don't miss the hand-knitted sweaters and socks, plus some wonderful vintage tractors.

Many thanks to costumer, historian, and producer Pauline Loven for continuing the share these videos with us. From our stats, it's clear you enjoy them as much as we do!

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Friday Video: Victorian Photographs in Color

Loretta reports:

When it comes to 19th and early 20th century fashion, as our readers are aware, it’s not all that easy to get a sense of what clothes looked like on real people. Fashion plates offer a simplistic idea of color but tend to be anatomically inaccurate (if not downright bizarre) and flat. Paintings show us color, texture, accessories, and so on, but they tend to be idealized, a sort of Photoshop version of the real person. Photography, once it gets going in the Victorian era, offers a degree of realism (they did doctor photos), but in black and white. Museums show us the actual clothing, but on mannequins often lacking accessories (and very often, underwear).

This video, featuring colorized Victorian and Edwardian photos, helps us get a real sense of real women in a range of clothing. Some of you will recognize at least a few of the women.



40 Amazing Colorized Photos of Victorian and Edwardian Women
Published by Yesterday Today

Image is a still from the video.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be. To watch the video, please click on the title to this post (which will take you to our blog) or the video title (which will take you to YouTube).

So Who Wore Round-Ring Pattens in the 18th Century?

Susan reporting,

I wrote earlier this week here about the wavy-ring 18thc pattens - a kind of overshoe with a wooden sole and a metal ring intended to raise the wearer's shoes above wet or otherwise unpleasant terrain - that were being recreated and worn as part of the Historic Trades program at Colonial Williamsburg.

In the course of my discussion about the pattens with apprentice tinsmith Jenny Linn and journeywoman blacksmith Aislinn Lewis (both of whom were involved in the creation, wearing, and research of the replica pattens), we also spoke of a slightly different kind of 18thc pattens. Although the wooden sole and leather straps and laces are much the same, these pattens feature a round metal ring as a support. While the wavy-ring pattens offer plenty of surface area and almost resemble the treads of modern winter boots, the narrower base of the round-ring style would be much more precarious for both balance and walking.

This, however, may be because they weren't intended for walking. Jenny and Aislinn suggested that this type of pattens served an entirely different purpose. In 18thc prints, the round-ring style is usually shown worn by housemaids indoors, and often with a  a bucket and mop nearby.

Examples include Piety in pattens, or, Timbertoe on tiptoe, upper left, with a tall maidservant made even taller by very high round-ring pattens.  In How are you off for soap, middle right, the ring-bottom pattens are worn by a laundress, whose work would also include splashing soapy water.

The maid of all work in Roberteena Peelena, lower right, not only wears the round-ring style, but has pinned her petticoat up to avoid the wash-water. The maid in the painting A City Shower, lower left, has stepped outside with her bucket, and vigorously twirls her wet mop while poised (rather daintily) on her round-ring pattens. (A side-note: apparently rolling the mop's handle across the forearms instead of with the wrists looks like it was the accepted method of mop-twirling.)

When the round-ring style appears in prints being worn outdoors in the streets, they seem to be a way that the caricaturist is indicating that the wearer is of a lower or serving class, and a woman who is (in the cruel manner of 18thc caricatures) humorously lower class, unstylish, or down on her luck (here and here.)

From these sources, it appears that the the round-ring style was worn primarily indoors rather than out, to raise the wearer above soapy water spilled on a wet floor. They may also have served to protect a clean, wet floor from dirty shoes, rather than protecting the shoes from the water. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any primary source documentation in the form of letters or journals to explain this further. If anyone has come across such research, I hope you'll share it.

Many thanks to Jenny Lynn and Aislinn Lewis for their assistance with this post.

Upper left: Pattens, leather, wood, & iron rings, c1780-1800, Victoria & Albert Museum.
Upper right: Piety in pattens, or Timbertoe on tiptoe, published by M. Darly, 1773. Walpole Library, Yale University.
Middle left: Detail, How are you off for soap, published by William Elmes, 1816. Walpole Library, Yale University.
Lower right: Roberteena Peelena, the maid of all work by William Heath, 1829, British Museum.
Lower left: Detail, A City Shower by Edward Penny, 1764, Museum of London.

Recreating (and Wearing) a Pair of 18thc Pattens

Susan reporting,

Writing about the past is an ever-changing (and ever-exciting) challenge, and research is one of my absolute favorite parts of the process. I'm always eager to read or hear of new discoveries or fresh perspectives on old ideas, and I never know what may inspire a new character or plot twist.

All of which has brought me back to pattens, a kind of 18thc under-shoe raised up on a metal ring. I've already written a post about them here on the blog.

