The Fashion Historian

Any visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City should stop by Gallery 599 on their tour of the museum. It's a small gallery, to get there you simply descend a small flight of stairs tucked away in the back corner of one of the large medieval galleries. Gallery 599 is located by the door to the Ratti Textile Center, which houses all of the textiles in The Met's collections. A rotating exhibition showcasing small samplings of The Met's textiles is featured in the display cases surrounding the door to the Ratti Textile Center. It's a quick pitstop on your tour of the museum and always well worth a visit as you get to see some rarely viewed textile treasures.

Embroidery sample for a man's suit, 1800–1815. French. Silk embroidery on silk velvet; L. 13 1/4 x W. 11 1/8 in. (33.7 x 28.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of The United Piece Dye Works, 1936 (36.90.15)

La mode à la girafe translates to giraffe fashion, that is, fashion inspired by and celebrating giraffes. Or, in the case of late 1820s France, the fashion influence of one very famous giraffe.

Nicolas Hüet, Study of the Giraffe Given to Charles X by the Viceroy of Egypt, 1827. In the collection of the Morgan Library and Museum.

February is Black History Month! To celebrate here on The Fashion Historian, I asked my dear friend and colleague Elizabeth Way if she would pen a couple of guest posts about two incredible African American fashion designers and dressmakers and she kindly agreed. Enjoy!

Elizabeth Keckly in the 1860s. Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Elizabeth Keckly, the talented dressmaker and close friend to Mary Todd Lincoln, is resurfacing as an important historical figure. She appeared as a character in the film Lincoln (2012), played by Gloria Rubin, and her life has been the subject of several fictional and nonfictional books. This attention is well deserved because she was truly a remarkable woman—over the course of her life she bought her freedom from slavery, made a major impact on American fashion by dressing the most famous political wives of Civil War-era Washington DC, created a charity to aid newly freed slaves, and wrote her memoirs, leaving important documentation on both herself and the Lincoln family for future scholars. Though her experiences in Washington DC are fascinating history—she created fashions for every notable lady from Varina Davis, the first lady of the Confederacy, to all of Lincoln’s cabinet member wives—her story as a society dressmaker began on the western frontier.

Elizabeth was born a slave on the Burwell plantation in Dinwiddie County, Virginia in 1818. Her mother was Agnes, also a slave and the head seamstress and dressmaker to the Burwell family. Her father was Armistead Burwell, Agnes’ owner and the master of the plantation. Agnes taught her daughter not only to sew and make dresses, but also to read and write, empowering Elizabeth with valuable skills for her future. Elizabeth moved several times in her enslaved life because her father lent her out as help to her half-siblings. After living in Hillsborough, North Carolina, where she was raped by a white man and gave birth to her son George, and Petersburg, Virginia, she moved to St. Louis, Missouri in 1847 as a slave to her half-sister, Anne Burwell Garland and her husband Hugh Garland.

Keckly designed this silk velvet and satin gown for Mary Lincoln in 1864. National Museum of American History, Political Life Division.

Hugh Garland was a lawyer, and the family was socially well connected, but he suffered from very poor finances. He sent Elizabeth out as a dressmaker to support the family and for two years and five months she worked as the main breadwinner supporting seventeen people! Elizabeth had gained her first experience sewing gowns for her Burwell half-sisters and was quite accomplished by the time she moved to St. Louis. However, the ladies in this city truly prepared her for the success she found in Washington. They demanded the latest French fashions, which they read about in magazines or picked up from visits and friends in New Orleans. These lady patrons, who refused to give up looking fashionable just because they lived in far-flung St. Louis, sharpened Elizabeth’s dressmaking skills and refined sense of style.

Elizabeth was intelligent, talented and an excellent businesswoman; in her own words, “in a short time I had acquired something of a reputation as a seamstress and dress-maker. The best ladies in St. Louis were my patrons, and when my reputation was once established I never lacked for orders.” Therefore, it is no surprise that this black female slave, who could support a family better than a formally-educated white man, would want to move beyond the limitations of slavery. Elizabeth repeatedly asked Hugh Garland to set a price for her and George’s freedom, which he finally did: $1200. This was an enormous amount of money, especially considering that most of her wages went to the Garlands. But the always-enterprising Elizabeth had a plan. She would travel to New York City and seek financial aid from one of the abolitionist organizations that helped slaves purchase their freedom. By this time Hugh Garland had died and Anne Garland agreed to let Elizabeth travel north, but only after acquiring the signatures of six white men who would pay her value to Anne if she never returned. Elizabeth had no problem obtaining these pledges because her clients and their husbands knew her as honest and trustworthy. The sixth man, however, spoiled her plans. This Mr. Farrow would willingly sign for her, but was convinced that she would never come back to St. Louis telling her, “you mean to come back, that is, you mean so now, but you never will. When you reach New York the abolitionists will tell you what savages we are, and they will prevail on you to stay there; and we shall never see you again.” Elizabeth was morally shocked that Mr. Farrow thought she was lying and called off her trip, explaining, “I was beginning to feel sick at heart, for I could not accept the signature of this man when he had no faith in my pledges. No; slavery, eternal slavery rather than be regarded with distrust by those whose respect I esteemed.”




