American Women s Fashions, PowerPoint Program

Transcription

1 American Women s Fashions, PowerPoint Program FOR THE PRESENTER: This PowerPoint program traces the history of American women s fashion through some highlights from the DAR Museum s collection. You may edit the number of slides in any program to fit the time constraints of the audience. Please do not deviate from the script, other than to shorten it. All images and text are copyrighted by the DAR Museum. If you or any of your audience members have questions about the program or about the museum in general, please feel free to contact the museum office at Thank you for your interest in and support of the DAR Museum s programs. Estimated program time: 30 minutes. Program Script 1. The DAR Museum has been collecting items of clothing since its creation in Today, the costume collection includes about 5000 objects, from dresses to accessories, and includes men s and children s garments. Today we will trace the history of American women s fashion through some highlights of the DAR Museum s collection. DAR Museum

2 2. The earliest dress in the collection is this elegant silk taffeta dress with matching petticoat petticoat being the term at this time for the underskirt, not an undergarment. This dress is constructed as a robe à la française, that is, French style, or Sack-back as it was usually called in English. Most 18 th century dresses are either the robe à la française or the more fitted-back robe à l anglaise, inexplicably called the nightgown in England. Silk dresses would not typically have been worn as everyday wear in America, but for special occasions. A dress like this would have been worn for many years. Fashion changed more slowly, so all that was usually required was re-pleating the skirt to the new silhouette. New trim on the dress, and sleeve ruffles, hair decorations, jewelry, and other accessories were used to update the look more frequently. 3. Here is a beautiful silk damask dress worn over a quilted wool petticoat, with a fine linen kerchief at the neck for modesty. This represents the second main dress style of the 18 th century, the robe a l anglaise, which was more common in America. Few early or mid-18 th century dresses of any style survive, as not only American women, but Europeans, even of the upper class, tended to save and re-make their fine silk dresses to adapt to new fashions. Notice, too, the snug fit of the bodice. Dresses at this time were constructed by draping the fabric over the corseted body; the coneshaped corset was the foundation over which the fabric had to fit without a wrinkle. Almost everything at this time was made-to-measure for a specific customer, not ready-to-wear. DAR Museum

3 4. Though the most formal look was a matching petticoat, contrasting ones were also worn. In winter, quilted silk and wool petticoats were both fashionable and practical, as they gave added warmth in cold seasons. Many were made in Europe by professional seamstresses in workshops, and exported to the colonies in bulk, to be sold ready to be pleated up to the individual customer s size. 5. But we know that some quilted petticoats were made here in America, too; newspapers often advertised schools for teaching girls this sort of work along with other needle arts. This elaborately embroidered petticoat is extremely similar in style to a group of petticoats in other American collections which were produced in Connecticut and Rhode Island in the mid-18 th century. See if you can make out the three-masted ship, a pear tree, a lion and a unicorn, a mermaid combing her hair, and birds! Here are details of the mermaid with birds above her, and the lion and unicorn. 6. After 1780, the center panel of the robe was filled in to make a one-piece round gown, and the silhouette became increasingly slim over the 1780s and nineties. By 1800, the height of fashion in Europe assuming you were young and slim and could carry it off was for sheer white dresses made of delicate cotton mull muslin pre-embroidered in India. The term muslin at this time meant a softer cotton than what we now call muslin. This neoclassical style imitating Greek and Roman statues was considered rather shocking, especially here in America where we were rather DAR Museum

4 conservative. Remember this was coming from centuries of rigidly corseted torsos and heavier fabrics which did not outline the female form. So, to wear curvaceous corsets and only one layer of petticoat with nearly seethrough fabric that clung enough to reveal the outline of a girl s legs, or more, was just more than many Americans could take. Abigail Adams once remarked, during her time as First Lady in Philadelphia, after seeing one of these dresses, that she could have wished that more had been left to the imagination, and less to the eye. Although the high-waisted style was here to stay for some time, most Americans wore the style in less flimsy fabrics. 7. Here are examples of the old and newer style of corset. At left, the 1769 wedding corset of Elizabeth Phelps Goodrich of Massachusetts. Notice she later took apart the pieces and inserted plain tan linen strips at the sides, to make it a little bigger a little later! And at the right, a corset that dates to about 1830, but is essentially the same as the new corsets that arrived about 1810, with no whalebone, and only a curved wooden or brass busk in the channel at center front, to keep the breasts separate and to keep the torso erect. You can see that with the gores at bust and hip, a more natural and curvy body is now the style. 8. Even if you didn t wear sheer muslin, white cotton gowns were the new fashion for younger women, and the narrow skirts required fewer petticoats. These cotton dresses weren t very practical in chilly weather DAR Museum

