So recently I've been thinking a lot more deeply about how I want to approach historical costuming for me. Both in the direction of historically adequate and inspired work for everyday, but also for more intentional costuming, e.g. for events.
So my first issue is physical. Me. I am not young, I am not princess-beautiful, I am not single, and I am not slim. I am (mostly) OK with myself - I don't mind my age, or my looks, and I'm not getting a divorce; yeah, I need to lose some weight, but even without the extra I will never be slim because my frame is naturally broad and solid. I am from working class and middle class stock, and it shows. And I am good with that. BUT I need to work with that, rather than pretend to be something I am not.
To look at this from a historical perspective, in past centuries a woman of my background, marital status and appearance would have been heavily mocked for "aping her betters", or for pretending to be something she wasn't. High fashion is usually, then as now, directed at the young, the rich, and the fashionable. Most of the country just weren't that, and wee unlikely to have seriously desired it. Would living a life of luxury have been nice, of course, but you could daydream while washing the dishes, managing a home, and raising the children, because life as always carries on needing to be lived.
The upside of this, from my perspective, is that clothing that the average woman would have worn was more likely to be practical and usable in daily life. Ball gowns are pretty, but aren't really practical for wearing on a daily basis.
All that said, even lower class women may have owned one or more nice dress.
- It may have been a wedding dress, much amended over time, and adjusted to accommodate new necklines or hemlines.
- It may have been bought from a clothes reseller - second hand markets have existed for a Very Long Time, and have always been a way in which men and women could potentially access to things otherwise out of their reach.
- It may also have been a gift. Gifts of old clothing from employers to servants, particularly in a domestic setting, were not uncommon. These clothes, while no longer high fashion enough for those who were being served, were absolutely acceptable for Sunday Best for those serving them, perhaps with a little adjustment. And if no longer usable as-is, the gifted clothing could happily be made over into something else more suitable to their needs (or indeed sold on via the above mentioned second-hand trade). The giving of clothing and/or fabric as gifts to vassals, to indicate favour, or indeed to curry it, has been used since at least the Elizabethan era, if not earlier[1].
So what does this mean for me, and what has my Squirrel Brain decided to do?
For me, it means I want to concentrate more on making clothing that my ancestors would have worn, rather than "Princess Pretty" clothing. That means middle to working class mostly, with a mixture of rural farming society, urban domestic servants and some northern factory mill workers. These were people who were more likely to be illiterate to functionally literate, than readers of magazines. If they did see fashion plates it would not have been because they sought them out, and more like when I look at the houses in Country Life - ultimately not something I ever expect to own anything even close to!
And as for my squirrel brain? Well that's decided on a new Project, which is superficially simple, but may prove to be Quite Long... Squirrel Brain would like me to find images of at least one working to middle class costume that I like, for each decade of the 19th Century, and possibly early 20th Century too. And then to make them up. Perhaps one working, and one middle class. This isn't to say I can't make the Pretties too - as above, women could still access nice clothes; plus I can make what I like for the fun of it! However, I probably will not count anything like this towards this project.
The Plan
First step in this project will be gathering images. Initially photos to give the impression of a decade, and then picking specific looks to recreate. While I'm doing that, I will probably work on underwear for a while, as that will also be necessary for anything I make outside this little (hah!) project. After that, will be the long process of creating them...
To be helpful to myself, I'm not going to do this chronologically, but instead let my brain bounce around as it wills it. That has the advantage of while I want to get stuck into more complicated eras to source at the beginning of the 19th Century (i.e. before widespread photography, and when the average person wasn't getting their portrait painted), I can also do easy bits bringing in images I already have from the 1890s-1920s period.
I may do years within a given decade for later periods where we have more surviving source material for me to use. Nevertheless, I want to stick to a minimum of one costume per decade, with more being a nice-to-have option.
I also am seeking to actively avoid uniforms and livery. The stereotypical working-class image of a 19th Century woman is of the domestic servant, but while I am interested in her clothes, what I want to recreate is what she wore when not a work. Basically, going beyond the stereotype of the black dress with the white apron over it. What did she wear on Sunday? What about after she married and left service (if she did)? Those are the outfits I'm seeking to find.
While I'm happy to look at extant examples of clothing, for this project I want to focus on images from the time. Images show you want was being worn, by whom (status/class), and how. I hope to only use museum examples to pad out the iconographic resources, rather than replace them, although I have no idea how successful that idea will be!
Is this all I'm going to be doing for the future? Oh no. Definitely not! I have other plans in the pipeline, and idling in the back of my head still, but this is something I want to do gradually over the next few years. In the long run, it may even be able to be a resource that others can use on middle to lower class fashions.
Citation
[1] One example would be the donation of a dress (or dresses) by Elizabeth I of England to the wife of a prominent Irish nobleman who she wished to have allied with her.
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