What Women Wore : could you cope with a bustle?

One of the attractions of writing about the dawn of the Gilded Age was that I love the shape of the dresses worn at that time. For several decades in the mid 19th century, American women’s dresses had been a one-piece with a tight bodice and bell-shaped skirt. In the 1870s this all changed. Influenced by the fashions of France and Britain, skirts became flatter at the front and swept back over a bustle at the back. Bodices, though still tight, were usually separate from the skirt – although often giving the appearance of a one-piece.

Who can resist the colours, ruffles and bows captured so perfectly by French artist Tissot? I used this picture, called Too Early, when describing a State ball attended by my heroine Ginny.

Extract of Too Early by James Tissot, 1873. Guildhall Art Gallery Collection. Reproduced for non-commercial use, courtesy of Creative Commons

Ginny may have a struggling farm, but she fortunately has a wealthy aunt and uncle, and an indulgent cousin who is determined to find her a rich husband!

The silhouette was created by draping soft cloth over a crinolette made of rows of fabric covered steel half-hoops.

Women’s Cage Crinolette Petticoat, 1872-1875. Courtesy: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Synthetic dye was invented in 1856 and by the 1870s dresses for upper-class women were vivid purples, pinks and yellows. Ginny travels to Boston and needs to fit in with the glamour of the emerging Gilded Age. I had this dramatic red and black ball gown in mind for a particular scene. It is in the Costume Institute collection at The Met, New York, but is actually a British dress designed by Madame Elise in the late 1870s. 

Ball gown designed by Madame Elise, late 1870s, Gift of Mary Pierrepont Beckwith, to The Costume Institute, The Met

I have a theory that different styles of dress would have been worn by different women in the same period. Many of the dresses, skirts and jackets in my wardrobe have been there for a couple of decades! Surely only the richest women would have been able to keep up with the latest fashions? My guess is that middle-class and working women would have been wearing the long-established bell-shaped dresses well into the 1870s, and this is supported by photographic evidence.

Under a Gilded Sky opens in rural Missouri. It is hard to get a clear picture of what rural women wore. Clothing was patched, reused, remade, handed down and finally taken apart for quilts, rags, and rugs. There are some black and white photographs but people wore their “Sunday best” for such an occasion.

Some evidence comes from the steamboat Bertrand which was carrying cargo up the Missouri River when it sank on 1 April, 1865. It was recovered from the mud a hundred years later and many original artifacts were retrieved. They included clothing for ordinary people, such as this man’s ‘hickory’ shirt.

Man’s ‘hickory’ shirt recovered from the Betrand, courtesy Rural Clothing Missouri 1860 – 1880

Most clothes worn by rural women were hand sewn during the 1860s and 1870s – often in the evening by candle light. Ready-to-wear garments were beginning to emerge, particularly for men because of the impact of the production of uniforms for the Civil War. Few rural women would have been able to afford them.

Clothing patterns were introduced in the 1860s with Mr Butterick setting up in Massachusetts in 1863 and selling six million patterns a year by 1871. Nevertheless, the old garment was usual taken apart and used for the new one and this hindered the change of garment silhouette. Sewing machines were coming into use but were expensive. The Valley Farmer, an agricultural book published in St Louis, advertised a hand cranked machine for $27 in 1860.

Much of the fabric was homespun rather than commercially woven. Rural fabrics would use traditional vegetable dyes which meant they were often dark browns, blacks and red. Indigo was popular. Clothes would be dyed a solid blue and then a design printed on them with bleach to produce a white-on-blue pattern. Mechanically produced fabrics often had tiny floral motifs. Wool tended to be heavy; the sheer, lightweight wools manufactured in the East would rarely be seen (Ginny loves a soft woollen shawl that is given to her).

Wealthier rural women might have owned a navy or black silk dress which would be carefully packed away and saved for special occasions, perhaps updated with a new trim.

Even rural women used hoops in their skirts. Rather than buying steel hoops, they would often use stiff vines run through rows of casings sewed horizontally around the cotton petticoat.

For underwear, rural women would wear a cotton camisole or bodice tucked into petticoats. Drawers were made of muslin, full-legged and gathered onto a waist band, the crotch left unsewn. And while we’re on the subject, men rarely saw the need for underwear, instead “going commando.”

Cotton lawn pantelets from 1870s. From Collectors Weekly December 2015

To me, it is extraordinary that rural and poor women would wear complex and restrictive clothing when their lives were filled with labouring, indoors and out. The US sociologist Thorstein Veblen gives some fascinating insights in his thought-provoking book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). But I’m going to leave that for another post.

Sources

Clothing of Kansas Women 1854 – 1870 Barbara M Fargo, MSc. thesis published in 1969 by Kansas State University
Rural Dress in Southwestern Missouri between 1860 and 1880, Susan E. McFarland Hooper, MSc. thesis published in 1976 by Iowa State University.
Fashion History Timeline, 1870 – 1879, posted by Harper Franklin, 2019
The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum, New York
https://www.collectorsweekly.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_(steamboat)

2 thoughts on “What Women Wore : could you cope with a bustle?”

  1. That’s a fascinating insight into clothes of the era. I cannot imagine having to be trussed into tight clothing for housework or gardening. I do remember clothes being altered with trims and layers to reuse materials though. Dressmaking is a skill which eluded my enthusiasm.

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