5 so plenty of cover-ups became fashionable. Here in two DAR Museum portraits of the era. On the left you see a lovely fitted coat called a pelisse [pronounced puh-leess ] worn by the chic lady with her parrot and notice her beautiful coral set of necklace and bandeau in her hair. In the other portrait, a handsome Kashmir shawl is draped over Sarah Humes Porter. These portraits are on view in the DAR Museum period rooms. 9. Another fashionable option was the Spencer jacket, a fitted jacket that went only to the high waist. A colorful spencer could set off a white dress nicely. Ours was worn by a member of Abigail Adams s family, perhaps a granddaughter of Abigail s, and features stylish details of the late 1810s, including military-style trim across the chest, and little rosettes on the puffed sleeves a little historic medieval or renaissance styling was creeping in to coexist with the neoclassical. 10. You can see how chic this spencer is compare it to this fashion plate of Americans were eager to keep up with European fashions. Not only did English and French fashion magazines make their way over here quite rapidly, but their fashion news was reported in local papers as well. 11. Further down the fashion scale was this practical everyday jacket, the shortgown, which was an unfitted, easily made jacket worn by women of most classes, as informal wear and for work. Like most ordinary items of DAR Museum

6 dress, they tended to wear out and be thrown away, so ours is one of only a handful that survive. It is a glazed cotton chintz with a printed cotton lining and a different cotton print lining the turnback of the sleeves. The shortgown was worn by a Quaker of Philadelphia whose uncle s dry goods store stocked the fabric. You can see the store s name in the facing of the collar. 12. As we are always looking for novelty in fashion, the columnar look of the neoclassical period evolved into wider skirts and fuller sleeves in the later 1810s and 1820s, and the high waist gradually moving back down. These trends continued until skirts were fairly full, the waist was nearly at normal level, and sleeves reached their peak in the mid-1830s. Here is a French paper doll of about 1832 in the museum s collection. Her printed cotton dress with its enormous sleeves, natural waistline, and full skirt are the height of style for her time, as you would expect of a chic French paper doll! 13. You can see the undressed doll s corset is very like the museum s corset from the same period. 14. And here is a real dress of this period similar to the doll s, a charming printed cotton dress of the late 30s. After sleeves reached their peak in 1835, they collapsed, tamed into pleats at the shoulders as you see here. The dress is shown with one of our beautifully embroidered collars. DAR Museum

7 Although some ladies of leisure surely embroidered their own, they could also be bought in stores. 15. Comparing the dress to a French fashion plate of the time, you can see that Americans were keeping up quite well with European styles! 16. Notice even the sleeve details match! 17. And look how well this beautiful embroidered collar compares with the French doll s collar of the period! All these comparisons between doll, fashion plate, and outfit are to show how well-dressed many American women could be. The Industrial Revolution, which began in the textile industry, was helping democratize fashion. Machine-spun, machine-woven, and machine-printed cottons were affordable to most levels of society, and even women of relatively modest means could afford a brightly colored and washable dress in the latest fashion. 18. This dress is from the next decade, the 1840s, when sleeves lost all their fullness and skirts gained still more. This dress hides a secret: the bodice folds are draped over a plain bodice layer, with two slits that can be opened to allow the wearer to nurse a child! With up to two-thirds of a married woman s reproductive life taken up by pregnancy and nursing, clothing had to be designed to discreetly deal with physical practicalities. DAR Museum

8 19. This beautiful silk dress of the 1850s represents one of the most popular designs of the decade: mechanized looms could now produce complex designs woven with the dress pattern in mind, and flounced skirts showing off more fabric! with woven borders were hugely popular. A similar dress is illustrated in this fashion plate from the Museum s library. 20. Eventually, skirts became so enormous that no amount of petticoats could hold them out, and the hoopskirt or cage crinoline was invented. Vast yardages of fabric could now be draped over these contraptions. Although some modern minds see in the hoopskirt a metaphor for Victorian women being caged by convention and fashion, the women embraced it as a great liberator. Wearing a lightweight hoopskirt was a huge improvement over many layers of petticoats which got wet and muddy on rainy days, were cumbersome to lift when walking or climbing stairs, and had to be washed and ironed in the days before running or hot water. By the later 1860s, the circular skirt evolved into this style, with flatter fronts and more fullness pleated into the back. The next step would be to loop the extra fabric at the back into a bustle. 21. And here are two bustle dresses of the later 1870s, when the skirts had narrowed considerably. On the left is a Paris couture creation, and on the right, a Southern Illinois creation, made at home or by a local dressmaker. Machine-woven silks were now made in a wide range of price points, DAR Museum