But while on a recent visit with some of my friends in the Historic Trades program in Colonial Williamsburg, I've come to realize that the subject of pattens is much more complicated.

Fragments of c1770s pattens with a wave-like base, or ring, were discovered in several archaeological digs in Williamsburg, Virginia, and inspired a project at Colonial Williamsburg to recreate them. While pattens would have been the specialized work of a professional patten-maker in 18thc England, in 21stc Colonial Williamsburg they required the skills of several different tradespeople.

Aislinn Lewis, journeywoman blacksmith, made the wavy rings and hardware that held the ring and straps to the sole, and completed the final assembly. Jay Howlett, journeyman artificer and leatherworker, made the leather straps and leather laces. Paul Zelesnikar, journeyman wheelwright, carved the wooden soles from ash. Jenny Lynn, apprentice tinsmith, has worn the finished pattens as part of CW programming. All of them contributed historical research and construction suggestions.

While the fragments were clearly worn in colonial Virginia, no documentation has yet been found to prove that pattens were being made or even sold in the colony at that time. It's probable that the pattens were imported from England, and possibly considered such mundane objects that they weren't listed for sale in newspaper advertisements.

The replica pattens are based not only on the fragments, but also on other, more complete examples that survive in other museum collections. Pattens were inexpensive, workaday footwear that likely didn't have a long life. The flat wooden soles were carved to fit beneath the wearer's shoes, and were held in place by a leather strap that tied across the instep. The metal ring raised the wearer about an inch above the muck of 18thc life, protecting her shoes.

But as Jenny Lynn actually wore the pattens, she discovered a number of things that scholars hadn't realized. First of all, walking in pattens is an acquired skill. Jenny likens it to walking in high-heeled mules. Because there's no back-strap, the wearer's weight must push forward onto the ball of the foot, or she'll walk right out of the soles. An 18thc woman who wore pattens regularly would have been familiar with how best to walk in them, but a certain amount of shuffling must have been unavoidable.

While the assumption has always been that pattens were worn on the notoriously unclean 18thc city streets, Jenny found that this kind of patten would be almost impossible to wear on cobblestone streets, where the rings would slip and tip and lead to sprained ankles and falls. They seem much better suited to the softer surfaces of a more rural life, like an unpaved path or street. Jenny found they work particularly well in mud or wet grass, though if worn by a wealthier woman than a lowly apprentice (sorry, Jenny), the pattens also probably served for making a short journey from a house to a waiting carriage.

The photos here show Jenny (in the blue petticoat) and Aislinn (in the red petticoat) holding the various components to the pattens, as well as close-ups of the soles and rings, and the pattens both on and off the foot. Perhaps my favorite photo is lower right, with the distinctive marks left by the patten-rings mingling with the modern sneaker-treads of CW visitors. The video, below, shows Jenny walking in them.

Many thanks to Jenny Lynn and Aislinn Lewis for their assistance with this post!

All photographs ©2018 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Friday Video: Getting Dressed during World War One: A VAD Nurse

Susan reporting,

Our friends at Crow's Eye Productions have ventured into the 20thc for this video. Featured in this video are the nurses who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) run by the British Red Cross Society during World War One. The VAD was a voluntary unit of civilians who provided nursing care to British military personnel; the majority of the volunteers were women and girls from the middle and upper classes who wished to contribute to the war effort. While most of these volunteers (over 60,000 by 1918) lacked the medical training of professional nurses, by the war's end many had proven that they were not mere "society ladies."  They served bravely and competently not only in auxiliary hospitals at home and in the field, but as ambulance drivers and cooks as well.

The accomplishments of the VAD are especially impressive in light of their uniforms - no easy-care scrubs here! This video shows the staggering amount of clothing that these women were expected to wear as they performed their duties. In time the war would mark a dramatic shift in the role of modern women and how they dressed, but these uniforms clearly belong more to the Edwardian era than to the 1920s flappers.

An additional note: the video was filmed on location at Stanhope Hall, Horncastle, the site of a former VAD Hospital.

Many thanks to producer and costumer Pauline Loven for sharing this video with us!

