Found Online: The Gender and Women's Studies Collection at the University of Wisconsin (1910s-1930s)

You sometimes find fashion and costume history resources in the strangest places.  One of them is in the digital Gender and Women's Studies Collection at the University of Wisconsin.  The name of this site is enough to tell you that the scope of the collection is wider than fashion alone, but such is the importance of clothes and style in women's lives that there are plenty of things to explore if that is where your main interest lies.

Here are some of the highlights!  Click on the images to go to the publications.

What Well Dressed Women Will Wear This Fall.  This little catalogue from 1911 promotes coats and suits made by H. Black and Company under the trade name "Wooltex".

From the same decade: Portfolio of Lady Duff-Gordon's original designs, published by Sears-Roebuck in 1917.

Lady Duff-Gordon was an English couturiѐre who designed under the label "Lucile".  By 1917 she had salons in London, New York and Paris, had licensed her name for various luxury goods, designed for films and the stage and penned fashion columns for women's magazines (including Harper's Bazaar and Good Housekeeping).  She is also credited as the first designer to hold catwalk fashion shows with live models and music.

This portfolio was an attempt to make her fashions available to a wider public at a lower price: though the clothes are pricey for Sears they would have cost customers ten times as much to buy original designs at one of Lucile's salons!

Fashions of the Hour—published in January 1927 by Marshall Field & Company.  The latest fashions to buy from the Chicago department store.

And finally we have The Style Book of Slenderizing Fashions by Lane Bryant.   This catalogue contains 80 pages of clothes for the not-so slender woman including everything from hats to corsets.  The styles are typically 1930s, albeit in larger than average sizes!

Of course, this is not the entire collection.  When you visit the site, check out some of the periodicals there as well!

"Seventeen" (1953)

The fifties were said to have brought forth the "teenager"—but you wouldn't know it from these fashions appearing on the cover of Seventeen. 

July 1953

July 1953 features Pattern 4367 from Simplicity—a "red dress of wool, nylon and Dacron by Miliken.  Beret was a "John Frederics Charmer" and the bag a "Talon Boodle Bag".

October 1953

October's cover displayed a dress by Teena Paige—"sparkling fresh in a scoop-necked rayon bengaline... In beige or turquoise with black braid markings, a blag patent belt."  The hat was a "Par Avion helmet hat by Colby."

Butterick Goes Hollywood ("The Delineator" 1933)

Between the wars readers of Vogue got their fashion inspiration from the great Paris couturiers.  More ordinary women, however, got their fashion ideas from Hollywood.  The big studios had workrooms and designers on contract to create glamorous fashions for their larger-than-life leading ladies, and audiences lapped it all up.

Clothing manufacturers would do knockoffs of film fashions (and clothes inspired by film fashions) but there was still room for home dressmakers who wanted to try and make that movie star look for themselves.  Thus we come to these licensed patterns issued by Butterick and appearing in issues of The Delineator in 1933.

Here we start in May 1933 with a costume worn by Katherine Hepburn in Christopher Strong:

The Delineator, May 1933

It was her first starring role, but the editors of The Delineator were more interested in the way she wore her clothes:

"DELINEATOR is especially interested in Katherine Hepburn because of the way she wears clothes.  She has that thing called chic.  There are only about ten motion picture actresses who have, by the way, and Miss Hepburn is one of the most chic of them all, and what she wears in a picture to-day has a good chance of being what Young America
is going to wear tomorrow."

Butterick reproduced the pattern for her "plaid-blouse frock" (Pattern 5156).  The original was designed by Howard Greer.  Also designed by Greer for the same movie was this "organdy evening gown" worn by Helen Chandler.  The Delineator assured home sewers that the pattern (no. 5154)  "didn't represent lots and lots of work for that lace is sewed along the edge only." 

The Delineator, May 1933

June saw The Delineator promoting fashions from a Bette Davis film: The Working Man.  This time the designer was Orry-Kelly, working for Warner Brothers.  The magazine was happy to assure its readers that "Butterick is the only pattern company which has the right to reproduce these Bette Davis costumes in patterns."

The Delineator, June 1933

She's seen in the still above wearing a plaid gingham bathing suit—reproduced below in pattern 5216:

We're assured that this suit is "fashion news, for the cotton suit is the suit of the summer—much, much smarter than the wool one."

The Delineator, June 1933

We're told that the "two-color" dress above (Pattern 5214 below)

"tends to reduce a "Boss" to a state where he will eat out of one's hand.  That dress might be just the thing for any girl who is about to ease in some advanced ideas on the subject of an extra week's vacation this summer—with pay."

The still below shows Bette Davis in a four-pocket frock that is "a grand dress to be fired in!"

The Delineator, June 1933

Reproduced below as Pattern 5204:

 

Lastly, an illustration for Pattern 5212.  We aren't shown it as worn by Bette Davis in The Working Man, but we are told it would make "the best possible "Saturday dress"".