9 making at least one silk dress a staple of most women s wardrobes. And thanks to the new paper pattern industry, any girl in the Midwest or elsewhere could make a stylish gown with the latest design features, and look nearly as chic as the couture customer in Paris. Now that s American democracy for you! 22. With the bustle, hoop skirts evolved to create the right shape, with all the fullness at the back. Those voluminous many-layered skirts required some serious structural support! Corset shapes also evolved with every shift in fashionable silhouettes; after years of a shorter-waisted style in the 1860s and early 70s, the later 1870s saw another shift back to a corset that went to the hips. The paper doll of the late 1880s shows the final effect of all the layers of underwear. 23. The bustle went through several different versions in its nearly 20-year reign over fashion. Here is an exquisite example made by the famous Charles Frederick Worth, the father of haute couture. This reception dress was worn to a party in Paris celebrating the opening of the Suez Canal. It uses heavy silk satin, elaborate brocade, silk chiffon, Brussels lace, and silk passementerie trim to achieve its luxurious effect. At the right is a dress of about 1890 or 1891 worn by Caroline Scott Harrison, First Lady to President Benjamin Harrison and the first President General of the DAR. As a lady of a certain age, she was DAR Museum

10 deliberately a little behind the latest fashion, so while the bustle had gone out of fashion very abruptly in 1888, she kept wearing it. It has the latest sleeve shape of the early 1890s, with a slight puff, however. 24. Change is in the air! In the turn of the century styles we see the evolution of style away from the bustle skirt to an A-line, and sleeves are due to reemerge as a focus of attention. From the modest lift of Mrs. Harrison s sleeves, sleeves grow enormously, until we have the enormous leg of mutton styles about But as we saw in the 1830s, with nowhere to go but down, the second half of the decade tames the sleeve fullness again. 25. More significant than these style changes, however, are larger shifts in society, and in women s lives. The so-called New Woman of the Nineties was a character who wanted to emerge from the domestic sphere, where Victorian ideology decreed she should stay, and be more involved in the world around her. More young women went to college and took jobs in offices. They began to play truly active sports like the new fads, golf and tennis and bicycling. And women of all ages got involved in social movements from temperance to suffrage, from labor reform to the kindergarten movement. The tailored suit, with a shirtwaist based on men s shirts, was the perfect outfit for the New Woman. 26. The tailored suit of 1905 on the right is typical of what was considered appropriate for shopping downtown, visiting friends, taking in a matinee DAR Museum

11 at the theater, or any urban activity. At left is the more casual outfit of shirtwaist and skirt, commonly worn for sports or by college girls, often with a casual boater or fedora hat, also borrowed from menswear. This outfit could be made dressier by adding a tailored jacket. 27. But the feminine had not departed from a lady s wardrobe! This frothy confection of about 1903 or 1904 exhibits all the frills you could choose from the style variations of its day: the jaunty little faux bolero jacket, the silk net bishop sleeves puffed over deep, pleated, ruffled-edge cuffs; four flounces on the skirt, each trimmed with ruched black silk, all combine to beautiful effect. The hat is a reproduction of a hat of the same period, made in colors to coordinate with the dress. The dress was worn by Bertha Briggs, an artist and teacher in Minnesota. 28. Evening wear at this time was very different from daywear: necklines could be lower, and fancier fabrics like brocade, chiffon, and trim like sequins and beading were added. The dark insets in the skirt on the right are silver net which unfortunately has tarnished. Try to imagine it shiny and reflecting the light of the ballroom whether candles, gas, or electric, the sequins and silver mesh would have shimmered! 29. Shortly before 1910, a distinct style shift occurs, and styles become narrower and more streamlined. The 1907 dress on the left is still very DAR Museum

12 Edwardian with its full A-line skirt, but in just one year, the 1908 suit shows some narrowing down, and it s not just because it s a tailored suit. 30. Fashion illustrations from Ladies Home Journal and the Delineator illustrate this shift. Comparing the modes in these mainstream magazines aimed at the average American woman, not high society, and seeing the dresses that survive, we can see that Americans were keeping up with each novelty in fashion. 31. The dresses here show further evolution to a more modern, streamlined silhouette, with a summer lawn dress with pleats and lace insertions from 1909, to a raw silk dress with silk cord trim of about 1910 and featuring the high-waisted Princess silhouette, to a modified hobble skirt dress of about 1912 at the right. 32. Again we see that these average American ladies are keeping up with the styles they can see in the fashion magazines. By now, the American lady has her choice of fashion magazines from Harper s Bazar at the high end, to Ladies Home Journal and the Delineator for the majority of stylish woman on a slightly more practical budget. Delineator and Ladies Home Journal assumed their readers, while keen to keep up with fashion, were on a budget and needed their advice on adapting last year s sleeves to this year s new shapes, for example. They also had columns addressed to the DAR Museum

