NEW LOOK FOR FALL
Even now, when it’s a major fashion statement to put on actual pants, people still care about new clothes for fall. In the Gilded Age, the fall fashions were every bit as much of a thing as they are now…even if for a much smaller group of people.
In the poorest households, it was enough to have an outfit to wear and one to wash, but even a little bit further up the scale, new (at least new-to-you) clothes were important for autumn. Part of that was the change in the weather; in many heavily populated areas, especially in the U.S., autumn was the start of the cold part of the year. So everyone had to put on more clothing.
For better-off folks, autumn meant much more than going down to the secondhand store and picking up a few serviceable woolen pieces to fend off the chill. It often meant major wardrobe changes, and not just for the grownups. Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder will remember all of the talk of hand-me-downs in her books, and that was the rule for most large families. It would never occur to anyone to waste perfectly good clothes or shoes when there was a younger sibling who could wear them perfectly well – if not happily.
As for the adults, the further you moved up the economic scale, the more modish those new fall fashions became. Men’s clothes evolved less quickly than women’s, and even a dapper fellow might well keep his suits and coats for a few years – or more. A gent who could afford it, though, would at least have some sharp new shirts, and likely more, depending on how much he cared about such things.
Women, then as now, mostly had to care. A lady with any pretentions to status was expected to show up, if not in the latest modes, certainly in reasonably new and fashionable clothing. In the 1890s, with the waxing and waning of the leg-o-mutton sleeves and the up-and-down movement of the corset waist, that often meant major changes. But not necessarily entirely new clothes: those puffy sleeves could be cut down, and the hat re-trimmed in the new season’s colors. Surviving clothing shows plenty of signs of alteration, suggesting that many women (or their lady’s maids) kept up with style, even if they couldn’t afford full-out new wardrobes.
For someone like our opera diva Ella Shane, far closer to the top of the social spectrum than the bottom, fall definitely means new clothes. In her autumn outing, A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, she doesn’t have a lot of chances to wear them, since she’s on stage in doublet and hose most of the time. But, on several occasions, she happily sports a new violet velvet hat and takes exactly the sort of pleasure any fashionable female would. (Unless it’s her newspaper reporter friend Hetty, who has a deep grudge against hats because she’s been forced to write about them so much!)
We do get to see Ella in one lovely new dress: a lavender velvet evening gown with silver embroidery. She wears it for a pivotal after-show event…and a visiting friend is very impressed indeed. Because that, of course, is the other fun of the fall fashions: wearing them for an appreciative audience!
Have an idea for a #ThrowbackThursday post? Drop it in the comments!
In the poorest households, it was enough to have an outfit to wear and one to wash, but even a little bit further up the scale, new (at least new-to-you) clothes were important for autumn. Part of that was the change in the weather; in many heavily populated areas, especially in the U.S., autumn was the start of the cold part of the year. So everyone had to put on more clothing.
For better-off folks, autumn meant much more than going down to the secondhand store and picking up a few serviceable woolen pieces to fend off the chill. It often meant major wardrobe changes, and not just for the grownups. Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder will remember all of the talk of hand-me-downs in her books, and that was the rule for most large families. It would never occur to anyone to waste perfectly good clothes or shoes when there was a younger sibling who could wear them perfectly well – if not happily.
As for the adults, the further you moved up the economic scale, the more modish those new fall fashions became. Men’s clothes evolved less quickly than women’s, and even a dapper fellow might well keep his suits and coats for a few years – or more. A gent who could afford it, though, would at least have some sharp new shirts, and likely more, depending on how much he cared about such things.
Women, then as now, mostly had to care. A lady with any pretentions to status was expected to show up, if not in the latest modes, certainly in reasonably new and fashionable clothing. In the 1890s, with the waxing and waning of the leg-o-mutton sleeves and the up-and-down movement of the corset waist, that often meant major changes. But not necessarily entirely new clothes: those puffy sleeves could be cut down, and the hat re-trimmed in the new season’s colors. Surviving clothing shows plenty of signs of alteration, suggesting that many women (or their lady’s maids) kept up with style, even if they couldn’t afford full-out new wardrobes.
For someone like our opera diva Ella Shane, far closer to the top of the social spectrum than the bottom, fall definitely means new clothes. In her autumn outing, A FATAL FIRST NIGHT, she doesn’t have a lot of chances to wear them, since she’s on stage in doublet and hose most of the time. But, on several occasions, she happily sports a new violet velvet hat and takes exactly the sort of pleasure any fashionable female would. (Unless it’s her newspaper reporter friend Hetty, who has a deep grudge against hats because she’s been forced to write about them so much!)
We do get to see Ella in one lovely new dress: a lavender velvet evening gown with silver embroidery. She wears it for a pivotal after-show event…and a visiting friend is very impressed indeed. Because that, of course, is the other fun of the fall fashions: wearing them for an appreciative audience!
Have an idea for a #ThrowbackThursday post? Drop it in the comments!
No comments have been added yet.
