Kathleen Marple Kalb's Blog, page 11

NOT SO SKINNY DIPPING

People have been swimming for hundreds of years. They’ve only been doing it in cute little outfits for a couple centuries. For most of human civilization, your bathing suit and your birthday suit were the same thing. Oh, folks might grab a loincloth if they were feeling especially modest (or inadequate) but that was about it.
This worked, in part, because people weren’t really swimming laps. They were “bathing,” most of the time, going for a healthful dip in the ocean, lake, or mineral spring, and almost always in sex-segregated groups so nobody had to look at anything they didn’t want to see – or be seen in a way they didn’t want to be.
Eventually, modesty started to be more of a thing, even when taking the waters. Especially for women. The first female swimsuit was a thing called a “bathing gown,” exactly what it sounds like: a big ol’ nightgown-ish thing that covered you from neck to wrists and ankles, sometimes in thick wool, so that you could get your nice dip without showing anything interesting.
While the women were thrashing around in soggy wool, it won’t surprise you to know that the guys were still frolicking naked. Or maybe leaving their breeches on. (Until at least the early 18th century, a lot of men didn’t bother with boxers or briefs, but just tucked the very long end of a shirt around everything. Sorry – that’s one of those things you can’t un-know!)
But by the 1800s, bathing was starting to become a bigger deal, and often a touristy one. As beach days became more fun, people became a lot less interested in partaking either in wet wool tents or naked to the world. So enterprising designers started coming up with various “bathing costumes.” Soon, when you hopped in your bathing machine – another post for another summer day! – you could leave your street clothes and put on something that would let you actually move around in the water.
That did NOT mean you were allowed to surrender standards of modesty. If you were a lady, chances were pretty good that your bathing suit started with big thick wool stockings, topped with shorts or a split skirt, and a tunic over that. Until the very end of the 19th century, the tunic had sleeves, and there wasn’t much actual skin showing. Not comfortable…but pretty sensible in a world before good sunscreen.
The guys, as usual, had noticeably more leeway. No stockings for them. And we got to see their manly arms a long time before the ladies freed the elbow. Men’s swimsuits moved much closer to the baggy union suit underwear that most of them were wearing on dry land…only in bright colors, and often with a tunic top. Just like only the most adventurous fellas wear the teensy ones now (and only a very few of them should!) there were men who were a lot more comfortable out there with a tunic over any sensitive spots.
And this time – the pearl-clutchers were actually right. You start with a swimsuit of a long-sleeve tunic over a skirt over stockings…and the first thing you know, things happen. By the end of the 19th century, a lot of women had ditched the stockings – do YOU want to wrap your legs in soggy wool knit? – and cut off the sleeves. Soon, they’d be borrowing the union suit idea from the boys – and the guys would get rid of their shirts.
Major upgrade if you ask me…just no teensy ones, please, fellas!

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LOVE THAT RED

Whether you associate it with Grace Kelly, Taylor Swift or your stylish aunt, simple bright-red lipstick has been a classic since at least Ancient Egypt. It’s a statement look and always has been: I’m here. I’m a woman. And I’m not apologizing for that.
Lip color, bright or neutral, has always been a way for women to make a statement.
It’s a choice.
Before we went down to the drugstore to buy our lippies, women made lip salves at home, and it was up to them (or their servants) to decide whether to add color – and how much. Often, that was determined by the fashions of the time.
Women (and plenty of men!) have always tried to enhance their appearance, but what they were emphasizing, and how, depended on the time. Really bright lips were sometimes associated with courtesans or other “bad women,” and respectable wives would redden their mouths without going too far.
Not always, though. At the court of Elizabeth I, flaming vermilion-red lip color was practically a requirement. Queen Gloriana never went out without a full face of artifice, and her ladies followed suit.
Red lips usually tracked with makeup trends: if the heavy, stylized look was in, bright rouge was a part of it.
The 19th century, though, was a bit of a makeup desert. It started with the light, natural look of the Regency, a definite reaction to the stiff, powdered 18th century style…and then the Victorians got involved. They were very much from the “good women don’t wear makeup” school, and it wasn’t until the nice ladies realized how much fun actresses were having with greasepaint that things changed.
Lipstick (as it became in the 1910s – see last week’s post!) got redder and more noticeable as the new 20th century continued. By the 1920s, it was the redder the better if you were a flapper, and a good bright shade even if you weren’t. Cosmetic companies made some other shades, like coral or orange, but lipstick stayed primarily red for decades.
The classic red lip really evolved over the middle of the 20th century. By the 1960s, it was associated with both the elegance of Grace Kelly – and the sexiness of Marilyn Monroe. Probably meeting somewhere in the middle around Elizabeth Taylor.
And then came the 1960s.
For the first – but not the last – time, people flirted with all kinds of exotic shades, from white to green to blinding purple. You can see the whole natural brownish 1970s lipstick thing as a reaction to that, and I won’t argue.
A lot of millennials may have started their lipstick career with black – or near-black – lipstick…or the second run through the wild brights that followed around Y2K. And then, no surprise, we hung up our velour sweatsuits and went back to the classics.
There’s no doubt that lip colors follow the fashion cycle. And a lot of us who’d never bother re-doing our wardrobes every year will happily buy the new lip color of the moment, just for a fun little change.
Mine is flaming pink – today, but I still keep thinking about those blues….

