Was It Ever Fashionable for Women Not to Wear Tops in the 1700
Information technology'southward undeniably the question we get asked more often than any other in the millinery store: how much clothing did the "boilerplate" woman have in the 18th century? On the surface, it seems similar it should be an easy inquiry to answer, but its complexities might surprise you.
One of the documents nosotros beloved to share with visitors is an inventory of the property of a woman named Mary Cooley, which you can view transcribed hither as part of Colonial Williamsburg'due south free digital library collections. Cooley was a nurse-midwife from York Canton who passed away in February of 1778; her status as a widowed adult female and mother to a minor child necessitated a probate inventory be taken to value her estate. At the time of her expiry, her wardrobe included ten gowns, vi petticoats, 13 aprons, 15 caps, and 9 shifts, amid other items. Non bad for a working woman and single mom. Merely a closer expect at the descriptions and values of the garments listed apace reveals a problem with this data. Clearly, Mrs. Cooley was not delivering babies in damask, crimson satin, or Persian silk, so where are her piece of work clothes? Because inventories represented the official tape of a deceased person's estate, they only included items of sufficient worth to be resold. Pieces with no perceived resale value – like well-worn everyday wear – went unenumerated and were simply thrown away, leaving u.s.a. with an incomplete picture of precisely what an individual's wardrobe looked like. There was e'er, in short, more than than what nosotros're left with on newspaper.
Consider, for example, an inventory by Martha Jefferson, married woman of Thomas Jefferson, written several months prior to Mary Cooley'due south in September 1777. Taking stock of her own wardrobe, Martha lists 16 gowns (18 if y'all count the 2 "to be made upward"), nine petticoats, 18 aprons, and 20 shifts. Assuming this personal business relationship is complete (note the number of times she distinguishes "old' items), the numbers are actually quite comparable to what we might imagine Cooley'south to take been, despite the discrepancy in socio-economic status between the ii women.
Header image by Wayne Reynolds
Even these self-reported numbers are problematic, though, when it comes to answering the "how much article of clothing" question. While we're fortunate enough to have a certificate like this, what we lack is its contemporary historical context. What motivated Martha Jefferson to have an inventory like this in the first identify? Should it exist understood as, "Thomas, I only accept xvi gowns! I simply must go shopping earlier the season begins!" Or is it, "I have sixteen gowns. Allow'southward lay off on the spending for a fleck, dear"? Was 16 considered a large number? Was Martha Jefferson representative of women of her socio-economic position, or simply representative of all fashionable women who liked to shop, regardless of class?
Simply didn't people accept to make all their own dress?
Near people knew how to sew in the 18th century. Every bit a basic life skill, sewing was taught to boys and girls from all levels of society as office of their applied education. But knowing how to sew together didn't mean that everyone knew how to make clothing. As we like to say in our shop, knowing how to hammer in a nail doesn't mean you can build a business firm. Cut out the shapes for garments and fitting them to a unique body was something an individual had to be trained to do through a formal apprenticeship. Before patterns, instruction books, and the net democratized that cognition past making it easily attainable, only professionals had the total range and depth of skill necessary to produce clothing. While sewing did happen at home, it was the kind of sewing that mended and maintained a wardrobe, rather than the sewing that manufactured it from outset to finish.
But most people didn't have a lot of money back and so, so how could they afford custom-made clothing? Wasn't that prohibitively expensive?
While it is true that access to currency in the class of cash in the colonies was limited, that didn't terminate people from spending! Remember virtually how the economy works today: about of usa don't behave greenbacks, either. Instead, nosotros rely heavily on credit, a stand up-in for coin that represents the promise of future repayment. The same has been true for 300 years. Eighteenth-century Virginia was an agrarian economic system, significant that virtually people had cash in hand in one case a twelvemonth when their crops were harvested and sold. To keep the economy going in the meantime, merchants and shops maintained credit account books that permitted customers to spend freely — whether they had the funds to back that spending or not. Some things never change!
Go on in mind, also, that simply considering a person may not have a considerable budget to spend on clothing, it doesn't necessarily follow that he or she has to have a pocket-sized wardrobe. Just similar today, article of clothing was bachelor at a wide range of price points. Considering it was the cost of materials — and non the cost of labor — that dictated the value of well-nigh appurtenances, consumers simply chose less expensive fabrics to get more affordable garments. The season's most fashionable style could be cut merely as easily in a workaday worsted wool equally in a luxury silk brocade. Given the choice, would you rather spend $150 on one proper name-brand pair of shoes, or the same corporeality on iii $50 pairs of shoes without the designer characterization? For some people, "manner" is in the status of the make, while for others, multifariousness of ensembles is more important. The way a person chooses to dress — both in the 18th century and today — tells united states much more nearly his or her priorities and interests as an individual than it does about his or her social condition or income level.
Just I know for a fact that closets were quite pocket-size and houses in the by didn't accept many of them, if they had them at all. Doesn't that imply that people couldn't have had as much clothing?
True! The lack of closet infinite is a frequent and accurate observation fabricated by visitors to our historic houses hither at CW. Simply closets in the 18th century were used for very dissimilar things than nosotros tend to use them for today. An 18th-century cupboard could be locked, making it the ideal place to shop valuable portable property, similar the family unit's silver. Wear was stored instead in furniture pieces like chests of drawers and wearing apparel presses, or in portable storage like trunks, making it piece of cake to fix bated off-season or occasional pieces until they were needed again. When actively being worn and circulated within the wardrobe, wear could be kept readily accessible on pegs to air out and to help forbid wrinkles.
But that brings us full circumvolve! How much tin you really fit in just a chest of drawers? It can't be much at all…
Nosotros wondered about that, also! Being the experimental and experiential historians that nosotros are, we in the millinery store decided to put this quandary to the examination using Mary Cooley's inventory. This year's woodworker'southward symposium dorsum in January focused on — you guessed it! — a breast of drawers, so we seized the serendipitous opportunity to put together a programme for some of the attendees that put the chest'southward true book to test.
To our own and our attendees' surprise, what nosotros discovered was that a four-drawer chest could comfortably accommodate not only the entirety of Mary Cooley'southward inventory as recorded, but a number of additional pieces likewise. In the interest of representing a working woman's wardrobe as accurately every bit possible, we added to the pile two flannel waistcoats, 3 underpetticoats (2 linen and one wool flannel), two bedgowns (semi-fitted jackets for working wear), and two extra "washing" linen gowns appropriate to her profession as a nurse-midwife. The entire wardrobe fit beautifully! We like to call up that the "chest" that's also listed on the inventory was in one case used in very much the same way, helping to keep a working woman'due south everyday wardrobe neat and organized and ready to wearable.
Apprentice milliner and mantua-maker Rebecca Starkins joined the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2016. Her research interests include puzzling out the intricacies of outerwear styles and examining representations of working women in 18th- and 19th- century literature by female writers.
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