"Sylvia's Home Journal" (October 1878)

 To round off October, the fashion plate which appeared with the October 1878 issue of Sylvia's Home Journal.

Sylvia's was a British women's magazine which ran from 1878 to 1891.  At sixpence an issue it wasn't the cheapest magazine on sale—but neither was it the most expensive!  It mainly contained fashion, fiction and household advice for its middle-class readers, and interestingly, it was one of the few magazines for women actually edited by a woman.

The garments depicted are described as "Elegant Travelling Costumes" in the magazine.  The lady on the left is wearing a dress made of faille (a lightly woven silk with a ribbed texture) with a "short" train.  The woman on the right is wearing a "short costume" (that is, one without a train) made of cashmere.  The back of the costume, which we can't see, is draped in falling loops.  Finally, on the right, is a costume for a little girl aged six or seven.  Her dress has two flounces, and is worn with a matching jacket ornamented with silk cord.

"Bikes and Bloomers" by Kat Jungnickel

Let's start by quoting Susan B. Anthony:

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

The invention of the safety bicycle and the subsequent cycling craze of the 1890s enabled many a woman to pedal her way to freedom, but it wasn't a completely smooth ride.  Cycling women not only ran counter to Victorian ideas of Woman's Place (in the home, not gadding around on the roads!) but there was also the problem of what they should wear.  Conventional dress—long skirts and petticoats—was inconvenient, and sometimes downright dangerous, whereas "rational" dress (i.e. bloomers) was considered indecent and apt to get one harassed on the street.

In Bikes and Bloomers, Kat Jungnickel looks at this dilemma and some of the solutions for it arrived at by Victorian women inventors.  She makes a detailed examination of five patents for cycling costumes and the women who took them out: Alice Bygrave, Julia Gill, Frances Henrietta Müller, Mary and Sarah Pease, and Mary Ward. 

 Alice Bygrave created the most commercially successful cycling costume, the "Bygrave" with a skirt that could be raised or lowered with a system of cords, pulleys and weights.  (It is shown on the cover of Bikes and Bloomers as worn by her cousin Rosina Lane, a competitive racing cyclist!)  Julia Gill's invention, on the other hand, was never put into production.  As she was a court dressmaker and as her costume was "daring" by the standards of the day, it's possible that she only created it as a publicity stunt.  Frances Henrietta Müller was a lifelong feminist, one of the first female students at Cambridge and the founder of a women's newspaper.  Her patent was for a three-piece costume including knickerbockers and a skirt that could be folded up for riding and let down for ordinary wear.  Mary and Sarah Pease devised a costume with a garment that could be worn as a cape while cycling, and as a skirt after dismounting from the bike.  Mary Ward's costume was the most conservative— a skirt with a hem that could be raised or lowered as convenient.

As a part of her research, Kat Jungnickel reproduced every one of these costumes, drafting patterns from the original patent specifications and trying out the finished garments on a bike.  (The patterns are included among the illustrations in Bikes and Bloomers, if anyone is game to try them!)  However the book is more than just a costume history—it is a social history exploring the changing lives of Victorian women, the development of technology and invention, popular recreations in the late nineteenth century and much more.    

  

Kat Jungnickel
Bikes and bloomers: Victorian women inventors and their extraordinary cycle wear
9781906897758
London: Goldsmiths Press, 2018.

Two Photographs from the Early 1860s

 I found these two little cartes de visite on eBay.  Neither of them are dated, but the clothes the sitters are wearing belong to the early 1860s.  Cartes de visite were photographs printed on thin paper and pasted onto thicker cardboard (the size of visiting cards, hence the name).  They were very much cheaper than earlier forms of photography, making it possible for less wealthy people to get their pictures taken.  It also makes it possible for us to see what ordinary Victorians were wearing more than 150 years later!

Both these photographs were taken in Great Britain but were bought in Australia—hinting that they might have been taken as momentoes for emigrating friends or family.

Wormald, Leeds

This sitter from Leeds is clearly dressed in her best, but just as clearly, her best isn't very expensive.  However she is wearing a fashionable hooped skirt.  The crinoline was one of the first mass produced fashions.  Retailing as low as a few shillings each almost anybody could afford them—much to the consternation of middle class critics and the delight of middle class cartoonists!