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DOES SHE ROUGE?

Women have been looking for ways to redden their lips since the first cave woman realized her berry snack had a side benefit. Ancient ladies from Greece to Egypt always had a pot of some kind of lip-salve, and it often had a red coloring, whether from fruit, flowers – or even crushed insects.
The recipes didn’t really change much over the next couple of millennia. It was usually a heavy oil or tallow preparation – or maybe beeswax and some kind of flower water, but the idea remained the same: a schmear of something to soften the lips and add a bit of color.
During the Renaissance, it was more than a bit of color. With the flamboyant makeup styles of the time (white-lead and egg-white foundation – no kidding!) a vermilion lip was part of the look. And sometimes it really WAS a vermilion lip – colored with the same dangerous mercury-sulfide used in paint!
Heavy makeup was definitely out by the nineteenth century, first thanks to the light and natural styles after the French Revolution, and then tangled up with the Victorians’ ideas of artless maidenly purity. By the late 19th century, a “good woman” would definitely have a pot of tinted lip salve on her vanity…but it would be a light tint, and she’d never put it on in public.
Well, until Sarah Bernhardt, anyhow.
The great actress, like all performers, wore greasepaint onstage. But she liked the look of a red lip and started wearing it offstage. Since she wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet, she soon decided that she’d touch it up wherever and whenever she liked.
It would take a few decades for ordinary women to get comfortable with the idea of public touch-ups, but by the turn of the 20th century, most ladies had no problem with going out with a noticeably reddened lip. And many would have rouge in their bags for a private fix.
That rouge, by the way, was usually in a pot or vial.
Chemists certainly knew how to make a lipstick by then; pomades, perfumes and other things were sold in stick form from the mid-1800s. And there definitely were colored lip-salves available as sticks by the 1890s, though it seems they were being sold as theatrical makeup.
A lady’s rouge, though, was usually a little pot on her dressing table, or packed into a fancy “vanity case,” in her purse, often with rice powder for her face, a mirror, and maybe other small implements. Lipstick may seem more useful to us – it’s what we’re used to -- but cream rouge was very practical, an easily portable way to have lip and cheek color in one little pot.
Lipstick as such didn’t really catch on until the 1910s…and then with a vengeance! Makeup cases were redesigned to include lipsticks – sometimes in the hinge, a style we sometimes still see today, and lipstick became the main form of lip color. So much so that “lipstick” replaced “rouge” as the generic word for lip color.
Ella Shane, by the way, has a nice little pot of rosepetal lip-salve on her vanity. And as much as she admires Miss Bernhardt, she’s far too much of an old-fashioned lady to take it outside!
Next week – part two of our look at lipstick – with a deep dive into color trends from Queen Elizabeth I to Taylor Swift.

