Yo internet peeps! Super excited to be presenting my paper titled "lacemaking In progressive era America: charity, nationalism , and authenticity of settlement lace" at #tsa2016 #tsacrosscurrents . Check it out at 3:30 if you're in Savannah for the conference!! Here is an image from my presentation, showing workers from the scuola d'industrie Italiane in NYC working lace while wearing folk costume at the art alliance exhibition of 1919 (photo from touchstone and American art student magazine, sept 1919) (at Historic Riverwalk Downtown Savannah)
Two slaughters in two weeks. @nationalrifleassociation Why don't we just keep it at half mast permanently from now on. #nra #tiredofviolence @nranews (at Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Paris mannequins sweating it out at the summer races at Auteuil or Longchamp. Couturiers previewed their fall collections- including furs-- at the summer races in July and August. Image from Vogue magazine, December 15, 1920, page 39.
At first, I was baffeld by the text which is written in an older kind of a German dialect (from Southern Germany, I guess). I read: “Also schlagen sich di gmamen frauen daselbst.” But there is no word “gmamen” in any German dialect I know. Indeed, it is a misreading; decipher “gmainen” (“gemeinen” in High German) instead. The meaning is: “In this way, the ignoble women are beating themselves”. Probably referring to a custom in regional folklore, I assume.
The Fashion Scrapbook of Miss Mabel Patterson: clothing, consumption, and memory in late 19th century New York City.
By Kathryn
Page 30 of Mabel Patterson’s Scrapbook, describing an ensemble she had made in 1891. She remembered it as: “One of the prettiest suits of my girlhood.”
For my master’s thesis, I explored the dress scrapbook of Mabel Patterson, a middle class woman from Brooklyn, New York. The scrapbook, begun by Mabel’s mother [Marcia Scudder Lewis Patterson] when she was born in 1872, served as a sort of dress diary. Marcia --and later Mabel herself-- carefully recorded each new dress that entered her wardrobe, complementing each entry with the fabric and trimmings used to make the garment. Mabel used the scrapbook until the age of 24, when she was a sophomore at Vassar College.
As a Brooklyn resident Mabel was very close to the fashion center of America, New York City. While not wealthy enough to travel to Paris and patronize the great houses of Worth and Piguet, she did have access to fabrics and designs imported from Paris to New York. As a middle class consumer, Mabel had access to selected luxuries. Her dress diary chronicles the process of navigating cost, quality and labor in the quest for fashionable attire.
While Mabel’s dress scrapbook contains over one hundred entries. This post will follow how she assembled the patterns, fabrics, and labor to create one particular garment: a wool day dress made in the Spring of 1891.
Mabel cut the illustration above of a “diagonal wool gown” out of the women’s magazine The Delineator. Published by Butterick, the commercial pattern company, The Delineator was a monthly magazine that reported fashion news. Throughout the fashion articles were illustrations of commercial patterns made by Butterick, and instructions on how to order them. [Interestingly, The Delineator also featured progressive articles urging women to attend college and join the workforce, something Mabel would later do by attending Vassar.]
Cover of The Delineator, August 1894.
All of the fashion illustrations and pattern renderings pasted into Mabel’s scrapbook are from The Delineator. It may have been her fashion magazine of choice because she was closely acquainted with the Butterick family, who lived nearby her Brooklyn home.
It is unknown if Mabel subscribed to the magazine or if she perused it at her dressmaker’s establishment, which many women often did. Another magazine published by Butterick, called Metropolitan Monthly, advertised especially to dressmakers.
After deciding on a pattern, a fashionable middle class woman like Mabel would need to select the perfect fabric, usually at a department store. Department stores were an incredibly important part of middle-class life. While most started out as dry goods stores, by the 1880s they sold everything from fabric and notions to linens, lamps, food, china, and eventually, ready-to-wear clothing.
Journeay & Burnham, Evening Hat, ca. 1892, silk, cotton, jet, feather, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hats like these were available in the millinery departments of NY stores in the late 19th century.
Most of the fabric Mabel purchased for her clothes came from department stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In Brooklyn, the most important department stores were located on Fulton street (what is now the Fulton Mall). Wechsler & Abraham (which became Abraham & Strauss in 1893, and is now Macy’s), and Journeay and Burnham, are all mentioned by Mabel in her scrapbook.
