"Madame" (Johanna) Weigel was one of the early movers and shakers in Australian fashion. Along with her husband Oscar she founded Australia's first business manufacturing paper dress patterns in 1878. Before then Australian women had to rely on patterns from overseas for home sewing, with an occasional (pirated) pattern made available through locally published newspapers or magazines.
In Madame Weigel: the Woman Who Clothed the Australasian Colonies, Veronica R. Lampkin tries to unravel the past of Johanna Weigel. I say "tries" to unravel because very little is known about this mysterious woman. She dropped a few autobiographical hints in her magazines, but no primary evidence remains: no letters, no diaries, nor even authenticated photographs!
Born Johanna Astman in Prussia in 1847 in a "privileged position of estates, servants, and peasants" she suddenly found herself homeless at the age of sixteen when her father went bankrupt. (Lampkin provides evidence for a slightly different version of events in the final chapter of this biography.) A resourceful girl, she made her way to her godmother in Vienna. Nine years later she emigrated to New York.
What did she do in New York? Legend has it that she worked for the McCall Pattern Company as a fashion designer, though there is no direct evidence to substantiate this. What is certain is the fact that she met and married Oscar Weigel, another immigrant from Germany. Oscar had taken out US citizenship, so they must have intended to stay in America. Instead they emigrated yet again in 1877, this time to Melbourne.
Many accounts make the Weigels' arrival in Victoria and the setting up of their business seem almost accidental: on Madame Weigel's death in 1940 it was reported that "She came to Australia on her honeymoon in 1877, and began her business in Richmond in 1877." "By chance she designed a paper pattern for a woman in her hotel," another account read. Veronica Lampkin unpicks this romantic story to get at the more pragmatic truth. The Weigels were unlikely to have been on their honeymoon in 1877, as they had already been married two years. The fact that they set up their paper pattern business in the same year that they arrived indicates that they had planned their move—paper pattern making requires specialist plant that would have had to have been imported to Australia. Lampkin theorises that Oscar and Johanna Weigel came to Australia in order to break into the sewing pattern business in a market that was less competitive than the United States.
From these beginnings the Weigels' business grew. If Madame Weigel had worked for McCall's she made good use of her experience in Australia. By the 1890s the Oscar and Johanna Weigel had 270 agencies selling Weigel's patterns, and by 1916 one million patterns were being sold each year. They also established Australia's first fashion magazine (Weigel's Journal of Fashion—later, after Oscar's death in 1915, Madame Weigel's Journal of Fashion). Johanna Weigel used the Journal as a vehicle for self-expression, and a lot of her biography has been pieced together from her articles for the magazine.
Much of this takes the form of travel writing, because Madame became an indefatigable globe-trotter from the 1890s on, first with her husband Oscar and then with her maid/companion Sarah Neilson. Her travels began when her business was well-established and she could afford to cruise in luxury—a far cry from the immigrant voyages that took her to America and Australia! She was also a keen-eyed social commentator and fashion journalist; and since she wrote from the late Victorian era to the 1930s she witnessed a lot of changes both social and sartorial.
While there are gaps in Madame s biography, there is much more information available about her patterns—mostly from her magazine and pattern catalogues. Madame Weigel's Patterns: 1878-1950 goes into detail about the patterns she was peddling, and incidentally provides a social history of Australian and New Zealand women through their clothes—and the clothes they made for their families!
Beginning with Pattern no. 100 (Lady's Princess Robe) in 1878, Weigel's issued over 9000 patterns before the firm closed in 1968. Madame Weigel's Patterns: 1878-1950 surveys the 6824 patterns issued from the beginning until Madame Weigel's Journal of Fashion ceased publication in 1950.
Madame Weigel liked to stress that her patterns were made for Australian women:
'"That fashion may be all very well for England", she exclaims, as she throws aside her study books, "and that may be the taste of Paris, and the American will perhaps be best suited by that style, but my people... want something between all these, suitable for their climate, their surroundings, and very particularly, for their purses,", and again she thinks and plans and sketches.'
Weigels patterns were sold to women who sewed for their households as well as for themselves, and were particularly prized in rural and remote areas. They can be classed into two 'tiers'. The first tier consisted of original and newly issued patterns presenting "contemporary style and new fashion", the second of repeated patterns presenting "enduring favourites, practical garments that were more clothing than fashion". Clothes for men and boys tended to fall into the second category—as well as garments such as underwear, nightwear and work wear.
In her preface, the author of Madame Weigel's Patterns describes the book as "a collection of essays and notes tailored to showcase Madame Weigel's pattern series". Each chapter, therefore, explores the subject from a different angle. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss the patterns as manufactured objects and Weigels as a business. Chapter 3 discusses "Australian seasons & Australian women", exploring when and how Madame Weigel's patterns would have been used, and how seasonable styles changed through the years.
Chapter 4 looks at international influences on Weigel's patterns and chapter 5 at fashion in Weigel's patterns and in her Journal of Fashion. The magazine not only reported on the latest fashions, but also offered advice to and answered the questions of readers. Chapter 6 takes a strictly chronological approach, looking at "The decades of fashion in Weigel's patterns" and chapter 7 looks at "Style in Weigel's patterns", noting how particular styles, for example the Norfolk style, the princess style or the cutaway style, came and went.
Chapter 8 explores "The lifecycle of Weigel's patterns", covering bridal wear, maternity wear and children's wear before discussing the range of garments worn by adult women (including underwear and work clothes). Chapter 9 looks at accessories and chapter 10 discusses "Choosing a Weigel's pattern for a purpose", whether that purpose was cleaning the house, travelling, attending an evening function or playing sport.
The final chapters, Chapters 11 and 12, look at the practicalities of sewing with a Weigel's pattern and clothes maintenance—the latter quite time-consuming in an era when clothes were expensive and expected to last, and washing machines had yet to be invented!
You can read Madame Weigel's Patterns: 1878-1950 in order or dip in and out of chapters as different topics take your fancy. Veronica R. Lampton has taken what at first appears quite a narrow subject—the output of one sewing pattern firm in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—and uses it to make a detailed examination of Australian women and their clothes and the attitudes surrounding them.
(The books can be obtained at: https://www.madameweigel.com.au/)
Madame Weigel: the woman who clothed the Australasian Colonies / by Veronica A. Lampkin
[Carrara, Queensland] : Veronica R. Lampkin, 2015
ISBN: 9780994238306
Southport, QLD : Veronica R. Lampkin, 2020
ISBN: 9780994238313
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