Norton & Iris, Islington

More obviously prosperous, this sitter from Islington looks at the camera with a confident expression.  The braid trim on her sleeves appears in fashion plates from around 1861 to 1863, so I can date this photograph to around then.  Of course she is also wearing the ubiquitous crinoline!

More Blouses—and a Bodice (Weldons, June 1897)

What is the difference between a bodice and a blouse?  By the 1890s, not much:

"...by 1890 a blouse had become more than the occasional garment of informal wear.  It became so much worn that in part it lost its original difference from the bodice, and many blouses of the 1890s are as rigidly boned as any of the dress bodices."

Anne M. Buck Victorian Costume and Costume Accessories (1961)

In brief, the main difference seems to have been that a blouse could be worn with any contrasting skirt, whereas a bodice was intended to be worn with only one matching skirt.  Most of the patterns illustrated below are described as "blouses", but it's quite easy to imagine a dressmaker making up a matching skirt for some of these and turning them into "bodices".

 The "Phyllis Blouse" designed for two materials "such as chequered, flowered or plain silk or satin, crȇpon, cachemire, &c., combined with plain soft silk or chiffon".    Excess fabric is "gathered" at the waist and the shoulders.

The "Lydia Blouse" is described as a "dressy design, for fancy silk or satin" and is enlivened with lace, tucks, gathers and frills.  A box pleat (lined with muslin) runs down the front, no doubt in order to conceal the fastenings at the front.

The Ellaline Blouse, double breasted and "suited to fancy and plain silk, trimmed with insertion or lace, braid or beads".

Pattern no. 13617—simply described as "a smocked blouse" and appears very much plainer than most of the blouses featured in this issue of Weldon's Ladies' Journal.   There is no detailed description of the pattern in the magazine, the editors claiming they lacked room for it in the issue.

Still plainer (and also without an accompanying description) is this "Russian Blouse".  Based on a traditional moujik's smock, it opens on one side and is belted in at the waist.

The "Nordica" blouse has a plastron (plastron: ornamental front of a woman's bodice or shirt consisting of colourful material with lace or embroidery) of "coarse lace mounted over coloured silk".

"A Fancy Silk Blouse" is described as having a "full plastron of plain silk" hooking invisibly beneath the accordion-pleated frills gathered on the front.

And lastly, a "bodice"—"The Henrietta Bodice"!  The corselet and the "Zouave part" of this design are to be made of coarse lace over coloured silk or satin and the band collar mounted on canvas.  The whole is fastened down the centre with hooks and eyes.

Cassell's Family Magazine (October 1888)

Cassell's Family Magazine wasn't a fashion magazines: it was a "general interest" magazine, mostly full of fiction.  However, it ran a monthly fashion column probably aimed at middle-class women who weren't particularly fashionable, but wanted to keep abreast of current styles.

This column was split into two halves, the first "From our London correspondent" and the second "From our Paris correspondent."  

 

"It is not often that cheapness and fashion go hand in hand.  We have to congratulate ourselves that this is the case now.  Wool is very inexpensive, and there is no material as universally worn.  Moreover, the patterns are good, the colours becoming and pretty, and the cloths well woven."

"Our London Correspondent" has decided to concentrate on the latest materials available rather than the latest styles.  This is perhaps not surprising given her readers would have been planning their winter wardrobes, a process that involved buying material and having it made up rather than choosing a garment off the rack in a shop.

And what colourful materials were fashionable in the autumn of 1888!  "Our London Correspondent" does her best to convey the vivid nature of these colours within the confines of a black and white magazine:

  

Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Ladies' cloth, in the best quality, is a fabric which is likely to last for years, and the tones this year are particularly tempting.  There is a rich and beautiful chesnut, which might be made up plain or embroidered, and nothing shows off silver, gold or black embroidery better than this particular tone.  The red, of the exact tint of soldiers' coats, is employed for pipings and vests; there are prunes, greys, browns, greens; and an enormous quanity of this cloth has been sold all over the country to the wholesale houses early in the autumn, and promises to be universally worn..."