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The Dickey, or, Abominable False Front

August 1873 Men's Fashions

Loretta reports:

The author of this 1876 guide to men’s dress did not mince words when it came to false shirt fronts. One can only imagine what he'd have to say about, oh, man buns or low-hanging trousers.

~~~

BEAU BRUMMEL said, “A gentleman should show clean linen, and plenty of it.” The first part of this sentence is strictly true, the second less so. There is no need, having a clean shirt on, to publish the fact, or to lead the public to infer you wear it as a disguise by undue exhibition of it. “Virtue is its own reward :” so the assumption of clean underclothing generally, even if its light be kept beneath a bushel, should afford the wearer the same pleasure as if ostentatiously paraded. When I see a man placarding his chest with a wide expanse of lawn, and exhibiting an unnecessary amount of cuffs, I infer he has got on neither a clean nor white shirt. The surmise generally proves correct.

Interlined Shirt Bosoms 1912

I often see in haberdashers' shops an exaggerated collar and lapel in one, designed to cover manly bosom. The commercial name of this impious fraud is called a Dickey. This felonious impostor must be made away with. No one with any self-respect can wear a dickey. A man clad in such an unmitigated imposition is a whited sepulchre of the very blackest type. If the reader knows any so depraved even to possess one, let him persuade the wretched man to pause, ere too late, in his headlong career—to burn the spurious rag, and he can then exclaim, with regenerated heart, “Richard” (not Dickey, mind) “is himself again!”
Many say, however, when this charge is brought against them, that they suffer from neuralgia, lumbago, and tic-douloureux and ... various other ailments ... Well, what excuse is this? I do not prohibit flannel —wear an under flannel shirt—two if you like; but you must cover it with an entire white shirt, not an aliquot part of it. If hypocrisy be the homage which vice pays to virtue, then the assumption of dickey is a sneaking admission of the necessity for showing clean linen, and a discreditable way of making a sham composition with the subject.
— The Gentleman's Art of Dressing with Economy. By a Lounger at the Clubs (1876)

The Lounger's disapproval did not lead to the rapid extinction of the dickey. On the contrary, it lived on into the 20th century, and it isn't dead yet.

Images: August 1873 Men’s Fashions, from the Gentleman's Magazine of Fashion, via Google Books.
Interlined Shirt Bosoms (1912), and Arrow Donchester shirt 1915, courtesy New York Public Library.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

An 1880s Bustle Gown, Intriguingly Unfinished

Susan reporting,

Here's another fascinating garment from the Fashion Unraveled exhibition currently at the Museum at FIT in New York through November 17, 2018 (The first I shared was this 18thc gentleman's waistcoat that was remade for a woman in the 1950s). As the Museum's notes explain, this exhibition isn't about perfectly preserved, pristine garments. Instead, it "highlights the aberrant beauty in flawed objects, giving precedence to garments that have been altered, left unfinished, or deconstructed."

As a fiction writer, I'd add one more to that list: garments that survive in such an interesting state that they beg to tell their story.

This white bustle gown from the 1880s is instantly intriguing. Even an untrained eye would see that there's something not quite right about it. Instead of the usual crisp, almost architectural lines characteristic of fashion of the period, this gown seems almost droopy. There's a reason for this, of course: it was never finished. The brown silk taffeta trim is only basted into place (the long white running stitches are quite visible), the raw-edged trim is still tentatively arranged in some places, and the gathers that arrange the bustle and overskirt are decidedly lopsided. The cream-colored wool was never steamed and pressed, leaving the seams soft and bulky, almost rumpled.

And yet this was clearly going to be a stylish gown, and likely a costly one, too. Even if a customer changed her mind in the middle of the process, why wasn't it remodeled to fit another wearer? Why wasn't all that brown taffeta and raw-edge, fringed trim removed to use in another way? Why was it simply abandoned in this tantalizing state?

No one today has the answers. But it could certainly inspire a wealth of fictional explanations, couldn't it?

Dress, c1880, USA. Museum at FIT.
Photographs ©2018 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Fashions for October 1902

October 1902 Day Costume

Loretta reports:

The Delineator is quite a bit different from the ladies’ magazines I’ve used for earlier time periods. The World of Fashion, La Belle Assemblée, and other 19th century periodicals were aimed at upper class women. Those magazines described the fashions, but didn’t explain how to make them, because their audience’s clothes were made by dressmakers.

The Delineator’s market is altogether different. They're selling patterns to women who make at least some of their own and their family’s clothes. My guess is that some dressmakers (those outside the high fashion realms) might have found it useful, too, especially regarding latest trends. As a result, we get a wealth of detail about the clothes and their construction—valuable especially for writers setting stories in this time period or those simply interested in post-Victorian fashion.

Like other ladies’ magazine of the 1800s, 1900s, and today, though, the Delineator offers a summary of the latest trends in the introduction to their long fashion section. You can read about what’s hot for October 1902 here.  A few years later, the silhouette changed quite a bit, as I pointed out in this post.

