If asked to draw a sketch of the American or European woman of fashion at the beginning of the 1820s, most of us would think of the recent Jane Austen movies and draw a woman whose lithe figure resembled an exclamation point clad in a simple high-waisted dress of thin european satin bridesmaid dress with short puffed sleeves. If asked to draw the silhouette of a woman of the latter half of the 1840s, the sketch would resemble a dinner bell.
Society as a whole was less restrictive in the early 1820s than it was to be for another one hundred years. Perhaps the natural reaction to those years of freedom was a pendulum swing in the opposite direction. By the mid 1820s the Ideal of Womanhood had begun. Part of the schooling of women to their new role came through the trends in fashion. The most noticeable change in fashions at the beginning of this period was the dropping of the waistline of women’s clothing to the position of a woman’s natural waist.
The high waisted dresses of the early 1820s had hid stomachs but with the natural waistline, corset use began in earnest. Women laced themselves tighter and tighter as this fifteen-year period progressed and the criticisms about tight lacing were not to be heard until well after 1840. A few jacket bodices were separate garments from the skirts, but most bodices had the skirt attached in gathers. Bodices themselves often showed gathers as the top layer, but the under construction was generally tightly fit to the body. The thin muslin favored in the 18teens lingered into the beginning of this fifteen-year period, but when muslin was used after 1825 it was used in greater quantities per dress. Before 1825 there was gossip that European society women in thin muslin dresses would douse themselves with so much water that the garments which clung to them seemed almost nonexistent. Not only was muslin adopted to the new cuts but it was also trimmed and accessorized quite differently than it had been earlier.
An 1828 letter describing the wedding of a woman from a wealthy North Carolina family includes this description of attire: The bride and bridesmaid were dressed in swiss muslin trimmed with white satin, and handsome turbans on their heads. Despite the wide use of muslin in the early part of this transitory period throughout this fifteen-year period, there was a trend toward heavier material. In August of 1826, fashionable British belles Jane Hogg and Jane Milner sent an Indian muslin dress to their cousins in America as they had no use for it any longer. Even more interestingly, the belles also sent a silk gown about fifty years old and advised their cousins to remake it. For the first time since the 1780s, the heavily figured silks were popular and many c.
1825-1840 garments are made of earlier fabrics which bear testimony to having been remade from an earlier gown. In 1825 white was the favored color for evening dresses with cream and yellow gaining in popularity by 1830. Muslin, gauze over satin and rich silk fabrics were always favored for evenings and used whenever economically possible but even among well-to-do Americans homespun was popular day wear. In July of 1828, Mira Lenoir a woman from a very wealthy North Carolina family wrote to her niece Julia Pickens offering her a homespun dress.
Let me know how you like Louisa’s, and if you had rather have yours some other stripe, and whether you want it checked and all about it. The majority of the day dresses which survive from 1825-1840 are those made of fairly heavy cotton. Medium to heavy weight cotton has withstood the test of time better than has the thinner cottons and silks. Figured calico was extremely popular and from the fabric samples which survive and the descriptions in period letters we know the designs were innovative. Many of the dresses of the best quality fabrics were destroyed when the fabric was reused a few years later.
Miraculously, moths have left us some dresses of wool which first began to be used for womens’ clothes in the late 1820s and was one of the most lasting innovations of this period. Throughout the years, 1825 to 1840 the skirt continued to widen. Perhaps the most obvious features of the period were the sleeves. The Placement of the Puff would be a good title for this section. As may be guessed, new terms were coined for each sleeve innovation. Yes, period detractors really did use the term imbecile sleeves and gentlemen’s’ magazines showed drawings of women turned sideways to go through doors.
The sleeves which were very wide at the shoulder and tapered gradually to the wrist were called the gigot sleeves and required their own set of underpinnings. The Victoria sleeve was actually not much favored by Queen Victoria who knew her build was not enhanced by tight shoulder and wrist fittings with volume in the mid sleeve section. No matter where the puff was placed armholes were small and high, so despite the volumes of material used arm movement was restricted. As a balance to the large puffed sleeves, collars were also enormous at various times from 1825 to 1840.
The pelerine en ailes d’oiseau collar covered the sleeves like a bird’s outstretched wing. Sometimes the collars were split at the top of each sleeve and often there were two layers of a collar. The bertha whose name and look are still familiar became popular near the end of the period. Lace and embroidered collars were widely made and worn.