13 Business Girl, for the young women working in offices or shops, who would be on even tighter budgets. 33. As always, corsets were key in creating the new shape. Now they had less to do with minimizing the waist, and more to do with smoothing out your curves underneath those slim, sometimes slightly clinging dresses! Think of these as Edwardian Spanx, if you will. The corset stopped under the bust, and a new undergarment, the brassiere, was now introduced. The slimmer styles required fewer petticoats, no doubt to the relief of women everywhere and their laundresses. 34. In the mid-teens, there s another dramatic style change. Was everyone just tired of how skirts had been getting narrower since 1907? Novelty is always required in fashion so perhaps it s no surprise to see the full, often flounced skirts of But it s significant that a year into World War One, European styles (which are still our guiding star) are above the ankle. As hundreds of thousands of European women went into volunteer work, or took paying jobs to replace men who had enlisted, surely fashion was responding to the need for more practical skirt lengths. And perhaps the flounces and other whimsical details were reassurances that fashion could still be feminine, even if its wearer was engaged in what was considered a man s job. DAR Museum

14 35. This charming summer dress of about 1915 uses the fashionable flounces to practical effect. Just above where each lower flounce is covered by the flounce above it, cotton net replaces the yellow cotton fabric. Thus, as the dress moved with its wearer, air could circulate more easily and give some relief on a summer day in the days before air conditioning! The back of the bodice is overlapped with net underneath to offer similar relief above the waist. Yet it s as prim and proper as can be. Here we pair it with a shadegiving cotton hat and a linen parasol. 36. Evening styles followed the trend for shorter skirts. This beautiful evening dress of the later teens uses the fashionable interplay of fabrics with different colors and textures, set off with an elaborate beaded tassel at the front. The 1917 department store catalog offers a somewhat similar style for only $19.98, and while money went a lot further back then, that s still a modest price for an evening dress, demonstrating again that fashion was available at every price point. By now, the ready-made industry was in full swing, and mail-order catalogs were sending ready-made fashions all over the country. 37. Our image of the 1920s is of the flapper in her knee-length-skirt, but actually, after half a decade of skirts above the ankle in the teens, the early 20s saw longer skirts again. The drop-waist of the twenties, and the boxy silhouette, is already much in evidence, however. This is a wedding dress of DAR Museum

15 38. Once again, underwear provides the structural support for the latest fashionable shape. Despite the proclamations by Paris designers such as Poiret and Chanel that the corset had been banished, most women needed underpinnings to create the boyish shape that was now popular. After all, who among us has no bust, no waist, no hips, and no derrière? Some slender and not very curvy young things might be able to get away with the minimal underwear fashion writers claimed was all that was worn now. But others needed brassieres often more structured than this charming lace confection and the newly elasticized girdles to smooth out those feminine curves. Advertisements in the Ladies Home Journal promised the straight bustline and flat-back effect and that desirable paradox the uncorseted look, while corseting quite firmly. 39. And here is the iconic look of the mid-twenties. A day dress, actually two pieces: a silk slip with satin pleated skirt, and over it, a printed houndstooth design on cotton velvet. Notice that at last women are wearing sheer flesh-colored stockings instead of the high boots, or opaque stockings first required with shorter skirts. 40. And here is a 1926 wedding dress: women were so enamored of the modern look of short skirts that they couldn t go back to floor length even for a wedding. Almost in recompense, trains of twenties wedding dresses, which usually hung from the shoulders, were incredibly long. DAR Museum

16 41. The same love of the shorter skirt reigned over evening dress. This was worn by DAR President General Lora H. Cook during her administration. Notice the pink lace drapery at the hip. As soon as short skirts were introduced, fabric manufacturers begged the fashion industry to bring back longer styles, which needed more fabric. So by 1927, designers started preparing women for longer skirts, starting with discreet little draperies like this one, and moving on to handkerchief hems and hems which lengthened from front to back. In fashion, nothing can ever stay the same for long! 42. But here is where we end our story, as the DAR Museum collection does not extend past the 1920s. I hope you enjoyed our look through American women s fashions from the colonial era into the twentieth century. DAR Museum