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BLAME IT ON PROHIBITION

If you’ve ever found yourself arguing with a kid who wants a soda, you can “thank” the Temperance Movement. The reformers who pushed through Prohibition also helped spark the creation of a slew of soft drinks, which led directly to our modern sodas. Not, as it turned out, that the ladies approved of them!
Lemonade (as we learned last week) has been around for a long time. So have a variety of other punches, nogs, and cups. Those were usually special-occasion drinks. Day to day, for most of human history, people drank a lot of low-alcohol ales and beer, or sometimes diluted wine. It only made sense, with water quality often uncertain.
In between discovering oxygen and advancing political and religious thought, British chemist Joseph Priestley invented a way to carbonate water, and there were “artificial mineral water” factories by the late 18th century.
Still, it’s not really until the late 19th century that we start to see recognizable “soft drinks.” The term itself is a Temperance reference, an easily understandable one that we still use today: alcoholic drinks are “the hard stuff.”
Most of our sodas didn’t start off as fun drinks. They started as “tonics,” patent medicines sold over the counter at the pharmacy. That’s why many early formulas included things we’d never associate with an innocent treat – including the now-infamous fact that cocaine put the “Coca” in Coca-Cola. Less famous ones had other interesting plant extracts, including gentian, burdock, and even dandelion!
Ginger, too, was a popular favorite. It’s known as a safe soother for an upset stomach. Even today, it’s known as a mild and reliable remedy for pregnancy nausea. (Yep, used it!) It has something else in common with the drinks that have survived until now, too: it’s tasty.
That became important as the drugstore counter evolved toward the soda fountain. Most of the really bitter and nasty things stayed on the pharmacy side – and the sweeter and friendlier concoctions gained favor. Then, as the Temperance movement gained momentum, people needed a place to gather for non-alcoholic drinks, and the drugstore soda fountain began to fill that need.
Surprisingly, though, while Temperance ladies were quite fond of lemonade, they were NOT fans of soda (or pop – a dispute for another day!) It’s understandable why they didn’t like Canada Dry Gingerale: it became extremely popular as a mixer during Prohibition because it killed the taste of bathtub gin.
But Coke? By 1929 there was no coca in the Cola but the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Arkansas still launched a campaign against the “hydra-headed menace.” Even at the time, almost nobody could figure out why.
By the time folks could get legal – and decent – alcohol again, soda was here to stay, in many of the flavors and forms that we know today. (Though there would be lithium in 7-UP until 1948!) And many folks had a taste for the soft, but very sweet, stuff.
The Temperance ladies, of course, had no idea that soda would become a problem of its own, with high-fructose corn syrup sweeteners and massive marketing to kids. They were just trying to get people off the hard stuff and onto something else.
Not a bad example – next time the kid asks for a soda, see if you can sell a gentian tonic.
Yeah, right!

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POUR ONE OUT

When life gives you lemons…
Turns out there’s a lot more to lemonade than juice and sugar.
While people have been enjoying cold citrusy drinks since at least the tenth century, lemonade has picked up surprising resonance for a simple beverage.
Starting with the lemons. First, life hasn’t been giving us actual lemons all that long. We know there were citrons, and other kinds of citrus in Greek and Roman times…but there’s nothing that’s verifiably a lemon until the 12th century. The treat from the tenth-century, enjoyed by the Jewish community in Egypt, was probably a citron slushie. Yum.
There’s no record of the person who actually took lemons and made lemonade, but we can verify that it was first sold as a soft drink in Paris on August 20th, 1630. It was made with sparkling water, sweetened with honey (the New World cane sugar industry wasn’t in full swing yet) and sold from tanks on the vendors’ backs. It was such a hot property that the vendors unionized into the Guild of Limonadiers!
Peak Lemonade came in 19th century America. The first U.S. recipe for lemonade was published in 1824, in the Virginia Housewife, and included egg whites. Egg whites or no, for most people it was an exotic treat. Remember, in most places, the lemons had to be shipped in or grown in a hothouse, so it was expensive and exciting.
That might add a little context to the whole temperance lemonade frenzy.
As hard as it is to imagine anyone seriously thinking a workingman would give up his nightly snort for a soft drink, it might be slightly less off the wall if the substitute were something seen as a treat. Maybe.
Still, by the late 19th century, the temperance movement was doing its best to make the case, pushing the slogan: “Goodbye to liquor, here’s lemonade!” It may not have worked for the guys at the corner bar, but it was the rule at the White House, where First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes (inevitably known as Lemonade Lucy) poured out the soft stuff. When she and husband Rutherford B. left, temperance went with them, until Prohibition made it mandatory.
By the end of the 19th century, just plain lemonade wasn’t all that exotic any more. Fortunately, there were new variations. “Portable lemonade” was what we recognize as drink mix: powdered lemon juice, sugar, and citric acid, useful for the frontier and even the military.
And then there’s pink lemonade.
There are two origin stories: one is fun and one is icky. The fun one is that someone at a circus accidentally dropped red cinnamon candies in the vat of lemonade and eureka, a cool new drink was born. The icky one? One of the trapeze girls accidentally rinsed out her red tights in the water meant for lemonade, and nobody had time to go get more water…so they made it into lemonade and sold it anyway. Another version of that story is even worse: it’s the clown’s socks!
However we ended up with pink lemonade, it still fits perfectly with the idea of making the best of a setback. So, when life gives you lemons – and wet clown socks! – make lemonade!