The editors of The Delineator note that 

"the patterns differ from the "movie frocks" only in the sleeves—the two long-sleeved frocks are reproduced in the pattern sketches here with short sleeves to suit the season.  However, the patterns are made with long sleeves, too, so you can make the frocks either way."

August 1933 showed us costumes worn by Helen Twelvetrees in Disgraced, and designed by Travis Banton "who is Somebody among Hollywood designers."  (He is best known today for having designed Marlene Dietrich's costumes for her early American movies.)  But back to Miss Twelvetrees and Disgraced. It seems that the clothes were one of the main selling points of this movie:

The Delineator, August 1933

 "As Gay, the beautiful mannequin who causes all the turmoil in this picture, Miss Twelvetrees wears lots of smart things... And modelling being her job, you get plenty of time to look at them to your heart's content.  In fact, so pleased were we to have a chance to look at the clothes in this film calmly—without having them whisked in and out in the usual manner—that we're thinking of starting a movement for all future heroines to be cast as models—for our benefit."

 
 Above is one of the costumes reproduced in pattern 5297. 

"Its role in the picture is in navy blue twill and navy and white gingham.  A perfect combination, just that way, for a campus frock for the college-bound wardrobe this fall."

The Delineator, August 1933

The highlight of this picture was a wedding gown:

"Miss Twelvetrees wears a wedding gown that is our idea of a wedding gown.  It had us practically in a swoon.  All  that blond loveliness of course helped, but even a plainer girl, we imagine, would look pretty glamourous in such a gown.  It's a satin affair, with a yoke of fine net, and a tulle veil that is like a cape and quite the most lovely one we've seen in years of weddings on- and off-stage."

Here it is, reproduced in Butterick pattern 5299.

 There was no way the home sewers of 1933 could ever reproduce these fashion exactly—to begin with, the movies were made in black and white, and our seamstresses would be sewing in colour!  What's more, the studios of the time dressed the stars of their 'A' pictures in the best of materials: supporting actresses and leads in 'B' movies could wear cotton, rayon and rabbit fur, but the stars had to wear real silk, satin and mink.  It's unlikely that the budget of the average home dressmaker in the Depression years would run to such extravagances.  Still, anyone could dream, and it's nice to think of the women of the 1930s trying to live their movie star fantasies through their sewing machines.

"La Mode" (25th of July, 1915)

 

I got this magazine—bound with a number of other issues from the same year—at a vintage fashion fair where someone was disposing of material used in an exhibition of First World War fashion.  The covers of the issues from earlier in 1915 all have patriotic themes: pictures of Huns confronting innocent Belgians, pictures of women and children giving gifts to wounded soldiers, pictures of royalty from allied nations.  However by this issue La Mode had banished the war from its front cover and had reverted to its role of a fashion magazine pure and simple.

The clothes worn by the models in this illustration are noticeably simpler and easier fitting than the clothes that were fashionable less than a year earlier.  The war was already making its mark on women's clothing.  Inside, the editorial staff had a few words of praise for tailored suits:

Costumes Tailleur

Avec un simple et correct tailleur, une femme est toujours élégante, sis a chausure et ses gants sont irréprochables de fraicher.

On tait cette année beaucoup de tailleurs à rayures plus ou moins irrégulieres, à damiers, éccosais, dans des tons neuters et doux de preference.

Mais nous insisterons sur la corréction de la coupe tailleur tradionnelle: et qui reste la caractéristique d’une femme élegante.

Malgré la coupe correct, le costume en lainage léger sera trés agréable pour les villégiatures de l’éte.  

[Tailored Suits

With a simple and correct tailor, a woman is always elegant, wearing impeccably fresh shoes and gloves.  

This year there have been many suits with more or less irregular stripes, checks, and tartans, preferably in neutral and soft tones.

But we will insist of the correctness of the traditional tailor cut which remains characteristic of an elegant woman.

Despite the correct cut, the light wool suit will be very pleasant for summer resorts.]

"Dress in the Age of Jane Austen" by Hilary Davidson

 

In the last thirty years the books of Jane Austen have become popular than ever, inspiring not only film and TV adaptations (many adaptations) but Regency costuming worn at Austen-inspired reenactments and get-togethers.  However what was clothing really like in Jane Austen's lifetime, and what did it mean to its wearers?  Dress in the Age of Jane Austen takes an in-depth look at the subject.

The book uses Jane Austen and her works as a focal point.  It draws heavily on her books and correspondence as evidence of what the people of her class and era wore, and what they thought about the clothes they wore, how they made or procured their garments, and how they cared for them.  Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, however, is not limited to the dress of Jane Austen's characters or Jane Austen's family—it covers the wider society and uses material from a variety of sources.