October 1902 Tea or Reception Dress

Because the descriptions are so long, I’m not going to attempt to clip them, but will instead provide links. Day Costume Description here. Tea gowns description here (scroll down to Figures 151G and 152G.


Images via Hathi Trust.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Inside an 1885 Dinner Dress

Susan reporting,

This short but fascinating video features the work of the Costume Institute Conservation Laboratory of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The star of this video, however, is this c1885 silk dinner dress, right. Made by New York dressmaker Mme. Grapanche (her label is still stitched inside the dress), the dress represents the most extreme version of a bustle - that huge draped and constructed extension to the backside of the dress, that would have been worn over a cage-like or padded support tied around the wearer's waist. Of course, this was a high-fashion version, worn by an elite woman with a taste for drama (Madame Olenska!), but the bustle style in less exaggerated forms was popular among 1880s women of every class.

Here Jessica Regan, assistant curator in the Costume Institute, shows us what was sewn inside the dress to help support so much fabric and style. Of course, modern fashionistas might look at this in bewilderment: how does one sit in all that bustled splendor? We have the answer right here, in another Friday Video.

For another analysis of this dress, see this blog post from the Museum at FIT.

Friday Video: Recreating Madame Récamier's Coiffure

Chinard, Mme Récamier

Loretta reports:

I have mentioned Madame Récamier before, mainly in connection with furniture (here and here). She is quite well known among Regency/Napoleonic era aficionados, both for her portraits and her salon.

The Gérard and David portraits of her will be familiar to many. However, being mainly interested in the chaise longue, I hadn’t really noticed the marble bust by Joseph Chirard, until I came upon Janet Stephens’s video. Ms Stephens has posted several YouTube videos explaining Greek and Roman hair styles, which in turn help us get a better sense of the powerful influence of Greek and Roman statuary on this period of fashion in Europe and America.

Video by Janet Stephens: Authentic Napoleonic Hairstyle: MadameRecamier

Image: Bust of Juliette Récamier by Joseph Chinard, in "Musée des Beaux-arts" of Lyon (France), photo by Philippe Alès, Creative Commons license.
Please click on images to enlarge.
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From the Archives: A Beautiful (and Romantic) 18th c. Man's Shirt

Susan reporting,

Today I'm reposting one of the breathtaking examples of needlework from The Diligent Needle: Instrument of Profit, Pleasure, & Ornament, a 2014 exhibition at Winterthur Museum. 

Hung against a dark wall, this 18th c. man's linen shirt was almost sculptural in its pristine perfection. I've written other posts about similar shirts here and here, so I won't repeat how they're made, how often they're laundered, or who wore them.

So why write about another one here (except, of course, because it's so stunningly beautiful)? While most men of every class purchased shirts made by tailors (remember that at this time, the primary cost of any garment lay in the fabric, not the labor), shirts were one of the few garments that wives and mothers could, and did, make at home. The economical geometry of 18th c. shirts made them comparatively easy to cut out and sew, and the voluminous shape did away with any challenging issues of fitting. The simple construction focused the attention on the stitching, and an accomplished seamstress could display her gifts for perfect tiny stitches and neat hems, left. Fancy needlework was admired, but skillful plain sewing like this was almost considered a wifely virtue.

Shirts were also intimate garments, worn next to the skin, and for most men at this time who still had not adopted the new-ish fashion for underdrawers, the tails of shirts also served as underwear. All of these reasons made a well-stitched shirt a popular gift from a bride or newlywed wife to her husband, and they are often mentioned in letters and diaries of the time. A new wife could happily clothe her husband with her own labors and romantically think of him with every stitch, while he in turn would also be proud to wear a shirt that showed his new wife was accomplished and frugal.

Although the curators at Winterthur don't know either who made or wore this shirt, their guess is that it was one of these "newlywed" shirts. Not only does its sparkling condition hint at a shirt that was perhaps put aside as a keepsake, but the stitcher also added a small, sentimental touch: at the bottom of the neck-opening, serving as a reinforcement, is a small appliqued heart, right. Awww....

Above: Shirt, maker unknown, linen, probably made in America, c1790-1820. Winterthur Museum.
Photographs © 2014 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Friday Video: A Young Dutch Woman Dresses for Day in 17thc Delft

Susan reporting,

Here's the latest lovely fashion history video from our friends at Crow's Eye Productions. The layers and layers of clothing worn by an elite Dutch woman in the 17thc served not only to display her family's wealth, but also kept her warm in a damp, unheated house. I found myself thinking of the Dutch immigrants in New Amsterdam (later to become New York City) at the same time, and how welcome those layers must have been in the New World, too.

There's also a wonderful surprise ending to this video that delighted the nerdy-history-girl-art-historian in me. Wait for it!

Many thanks to costume historian Pauline Loven and director Nick Loven of Crow's Eye Productions for sharing their work with us.

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