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I SHAVED MY LEGS FOR THIS?

It’s my favorite country song title – and one thing a 19th century woman would never have to say!
But, that doesn’t mean women didn’t resort to all kinds of creative, and potentially dangerous, ways to get rid of excess hair that WAS visible.
In the days of floor-length skirts and stockings, it didn’t matter in the least if a woman had hairy legs, and honestly, most of the fellas probably didn’t know to notice. Western men who traveled to parts of the world where women were a lot more into depilating did sometimes write about how amazingly smooth the local limbs were…but they would definitely NOT expect their ladies to take up the fashion.
We can also dispense with any thoughts of the bikini wax. That particular variety of personal landscaping didn’t even show up on the map until the mid-20th century. Some folks probably did neaten up the downstairs a little in the Victorian Era, but they sure didn’t talk about it.
No, if women were worrying about hair, they were probably worried about hair somewhere on their face, whether it was overly energetic eyebrows, a bit of peach fuzz, or a more serious mustache situation. But whatever it was, they probably weren’t shaving it.
There’s a reason they called ‘em cut-throat razors back then. Most men used – or paid a barber to use – one of those big scary blades. Safety razors had been invented…but it wasn’t until the Gillette disposable hit the market in 1903 that they became popular. So if the missus wanted to address her mustache with a razor, she’d have to borrow a blade.
Probably not.
Which leads us to all kinds of depilatories. This could be anything from a relatively mild abrasive – to something used in a tanning factory. Women could be, and sometimes were, injured and disfigured for life by some of these preparations. And since it was before any serious safety regulations, they were just out of luck.
If you think that’s scary, how about radiation? No kidding. In the late 19th century, some doctors did X-ray hair removal. Eventually, the doctors decided it was too dangerous for them, but it continued in some private salons well into the 20th century.
Early electrolysis was also available, and almost as risky as those X rays. Long before the modern understanding of electricity, it could still result in burns and hair growing back. But – this one did get safer with time. Fun fact: a lot of Golden Age movie stars got their perfect hairlines thanks to state-of-the-art electrolysis. Rita Hayworth was NOT born with that widow’s peak!
But back to our 19th century lady glaring at her little mustache. She’s down to two of the things we still rely on today: wax and tweezers. If you control the temperature with wax, you’re not going to do much damage, even if it hurts to rip out the hair. Tweezers take time, but they work, even if they’re fussy and just as painful. Still a small thing compared to permanent disfigurement.
So yes, while we may sometimes question if something – or someone – is worth shaving for, it’s still a vast improvement over what Great-Grandma had!

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THE GLORIOUS FOURTH

The Founding Fathers (and Mothers) would not recognize the way we celebrate a lot of holidays these days, but they’d fit right in at a Fourth of July party.
Food and fireworks were at the center of early festivities too, if a lot looser on the safety rules.
It was just as John Adams would have wanted it – in a letter to Abigail, he called for massive nationwide celebrations including parades, shows, illuminations and more. The new country took his advice and Independence Day quickly became an excuse for a grand summer party.
Mr. Adams, though, would not have approved of the way the festivities evolved in New York; Tammany Hall, the infamous political machine, ran the party for most of the 19th century, providing feast and fun in return for votes and clout. Originally, the festivities were a sort of big open street fair with food booths near City Hall.
The neighbors didn’t much like that and spent several decades working to stamp out the party. Eventually, they succeeded – in handing over the event to Tammany Hall. One late 19th century writer observed with a distinctly disapproving sniff that it had become a holiday for little boys and the political machine.
Whoever was running it, though, everyone could still agree that food and fireworks were the center of the party.
Some things are familiar; plenty of people still mark the Fourth with a pig roast. Pickled oysters, not so much. It made sense at the time, though. Oysters were not in season in the summer, at least partly because of the possibility of illness from contaminated water, so the only way you were going to get a fast and simple meal of oysters was to preserve them.
Another treat is something we still enjoy – but not on July 4th: egg nog! While we associate it with the winter holidays, egg nog was actually a year-round festive drink in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was a special-occasion treat because of the huge amount of eggs – and especially the sugar and spices, both of which were expensive and sometimes hard to get. Not to mention the rum or brandy.
Lobster was also often on the menu. And it’s worth remembering that for a very long time, lobsters were poor people’s food because they were plentiful and cheap.
For dessert? Pineapple – very exotic at least until the late 19th century – and various puddings. Thanks to unreliable refrigeration, ice cream was a very high-end delicacy until the late 19th century. (That’s a whole other post!)
So what about the fireworks?
Well, that’s the scary part. Remember that writer who called it a holiday for little boys? He meant that the boys were setting off the fireworks. In the days before federal safety standards, no one thought much of allowing the little guys to run around with firecrackers. Before you clutch your pearls, though, don’t forget that a lot of us grew up waving sparklers around, and they’re not exactly harmless.
Leaving the pyrotechnics to the pros is no great loss – I’ll vote for the Macy’s Spectacular every year! And the eggnog? Well, maybe if you make it into ice cream!