The dress illustration in the scrapbook called for “diagonal wool,” Mabel chose a gray wool twill, which is woven to give the illusion of diagonal lines. Mabel purchased this fabric at Loeser’s, a department store on Fulton Street. The dress required a lining; unfortunately Mabel rarely mentions the fabrics used to line her garments in her scrapbook.
Loeser’s Department Store, 1905. Notice the elevated railroad at the lower right, which ran down Fulton Street and which Mabel likely took from her house to go shopping. From Moses King, King's Views of New York 1896-1915 & Brooklyn 1905 (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 36.
After choosing and purchasing an appropriate fabric, Mabel brought the fabric to her dressmaker, who cut, stitched, and fit the garment to the individual woman.
Mabel employed several different dressmakers in Brooklyn. The wool gown was made by a woman she calls Miss Gano. Miss Mary J. Gano lived at 45 Nevins Street, in downtown Brooklyn near Fulton Street. She probably worked out of her home, or traveled to Mabel’s home for fittings. Some dressmakers worked exclusively at their clients homes, often staying several days while they cut, sewed, and fit a dress for a client.
Once the garment was complete Mabel purchased a matching hat, also from Loeser’s, completing the outfit. Unfortunately, Mabel did not record the style of the hat!
Mabel records that she wore the ensemble, “First April 18th – a very warm Saturday.” Unfortunately, Mabel probably got very little use out of this dress, since the following year it was completely out of fashion. Sleeves became larger and skirts abandoned the bustle completely, becoming flared by use of gores rather than straight.
Dress scrapbooks like Mabel’s are a boon to the fashion historian as they record not only what garments and fabrics were worn, but how choices were made. This gives valuable insight into the decision making process of middle class people who-- although without the means to buy designer couture-- worked within a budget to dress in the latest mode.
Fashion plate, La Mode, March 1839 [v. 21, plate 3], Los Angeles Public Library.
Fashion historians typically assign bustle period of the 19th century to the years 1868 to about 1892. However, there was an earlier, even longer lasting bustle period. This one had its roots in the 18th century and lasted right up to the adoption of the steel cage crinoline in 1856.
R Delin and S W Fores, The Bum Shop, 1785, satirical print, Manchester City Galleries.
The bustle that emerged in the mid 1780s, known as a bum roll, was comprised of simple semi circular pillow tied around the waist. The roll emphasized the rear, supporting masses of skirt at the wearer’s back and providing endless fodder for satirists.
With the arrival of the slim Grecian inspired styles in the 1790s, the bumroll was not discarded. Instead, a miniature version of the undergarment was worn to prevent folds of fabric at the high waist from collapsing into the back. These are clearly seen in fashion plates of the era, which emphasize a graceful convex curve emanating from the mid-back to the hemline. Throughout the first decades of the 19th century, pads like these remained important tools for creating the fashionable shape.
Left: Fashion Plate. 1801. Collection of Rhode Island Historical Society. Right: Fashion plate from Ackermann's Repository, 1819, Series 2 Vol 7.
The term ‘bum roll’ was replaced with more genteel terminology by the 1820s. In 1828, The Ladies’ Monthly Museum magazine used the term tournure [a french word denoting an elegant appearance] to describe an undergarment that supported folds at the back of the skirt[1]. Workwoman’s Guide, a manual published in 1838, used the term bustle to describe the same garment; “Worn by those whose shape requires something to set off the skirt of the gown... They are made of jean strong calico and sometimes of glazed calico.[2]
Fashion plate from Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 27 (August 1843)
The ideal skirt of the late 1830s-1840s was a dome emanating from a tiny waist. Multiple layers of horsehair and stiff, starched cotton petticoats were used to achieve the look. In practice this silhouette was very difficult to realize ; daguerreotypes of the period show that women achieved this fashionable shape with varying degrees of success. Critically, the bustle helped to support the numerous layers and enhance the domed appearance at the rear.
