Day Dresses

[18thVirginia]

More working women:

Laundress in Virginia LOC

 

[18thVirginia]

Women dressed for work:

Somewhere in the North - workers at a boarding house/hotel maybe?

Seamstresses

Sewing for soldiers

Teaching school in the Sea Islands

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Lady Photographers

 

[DJenne]

Amazing to see the lady photographers! Where is that image from please??

 

[18thVirginia]

Amazing to see the lady photographers! Where is that image from please??

Those are all from Pinterest--which are not always sourced.

 

[18thVirginia]

18thVirginia,

I get the impression that most of the day dresses you have posted are just a bit below 'fancy' or for upper crust ladies.

What kind of dress would a woman wear when slopping the hogs or doing household chores around the farm?

Sure would like to see a picture that showed that side of a woman's life!

Sincerely,
Unionblue

Thanks for asking, Unionblue, I've added some photographs of working women of the period. A lot of the dresses are those that survived and it's likely they would have been owned by women who were elite enough to afford servants to maintain them and a house large enough to store them. But, some of the photos are CDVs of local women, although dressed in their best.

From what I've read, women did copy the fashions of the elite, a trend which has continued. I remember as a child in the 1960s wearing a shift dress when Jacqueline Kennedy wore one, which then was translated into a "sack dress." Then a princess dress with empire waistline when she was pregnant. The minister's wife always wore some version of a Jackie pillbox hat. We all had A-line dresses that copied some of Mrs. Kennedy's.

 

[Allie]

Thanks for asking, Unionblue, I've added some photographs of working women of the period. A lot of the dresses are those that survived and it's likely they would have been owned by women who were elite enough to afford servants to maintain them and a house large enough to store them. But, some of the photos are CDVs of local women, although dressed in their best.

From what I've read, women did copy the fashions of the elite, a trend which has continued. I remember as a child in the 1960s wearing a shift dress when Jacqueline Kennedy wore one, which then was translated into a "sack dress." Then a princess dress with empire waistline when she was pregnant. The minister's wife always wore some version of a Jackie pillbox hat. We all had A-line dresses that copied some of Mrs. Kennedy's.

One thing that you can notice about middle-class and poor folk copying fashions from the wealthier is that the fit of clothing was an indicator of status, just as much as quality. Graded patterns - that is, patterns made in different sizes, were invented by Ebenezer Butterick, founder of the Butterick pattern company, in 1863, and were not made for women's clothing until 1866. Before that, there were some patterns, but they came in a single size and you were expected to know how to alter them to fit. Most people just made their own patterns by looking at fashion drawings, and the results varied dramatically depending on the person's skill. The wealthy could afford professional seamstresses, while maybe your gggreataunt is in a photo wearing a dress that looks a little lopsided or bunches in the wrong places!

 

[18thVirginia]

Elizabeth Keckler was supposed to be greatly prized because of her ability to fit well.

http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/M965.112.1.1-2/

The bodice has the fashionable full coat sleeve, slightly curved to follow the shape of the arm. Small epaulettes over the upper sleeve and the low horizontal placement of the trim on the bodice front give emphasis to the dropped armscye. The bodice front forms a point just below the natural waistline and ends at the waistline in back, with two long, narrow panels that extend beyond the skirt and draw further attention to the fullness of the back. The ruched silk taffeta trim on the bodice is in the very fashionable mauve colour of the late 1850s and early 1860s, and may have been dyed with mauveine. Mauveine was the first synthetic dye discovered by William Perkin just a few years earlier. Perkin's discovery marked the beginning of the synthetic dye industry and heralded an entirely new range of brilliant fashionable shades.

 

[18thVirginia]

More era women in day dresses:

 

[18thVirginia]

Connecticut Historical Society 1860

http://wnpr.org/post/fashions-changing-silhouettes

 

[18thVirginia]

Reenactor dress

Women from the ACW era

 

[DJenne]

Found a family album wedding party photo. Mixture of wedding dress on the left and day dresses on the other women.

 

[18thVirginia]

How wonderful!! Thanks for adding this to the thread.

 

[18thVirginia]

New England organdy day dress 1860s
http://vintageclothing.com/product_info.php?products_id=251

 

[18thVirginia]

My great great grandparents in Texas. Photo made from a tintype, but you can see her day dress.

 

[Northern Light]

View attachment 68802

Wool plaid day dress
http://whitakerauction.smugmug.com/Fall2011-4/Clothing-DAY-2/ID-329/i-99DnQjt

Here's a Godey's design of a similarly colored day dress:

View attachment 68839

I love the green trim on the dress in the photo. it makes such a nice contrast.

 

[Northern Light]

View attachment 68840

"Grenadine dress, one of the most elegant designs of the season, has a white ground powdered with pansies of the natural colors and light leaves. The bordering at the edge of the skirt is a deep sea-green, headed by bands of black resembling velvet. The corsage is in the Pompadour style, with rich muslin guimpe and sleeves." Godey's 1863

illus http://archive.org/stream/godeysladysbook67phil#page/n9/mode/2up

View attachment 68841

dress, ca. 1865, sheer with beaded embroidery, Kent State Museum Collection

http://fripperiesandfobs.tumblr.com/post/77745857004/dress-ca-1865-from-the-kent-state-university

That last one is just elegant.

 

[18thVirginia]

Boston MFA ca 1865

Okay, you know every woman who saw this dress went home and tried to copy it. Simple, but so elegant.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/518195500848618921/

 

[MaryDee]

Note that this last dress (and the 1865 dress shown earlier) have the skirt's fullness mostly toward the back and is almost flat across the front. It also has a train effect in back. This trend started during the last year or two of the CW, although many women weren't able to switch until after the war. By the end of the 1860s, this trend led to bustles and big bows in the rear, with a tight skirt front. Since my abdomen definitely protrudes in front (almost as much as my rear), this is not a fashion I'd want to copy for myself! I'm thankful that I chose to re-enact a period when being large below the waist was the height of fashion! This dress is wonderfully elegant, but not for me!

 

[unionblue]

View attachment 69093

Boston MFA ca 1865

Okay, you know every woman who saw this dress went home and tried to copy it. Simple, but so elegant.

18thVirginia,

Is it true that when a woman was working at some chore, especially one that required a lot of effort, that the hoop was not worn under the dress?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

 

[RobertP]

I had posted this before in a thread on CW ancestors but will do it again here:

This group photo is from about 1867-1868 and shows my great grandmother second from left (not dated but she was born in 1851 and looks about 16 0r 17 in the photo) with other girls in her class at Augusta Female Seminary, later Mary Baldwin College, in Staunton, Virginia. On the back it gives their names and hometowns. Three are from New Orleans, including my ancestor and three are from Virginia. Interestingly, the first girl on the left is from Big Lick, Va. which I found was the name of Roanoke prior to 1882.