Beginning with an introductory chapter ("Self") Davidson gives a quick rundown of the fashions worn between 1795 and 1820 and summarises the evidence (from fashion plates to surviving garments) available on the topic.  "Home" follows, and in this chapter the author discusses the intimate apparel worn by Jane Austen's contemporaries, from shifts and stays to house gowns and dressing gowns.  

"Village" comes next, and in it Davidson explores the social world immediately beyond the self and the family: how fashions were transmitted locally through gossip and observation, how one maintained one's status and respectability through clothing, and how one obtained clothes through local traders and networks.  "Country" concentrates on clothing worn outdoors.  Riding and sporting dress was the particular domain of men (though some women had riding habits, of course) but outdoor dress was needed by everyone, for travelling or just for getting around.  This chapter chapter not only covers overcoats and cloaks, but also discusses outdoor boots and shoes (what would Lizzie have worn for her walk to Nethercoats?) as well as the first umbrellas!  It also gives a peek at what ordinary country folk, as distinct from the middle classes and gentry, were wearing.

"City" plunges us into the fashionable world (mostly of Bath and London). Here we catch a glimpse of the trendsetting circles of royalty and the aristocracy.  "Nation" looks at costume in the British Isles as a whole, and of its component parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and contrasts it with the fashions of France and the continent.  Since Britain was at war for most of the period covered in this book, "Nation" also explores military uniforms, and what they meant in terms of male display.

Finally we come to "World", which takes us quickly around the nascent British Empire.  This last chapter links us back to Jane Austen and her family—many of whom were officers in the Navy!

I brought away several things from the book as a whole.  Firstly, that as far as fashion goes, Jane Austen's era was far, far more complex than it is usually credited.  Technological innovations had a hand in changing fashion—for example the fashions of 1820 were covered in ribbon trimmings (while the fashions of 1795 were not) largely because new production techniques made ribbons cheaper and more available in 1820 than in 1795.  Networks of people spread out over the country and the rest of the world influenced fashion through describing different styles, introducing new fashions into new neighbourhoods, and making gifts of fashion items from around the world.  Though we tend to see this era as timeless, it was in fact the beginning of the modern era.

Lastly, the impression I got was that clothing in Jane Austen's era was hard work, particularly for women!  Every garment was made by hand: if not by professionals, then by the wearer or the wearer's female kin.  Well into the nineteenth century women's "work" was synonymous with sewing.  Which brings me back to Jane Austen herself: her brothers, sailing around the world on the business of the Royal Navy would have taken a good supply of shirts—many of which would have been sewn by Jane herself.

Dress in the age of Jane Austen: Regency fashion / by Hilary Davidson
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019.

ISBN: 9780300218725

Seven From Style Pattern Book (Autumn/Winter 1974)

While "do your own thing" was still very much part of the mindset of the mid-1970s, some of the wilder fashion excesses of the late 1960s and the early 1970s had been moderated.  "Coordinates" were the name of the game—along with "mix n' match".

"Co-ordinate fabrics are taking a giant step towards making our lives a lot more versatile.  

Make today's suit from two different  fabrics that were obviously made for each other, wear the jacket and skirt individually with casual separates, and presto, two more totally different looks.

Mix florals, prints, stripes in one dress or lightweight skirt and jacket, or how about a shirt with contrast collar and cuff?

It all adds up to your very own look, with the designer's touch."

 Let's see what it all adds up to in one fashion magazine from 1974.

On the cover: orange.  Lot's and lots of coordinated orange.  From inside the magazine: "For the jacket we used acrylic pile Borglama by Borg Textiles... For the skirt Sparva synthetic fibre tartan... The shirt... is in Samual Courtauld's Tricelon Pongee..."  In other words, lots of synthetic fibres too.

A hostess dress—one among a selection of fashions "that set a bright mood for cosy dinners and all but the most formal parties... or for making stay at home evenings special."  Loosely fitted, and falling from stretch shirring under the bust, it is in a brightly floral patterned fabric.

An altogether more conservative look in off-white/beige.  This outfit is described as a "town or country classic" in the text.

Bright colours again in this "sleeveless jacket and skirt", offset by a patterned blouse.  It's all-so 1970s, but somehow not undignified.

Back to floral fabric again for this more formal evening dress.  The lines of this dress are elegant, but I wish they had made it up in different material.  I have seen the same sort of pattern on wallpaper and curtain fabrics of the era, and this looks just cheesy. 

And now for an outfit made up in those mixed patterns we were promised earlier in the magazine!  This Style pattern is promoted as a "Young Shape Design", specifically targeted towards wearers with more youthful figures.

And finally, for indoors: a "misses housecoat and nightdress in two length"—made up and photographed in a floor-length version.  With its frills and made in a flower-decorated fabric, it is a very traditionally feminine garment.