Obscured under layers of petticoats, and rarely discussed by fashion historians, the bustle of the mid nineteenth century seems hidden to the 21st century viewer. However, these garments still exist, physically in museum collections, and via descriptions in magazines and guidebooks of the era. The American Textile History Museum [ATHM] in Lowell, MA has at least 4 bustles; the Costume Institute has at least two. These bustles are made of a range of materials, from soft feathers to rigid whalebone. Written sources from the era attest to these varied materials: “[the bustle] signifies a semi circular bag ... filled with bran, flour, feathers, hair, wool, cotton, rags, felt, bits of carpets, dry leaves, straw, or wind...”[3]. In 1844, an English visitor to New York City noted: “I inspected with considerable interest some improved wire gauze bustles for the ladies. They were a beautiful article, and to be had it seems considerably under prime cost.”[4]
One of the most curious bustles in the collection at the American Textile History Museum is a sort of disk of cotton, supported at its edge with whalebone or reed. Button holes at the waistband allowed the garment to be fastened to a waist tape or perhaps a petticoat. The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art contains two similar examples. One dated to 1850-1875 [C.I.45.79.11] is crafted of cotton held taught with a circular reed. The device clips in front and has adjustable shoulder straps that hook into elasticized clips [the same style of clips were used on the back of men’s vests during the period]. A similar garment [C.I.53.51.16], missing it’s shoulder straps, is dated to the 18th century.
However in visible to contemporary viewers, bustle contraptions were all too visible to 19th century observers. Satirical writers warned of down-filled bustles inflating if a woman stood too close to a fire: “She was moreover so unfortunate as to take up a position near the fire and soon to the astonishment and dismay of the spectators she began to amplify and amplify and amplify.”[5]. Wire and whalebone bustles were susceptible to: “Severe trials in the way of compression, and if that compression be carried to a certain extent they will resist no longer but give way with a crash.” Others warned of the tendency for the fashion to: “create an undue heat in one particular part of the body.”[6] Many opined that the bustle caused an ungraceful walk.
As a costume historian and mounter, this type exploration sheds light on how to physically bring garments from the first half of the 19th century to life in an exhibition setting.
[1] “Modes de Paris.” The Lady's Monthly Museum, Volume 28, December 1828, 347.
[2] Maria Wilson[?]. The Workwoman's Guide, Containing Instructions ... in Cutting Out and Completing Those Articles of Wearing Apparel, &C. Which Are Usually Made at Home ... By a Lady. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co, 1838.
[3] “The New Philosophy.” The Knickerbocker; Or, New-York Monthly Magazine, Volume 26, November 1845, 425.
[4] Henry Cooke. “Notes of a Loiterer in New York.” Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 16, 1844, 596
Girls and Boy’s cooking schools at the South End settlement house, Boston MA, 1907. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Social Museum Collection.
Inspiration or Imitation? A 1949 Schiaparelli coat at the Costume Institute.
Left, a wool coat designed by Schiaparelli in 1949, currently in the collection of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum, accession no. C.I.58.50.5. Right, Stella McCartney Pre-Fall 2015 coat, photo from style.com.
Many designers mine vintage clothing archives, auctions, and sales for inspiration. However, at what point does inspiration become imitation? A coat from the Pre-Fall 2015 collection by Stella McCartney bears a striking resemblance to a Schiaparelli coat in the collection of the Costume Institute. The McCartney coat utilizes not only the dramatic collarless angled lapel, but even small details like the welt side pockets and button placement. The overall length and the shoulder placement are the only apparent changes.
As an aside: the Schiaparelli coat was donated to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1958 by Bettina Ballard, a Vogue correspondent, then editor, from 1935 - 1942 and 1945 - 1956. Ballard’s work as a fashion editor was chronicled in the Mar 5, 1951 issue of LIFE magazine. Titled “Bettina’s Busy Day,” the article includes several photos of Ballard attending fashion shows and directing editorials. The above photo shows Ballard at the house of Schiaparelli, wearing “a short Schiaparelli coat over her Balenciaga basic suit.” It is highly possible that the coat in the photo is the same coat in the collection at the Costume Institute.
If she’s suggestive of Persia, there’s a reason for it-- which is her pajama suit copied from an old Persian costume. The tunic of black and gold cloth has part sleeves of soft apricot velvet...The trousers are of velvet, and both sleeves and trousers laced with gold.
Sono Osato modeling a copper rayon and satin dress by Pattullo Modes, c. 1945. Dance Clipping Files, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
Northeast Costume Mounting in Vogue.com! Here we are working on the American Ballet Theatre’s 75th Anniversary Exhibition, at the Metropolitan Opera, curated by Hamish Bowles.
More images of the installation after the jump!
At left: Kathryn mounting a costume from Fancy Free, a 1944 ballet about three sailors on shore leave. At right: the mounts inside a case at the Metropolitan Opera.
At left: Katie creates a custom red velvet cover for a mannequin base to seamlessly blend with the Metropolitan Opera’s famous red carpeting. At right, Jennifer puts the finishing touches on a Leon Bakst designed costume from the 1940 ABT production of Carnaval.