"Ladies' cloth" is defined as a lightweight broadcloth used for making dresses.

"Plaids in green, red, blue and yellow, and all kinds of mixtures, are quite new; they are invariably fancy plaids and not those appertaining to the clans, and are very varied; checks run through them sometimes, and knickerbocker effects, as well as shaded stripes."

Perhaps the plaids looked something like this dress, worn in 1888 by the bride of Andrew Carnegie.

"Our Paris Correspondent" on the other hand, pays more attention to the latest styles, though she does inform us

"Some new and charming materials have been brought out this autumn, which are as costly as silk, although they are merely silk stripes on wool...

"...The new colours have all much warmth in them.  Women of fashion seem to care for bright tones, and to relieve the more sombre greys and browns with touches of some brilliant hue becoming to the complexion."

 

The picture reproduced above illustrates some of the latest styles as observed by Our Paris Correspondent:

"The Directoire still gives the inspirations as to style.  Our second illustration shows a modified coat of the fashionable cut, which would be a good manner of making up the new stripes of silk on wool, with plain material... If you examine the cut of the coat closely, you will see that it is in fact a Directoire jacket, which here and there has lengthened basques, forming panels...

"The accompanying figure wears a simpler coat, well suited to the plain and striped woolllens.  It has revers in the front, which turn back to show a short striped vest just draped in loose folds... The sleeve at the top is after the old leg of mutton shape to the elbow... This style is guaranteed to diminish the apparent size of the waist.  This costume is made of silver-grey cloth, stripes of silver being laid on the vest; beige-colour with gold is also suited to this new make..."

Stripes were obviously the flavour of the month in October 1888!  As for the "leg of mutton sleeves", they would grow and grow through the early 1890s until they became the enormous "balloon" sleeves of the middle of the next decade.

"The New Monthly Belle Assemblee" (October 1843)

Let's take a quick look at what the Early Victorian woman of fashion would have ideally worn, courtesy of some plates from The New Monthly Belle Assemblee.   It should be noted that only a minority of women wore clothes like this made of fine fabrics and intended for very specific occasions.  Even most of the women who read this magazine might have seen them as more to be aspired to than actually worn!

As usual, the person who wrote the original descriptions of these plates interlarded the text with a lot of obscure French fashion jargon.  The words for today are maucheron (an ornament worn on the upper sleeve) and demi toilette (a costume which is formal enough for most social occasions, but not quite as formal as full evening dress).

 

 The main figure to the left of this fashion plate depicts a two-tiered "London Public Promenade Dress" in rose colour striped with cinnamon colour; worn with a mantelet of green and lavender shot satin, lined with lavender sarsenet (a soft silk fabric).  The bonnet is of "pale orange satin" with velvet flowers.  

The colours as described sound as if they should clash, however the fact that only natural vegetable dyes were available in the 1840s means that the effect might have been softer and less startling than we'd expect.

The figure on the right depicts a "Paris Public Promenade Dress" in blue and white Pekin (a striped silk fabric) with two deep flounces and a bonnet of blue.  This costume seems altogether better coordinated than its London counterpart!

The half figures at the top are (from left to right) a Morning Visiting Dress, a Carriage Dress and a Demi Toilette.

The second plate from this magazine depicts at bottom left, a "demi toilette" in "one of the new shades of grey", trimmed with two "very deep flounces" and sleeves of "moderate width at the top, but increasing in size as [they] descend, and finished with a white satin bonnet, trimmed with pink and white ribbons.

On the right is a "carriage dress" in green and white shaded Pekin and trimmed with quilled ribbons down the front.  The bonnet is of pink satin, trimmed with matching folds of tulle (a fine soft silk or cotton used for making veils and dresses).

The half figures at the top depict—from left to right—a Morning Dress (as a rule less formal than anything worn later in the day) in Victoria plaid, an Evening Dress for a Social Party and on the far right, another Morning Dress in "quadrilled Pekin".

Taking all these illustrations together, we can conclude that fashionable dress in 1843 consisted of full, bell-shaped skirts (often flounced), long pointed bodices cut and ornamented to make them appear even longer and more pointed than they actually were, and tight sleeves, set in low under sloping shoulders.