"Dress: In Season and In Reason" (April 1889)

The Girl's Own Paper started life in 1880 as a weekly magazine for middle-class young women—teenagers, really, to use a word coined at a later date.  True to its time it was full of piety and tales of good works—and a monthly fashion column.  Written by "A Lady Dressmaker", this column described what was "in" for its readers, and suggested ways they could reproduce them (on a low budget, if necessary).  Unlike many other fashion columns, then and later, the writer was not afraid to criticise what was in fashion, either on moral or aesthetic grounds.  Since The Girl's Own Paper wasn't interested in pushing every latest fad in order to please its advertisers it's an invaluable resource for those interested in

The column appearing in the Girl's Own Paper of April 27 1889 begins by noting that a fashion revival is in progress—of the "Directory" (i.e. Directoire) style of the 1790s:

In the sketch of "The Newest Gowns at the Private View", I have done my best gather together everything that is now known of the future spring styles in dress.  The cold and inclement February kept every idea of spring in the background, and so there is perhaps rather less of novelty than usually to be observed at this time.  Although there are many dresses of the "Directory" style still being produced, I do not imagine that we shall have quite as much of it as during the winter.  The long coats can be so well imitated by the skirts with large pockets and kilted backs and bodices that they will, I think, fall out of favour; while the more simple "Empire" costume, will, very probably, be more worn than anything else.

In the "Private View" we show the new method of making up the striped materials on the left-hand side.  Next to that is the Directoire jacket, and in the front, the new sleeved mantle in plain black velvet.  Of the two gowns at the back, the one is a Directoire jacket, with embroidery, and the other a tailor-made gown, with white panel and waistcoat.  The different shapes and trimmings of the hats and bonnets are also represented.

Of mantles and jackets the "Lady Dressmaker" writes:

1880s mantle, via Pinterest

In the way of spring mantles there seems to be nothing novel, but all the old shapes with modifications will be worn.  Nearly all are short at the back and have long ends in front.  The new jackets have wonderfully embroidered fronts, with a long, straight-cut revers at either side, the linings being of moiré silk.  The latest models appear to be in plain black cloth, with plain black moiré facings in front.  But there are plenty of dark stone, brown, grey, twine and cinnamon colours.  

... There are some novel redingotes with a wide revers in front and a triple "Garrick cape" on the shoulders at the back.  On of the novel wys of putting on braid is to lay it on in stripes that follow the seams of jacket, and finish it off in loops, arranged like trefoil at the edge.  This style will add length to the figure, and become short people.

The bustle was going "out"—but emphasis still lingered on the back of the skirt:

The newest skirts are those with small tucks in front, or are gathered for several inches down.  The backs of these are laid in folds.  The "Empire skirt" does not need with steels or a mattress; but the folds of the dress itself is  are slightly wadded, either underneath or in the folds themselves, to make them stand out.

 Hats were transitioning from the high-crowned styles that were fashionable in the 1880s to the flatter shapes fashionable in the 1890s:


... There are many styles of hats, both large and small.  The smaller shapes have the brim very often turned up at the back, and not in front.  And there is a very ugly hat which has a round brim, caught up to the crown in several places at equal distances all round.  The crowns and brims are often of different materials in various colours, and the ribbons for trimming hats are as wide as those used for bonnets. 

Though few of their readers were likely to go to Court (that is, the Royal Court, rather than to a court of law) The Girl's Own Paper included a sketch of the latest styles:

I am sure that many of my readers will like to see the new Court bodices which the Queen has lately authorised, as a protection to those who cannot wear the ordinary round Court bodice, that has been worn during Her Majesty's reign.  The bodice represented as open can be filled in with white tulle or net, quite up to the throat, if preferred, and transparent sleeves can be used instead of thick ones.  It is reported that they were not very generally adopted at the first Drawing Room held this year; but they are new, and are, moreover, intended for invalids and those advancing in life; for though a doctor's certificate is no longer needed, the permission of  the Lord Chamberlain has to be asked.  

(Well into the twentieth century the official dress for women being presented at court included a low-cut bodice and short sleeves.)


For people wanting to see more of this publication: I've searched online for scans of The Girl's Own Paper, but have been unable to find any freely accessible copies.  However, anyone who is a member of a library which subscribes to Gale Cengage resources might be able to find it: they have all the issues between 1880 and 1900 scanned and available through their "Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals" database.

"Good Needlework" (February 1933)

 Good Needlework was a craft magazine,not a fashion magazine.  However in each issue in the early 1930s they'd usually include a plate illustrating lingerie patterns from "Bestway" and a selection of their own transfers for embroidering on the finished garments.

In an era when most women made at least some of their clothes at home, and glamorous lingerie wasn't necessarily cheap or easy to get hold of, these patterns must have been a treat for many an accomplished needlewoman.

 

Above are illustrations for bras, knickers, slips, nighties, bed jackets, robes and a pair of camiknickers.