GLOVE UP
A lot of us started wearing gloves in the last year for pandemic safety, but our great-great grandmothers would probably just be happy that we were finally covering ourselves decently…even if in purple nitrile.
Until the middle of the 20th Century, a good woman -- oh, that concept again! -- never left the house without a hat and gloves. The particulars changed, depending on fashion and resources, but no female person with any pretention to respectability would go without gloves. Most women without any such pretentions did too. Really, most people did.
You just put on gloves when you left the house. It wasn’t necessarily a female thing, though the rules were – as so often – more elaborate for women. But the menfolk had to keep track of their gloves too. And just as a lady was expected to know what to wear and how to wear it at every occasion, so too was a gentleman.
By the late 19th century, there was a huge range of gloves and an entire library of advice on how and when to wear them. Anything that could be seen as a marker of “respectability,” or “nice people” (the expression still in use in my Western Pennsylvania youth) carried plenty of rules for its proper use. Gloves were certainly in that category.
The “when” part of glove wearing was easy: every time you left the house, and sometimes when you were home, too. Everyone wore some kind of gloves in the street, whether it was tiny wrist-length ones that went up to the sleeve of an office girl’s suit, or pretty forearm-length ones to fill in the shorter sleeves of a society matron’s shopping outfit…or a man’s very simple pair.
You could usually take off your gloves if you were home, or visiting a friend. But if you were at a dinner party and the long kid gloves were part of your evening wear, you’d unbutton them at the wrist and free just your hands so you could eat without dirtying the fine leather. Also so you didn’t have to struggle into and out of those huge long gloves in front of everyone.
Getting into gloves was a thing. Advice manuals remind women to put them on before leaving the house, because a lady should not be seen doing that. And that’s the wisdom about short day gloves; one can only imagine what people would think of a woman who was seen putting on the full arm-length gloves that completed an evening costume.
If you’ve seen surviving gloves in museums, you’ve probably been amazed by how small they are. Yes, people were smaller, but not that much smaller. Some of it is simply that the gloves were extremely tight-fitting and stretched to fit the wearer – just further evidence of how hard it was to put on a pair.
All of this also goes a long way toward explaining why taking off long gloves was a key part of a burlesque artist’s act well into the 20th Century…the sight of a woman peeling away a snug high glove to reveal some skin clearly had an effect on the fellas!
That, however, was not the effect most women had in mind when they struggled into their gloves. It was an announcement: I am a lady, and you will treat me as such.
Not bad for a few square inches of leather.
Got a Throwback Thursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
Until the middle of the 20th Century, a good woman -- oh, that concept again! -- never left the house without a hat and gloves. The particulars changed, depending on fashion and resources, but no female person with any pretention to respectability would go without gloves. Most women without any such pretentions did too. Really, most people did.
You just put on gloves when you left the house. It wasn’t necessarily a female thing, though the rules were – as so often – more elaborate for women. But the menfolk had to keep track of their gloves too. And just as a lady was expected to know what to wear and how to wear it at every occasion, so too was a gentleman.
By the late 19th century, there was a huge range of gloves and an entire library of advice on how and when to wear them. Anything that could be seen as a marker of “respectability,” or “nice people” (the expression still in use in my Western Pennsylvania youth) carried plenty of rules for its proper use. Gloves were certainly in that category.
The “when” part of glove wearing was easy: every time you left the house, and sometimes when you were home, too. Everyone wore some kind of gloves in the street, whether it was tiny wrist-length ones that went up to the sleeve of an office girl’s suit, or pretty forearm-length ones to fill in the shorter sleeves of a society matron’s shopping outfit…or a man’s very simple pair.
You could usually take off your gloves if you were home, or visiting a friend. But if you were at a dinner party and the long kid gloves were part of your evening wear, you’d unbutton them at the wrist and free just your hands so you could eat without dirtying the fine leather. Also so you didn’t have to struggle into and out of those huge long gloves in front of everyone.
Getting into gloves was a thing. Advice manuals remind women to put them on before leaving the house, because a lady should not be seen doing that. And that’s the wisdom about short day gloves; one can only imagine what people would think of a woman who was seen putting on the full arm-length gloves that completed an evening costume.
If you’ve seen surviving gloves in museums, you’ve probably been amazed by how small they are. Yes, people were smaller, but not that much smaller. Some of it is simply that the gloves were extremely tight-fitting and stretched to fit the wearer – just further evidence of how hard it was to put on a pair.
All of this also goes a long way toward explaining why taking off long gloves was a key part of a burlesque artist’s act well into the 20th Century…the sight of a woman peeling away a snug high glove to reveal some skin clearly had an effect on the fellas!
That, however, was not the effect most women had in mind when they struggled into their gloves. It was an announcement: I am a lady, and you will treat me as such.
Not bad for a few square inches of leather.
Got a Throwback Thursday idea? Drop it in the comments!
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