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YOU ARE WHO YOU SAY YOU ARE

“Google him.”
How many times have you said it to a friend about a new acquaintance, business connection or potential date?
Even before Google, there were databases, ways to quickly check out a person and at least find out if they were who they said they were…and hadn’t done anything terrible.
But what did people do before computerized records?
For centuries, letters of introduction were one big way to get a start in a new place. You’d have a (hopefully prominent) acquaintance write a letter to their equally prominent friend in your new town, telling them what a great person you are. It was a good way to get off on the right foot. Even now, many of us will ask a friend or mentor to make a few introductions – these days by email or phone – when we’re moving or starting a different job.
By the nineteenth century, reliable records of births, deaths and criminal proceedings were being kept, of course, but accessing them was neither fast nor easy. Letters of introduction were still a very common practice, and with improved communication, it was a lot tougher for someone to bluff their way in without getting caught. Not that it didn’t still happen.
Scammers were thick on the ground wherever there was money to be made and people willing to believe a good story. The very social mobility and change that made the Gilded Age such a fascinating time opened up plenty of chances for opportunists. More than one well off woman (and man) ended up losing their fortune to a suitor who seemed appropriate in every way…and turned out to be a clever criminal.
So, when a fine gentleman claiming to be Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, walks into Ella Shane’s rehearsal studio one spring morning, she doesn’t just accept him at face value. She takes careful note of his clothes, which are good, but neither fancy nor especially new. She watches his behavior, observing that he’s a decently trained fencer – if not as good as she is – which suggests an upper-class background. And she listens to his accent, mostly the expected crisp London diction. But something about his consonants concerns her.
And anything strange might be a suggestion of very big trouble.
No surprise, then, that later in the day, she reaches for one of the few references that might help: Debrett’s Peerage. It’s a book listing all the titled families in Britain, and their members. Ella bought her copy as preparation for her first tour in London, so she would know who she was dealing with – and how to address them. Flipping through the book, she quickly establishes that there is indeed a Dukedom of Leith, the current incumbent is Gilbert Saint Aubyn, and he’s the right age.
More, his domain (which, of course, exists only in the pages of the Ella books) is in the North of England. Now, she has an explanation for that odd accent: he’s a Northerner, a border lord. There’s a great deal of history and intrigue associated with the border lords, but that’s a post for another day. What matters now is Ella was able to check him out enough to feel relatively comfortable.
Not that she fully trusts him right away…and not that she doesn’t have a few doubts later. Ella is nobody’s fool…not even a hot Duke’s.

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THIS STINKS!

