We stand on the lofty ridge of Time!
The fashion of stiff corsets never will resume.
We are constrained to note, “The female mind
could never have devised the loom.”
[from Chestnut Ridge, a verse-history-in-progress of southwestern Pennsylvania]
**
Fashion journals such as Godey's Lady's Book had an enormous impact on American women, particular those who lived in the hinterlands. They democratized fashion: the Ingalls women, for instance, copied Godey's illustrations when they designed their new go-to-church dresses in the western territories. But magazines such as Godey's also reinforced a philosophy of womanhood: emphasizing appropriate family roles and spheres of feminine interest, and subtly (or not so subtly) dismissing woman's capacity for curiosity. At the same time, they were instrumental in promoting gradual improvements in one of the most galling of feminine fashion requirements: the corset. As period photographs make clear, corset styles changed in every decade of the nineteenth century. Whereas 1840s corsets compressed and flattened women's curves, 1890s corsets emphasized a more natural figure. A late-century woman wearing a corset could actually ride a bike or play tennis, and thus the history of middle-class leisure began to change.
For a fascinating history of the everyday dress of nineteenth-century American women, check out Joan Severa's Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840-1900.
And never forget: "Taste and ingenuity, with a very small amount of cash, will enable a lady to appear always fashionably attired. . . . No excellence of mind or soul can be hoped from an idle woman" (Godey's, September 1845).
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