The recent Canadian forest fire haze in the Northeast sparked (see what I did there?) serious discussion of climate change, and a slew of apocalyptic viral memes. But anyone alive in London in 1858 would barely have noticed.
After all, the Northeast hadn’t become a giant open sewer…and the whole thing did, ultimately, quite literally blow over.
Not so the Great Stink of 1858.
The problem had been growing for a while. London started building brick sewers in the 17th century, and by the mid-1800s, the sewer system was old and in bad repair. On the clean water side, they were still busy replacing medieval wooden pipes with iron ones. The widespread use of the flush toilet, invented by one Thomas Crapper, another post for another day, only added to the strain on the system.
It all basically went one place anyway: the Thames River.
Observers described the river as being nothing but a literal reeking sewer. In 1857, the British government poured disinfectants like lime and carbolic acid straight into the river in hopes of easing the stench.
The next summer, even that didn’t help.
Temperatures soared in June 1858. Records show average temperatures in the mid-90s (Fahrenheit) in the shade…and as much as 118 degrees in the sun. The relentless heat baked the sludge in the Thames, six feet deep in spots, creating what one reporter called “a pestiferous abomination,” and none other than Charles Dickens observed that the river had become a “deadly sewer.”
The vile stench affected everyone. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attempted a pleasure cruise on the river and had to turn back. Parliament soaked their curtains in lime chloride, dumped more into the river, and it was still so bad that they had to consider moving business to Oxford or St. Albans. Well-off folks were able to leave the city during the worst of it, but the poor were as trapped as they always were, and the reek just added another layer of wretchedness to their already difficult lives.
All of this wasn’t just repulsive, it was dangerous. While the Victorian miasma theory of illness, the idea that bad air makes you sick, wasn’t quite right, there were plenty of germs in that stinky air and water. Cholera outbreaks were common, and deadly. We know now that cholera is transmitted by bacteria in excrement and that dirty water is a prime vector, but the idea of water-borne illness wasn’t fully accepted until a later outbreak.
The really interesting part of the Great Stink is what happened later in the summer.
After several weeks of conducting the nation’s business while breathing through handkerchiefs and even newspapers, lawmakers decided that they had to do something about it, and they proceeded to come up with a big, serious plan.
And agree on it.
They approved a new sewer system for London, with as much waste as possible to be pumped out of the city. It wasn’t cheap – three million pounds in 1858 money, which is an almost unimaginable sum now. A three-penny tax on every London household paid for it. While the situation didn’t improve immediately, eventually, the city became much safer and healthier. And, eventually, people looked back on the Great Stink as a disaster that they had to work together to solve…and did.
That doesn’t stink.
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A PRETTY SUMMER DRESS

A lovely woman in a thin, fluffy white dress with a big straw hat.
It’s a signature image of turn of the 20th century romance…but it’s also an extremely practical hot-weather outfit in the time before reliable air conditioning.
Just as women now dig out their “AC sweaters” and tank tops when the temperature spikes, so did ladies get their lingerie dresses ready. A women’s magazine of the time reminds readers to get to work on the embroidery early, because the time to make the dress, and to wear it, is short.
The name “lingerie dress,” isn’t a reference to boudoir wear, but to the thinness and sheerness of the fabric. Basically, the sheerer the better. White cotton lawn is the one most of us imagine for these dresses – a thin, super-soft fabric, still tightly woven enough to stand up to both embroidery and frequent washing.
Surprisingly, though, many lingerie dresses were made of silk, or linen, and often in pastel colors. Brights and darks, of course, were out because they defeated the purpose. But silk and linen both have the same, or possibly better, breathability as cotton.
Women called them lingerie dresses, and so do we, but they were frequently two pieces, a bodice and a skirt. Many Victorian and Edwardian dresses were, especially as you went further down the social scale. It’s far easier for a woman without a ladies’ maid to button a blouse and fasten a skirt, than to fuss with a long placket of buttons.
The two-piece dress, and especially a very sheer lingerie dress, had other advantages, too. They were easier to wash or maintain, the pieces could be mixed and matched, and women could achieve all kinds of different looks depending on what they wore under the dresses.
Most of the time, what women wore under them was pretty simple: more layers of cotton lawn or cambric. A lingerie dress was the thinnest piece of outer clothing you could get away with, and that was undoubtedly an upgrade over a heavy wool suit. But it wasn’t an escape from appropriate attire.
Even on the hottest day, a decent woman would be wearing several layers. By 1900, many women started with “combinations,” a thin knit undergarment that looks a lot like a unitard, but some still preferred the older chemise and pantalets.
Fun fact: pantalets were usually open in the middle – not for any nefarious purpose but because of the sheer difficulty of managing all of that linen in the restroom!
Then came the corset (last week’s post!) followed by at least a corset cover on top. Now we start with petticoats, bunches of them. Matrons in several 19th century novels observed that a proper lady must have at least three, one of them flannel…but that was probably the low end. In the summer, too, none would have been flannel; whether cotton or wool, it was just too thick.
So our lady was pretty properly covered by the time she reached for that dress. Probably the only part of her anatomy that didn’t have at least a layer or two over it was her arms – and these dresses always covered them. Sleeveless was for evening.
Now, as long as her corset wasn’t too tight, she’s as comfortable as she can be. With her hat and long sleeves, she’s protected too. Before modern sunscreen, the big hats and long sleeves provided at least a little shade – and the required parasol added more.
All of which added up to a lovely and graceful getup…and the most comfort and protection a lady could decently manage. Not bad for a few yards of lawn!

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