In her darkest hour, Elizabeth was saved by the reputation she had earned and the loyalty she inspired, not simply as an excellent dressmaker, but as an admirable and respected person. A client, Mrs. Le Bourgois, came to visit and told Elizabeth that her patrons did not want her to go to New York and beg for money for her freedom. Instead Mrs. Le Bourgois raised the $1200 among Elizabeth’s clients, gifting her with the money. In 1855 Elizabeth bought her and George’s freedom and she started her own business as a free dressmaker in St. Louis. She repaid every penny given to her by her patrons and in 1860 Elizabeth Keckly arrived in Washington DC, beginning her illustrious career as the leading dressmaker in the nation’s capitol.

Further Reading

Keckly, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes or Thirty Years a Slave and Fours Years in the White House. New York: G.W. Carlton and Co. Publishers, 1868.

Elizabeth Way, Curatorial Assistant at the Museum at FIT. Elizabeth wrote her master's thesis on the African American dressmakers Elizabeth Keckly and Ann Lowe and continues to research the intersection of African American culture and fashion.

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Baudelaire on Fashion
Part 3: Tissot's Paintings

Tissot was intimately connected with fashion. One writer remarked, “At present time in England, Mr. James Tissot and Mr. George du Maurier exercise considerable control over the fashions.” Another wrote that Tissot “seems to have devoted himself chiefly to recording the fleeting fashions and affectations of modern costume, sometimes choosing for this purpose the most bizarre and the most hideous… the heads are quite subordinate to the turbulent mass of millinery which occupies the principle part of the canvas."

James Tissot. Too Early. 1873. Oil on canvas. London: Guildhall Art Gallery

James Tissot. Hush! 1875. Oil on canvas. Manchester: City of Manchester Art Galleries.

James Tissot. The Ball on Shipboard. 1874. Oil on canvas. London: Tate Gallery.

One of the most curious aspects of the three works I'm analyzing is the repetition of dresses, both within each painting and within the group as a whole. The woman who dominates the center of the canvas in Too Early wears a light salmon-pink dress with burgundy trim, the skirt falling in endless layers of ruffles. In the same work, a woman can be seen ascending the stairs, the coloring of dress and trim suggesting the same garment. The same dress is also worn by the woman sitting closest to the violinist in Hush!. The layers of ruffles and burgundy trim are also on a snippet of garment viewable at the edge of the canvas. The same dress is seen three times in The Ball on Shipboard, worn by a woman climbing the stairs, a seated woman, and a woman walking with a gentleman.

James Tissot. The Ball on Shipboard. 1874. Oil on canvas. London: Tate Gallery.

The Ball on Shipboard presents the most obvious set of duplicates. The two women standing by the railing wear identical dresses of white with black trim. In a group seated in the back corner, two women wear identical green dresses while another two wear low cut light blue dresses. These light blue dresses also look very similar to the gown worn by the subject of The Bunch of Lilacs (1875), and the two central figures in In the Conservatory (The Rivals) (The pink and burgundy dress also makes another appearance in this work).

Several explanations have been suggested for this repetition. Sometimes twins or sisters dressed alike. The repetition may have been derived from the multiple views of a single dress shown in fashion plates of the period. It may suggest the social faux pas of multiple women wearing the same dress at a social event. Or it may suggest a passage of time, with a single woman moving to different parts of the canvas. One of the most popular explanations is that Tissot had a limited number of actual dresses which he used as studio props, and so he simply repeated them in his various paintings.

However, the most compelling argument is that this repetition is a commentary on society and a reflection of Baudelaire’s modernity. Nancy Rose Marshall argues that “this sort of repetition suggested that ‘Woman’ in 1870s society was little more than a mass-produced commodity.” With the popularity of the department store and the rise of the ready-to-wear clothing industry, fashion was becoming more homogenized and democratized. Class lines were no longer easily distinguishable through dress. Women could purchase garments which were fashionable, but mass produced. While in previous centuries luxury was relegated to the few, increasingly in the nineteenth century luxury—or at least an appearance of luxury—could be gained by the many. As noted by Baudelaire, a womans dress was connected with her very being, thus indicating that a woman in a mass produced dress is a mass produced figure herself. This idea is reflected in the fashion in Tissot’s art, the repetition of clothing creating duplicates. The women are literally mass produced. Continuing in this line of reasoning, the women then become commodities, just like the clothing they wear. Their fashion sells the woman. As one commentator wrote, “The reason for the present extraordinary luxury in dress is that the surplus million of women are husband-hunting and resort to extra attractions to that end.” In the case of the women in Too Early, The Ball on Shipboard, and Hush!, the ostentation of their dress suggests that what they are promoting is their wealth and new status in society.

Tissot’s paintings emphasize the artificiality of society through the artificiality of fashion. As one writer wrote in 1867, it was an “age of shams”. He continues, saying “unreality creeps into everything… the consequence is that woman has become an imposture and men have learned to fear that what they most admire may be but a successful art.” With the elaborate construction of fashion in the early 1870s, women had literally become scaffolding on which to display ideas of wealth and beauty. Yet for the nouveau riche, this was a false portrayal, masking the reality of a newly emerging upper class which did not fully understand the rules of society. This was the reality of modernity, or at least the perceived reality of social commentators.

Selected Bibliography
Ash, Russell. James Tissot. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1992.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. Translated by Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon Press, 1986.

Garb, Tamar. Bodies of Modernity: Figure and Flesh in Fin-de-Siecle France. New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1998.

Hollander, Anne. Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting. London: National Gallery Company Limited, 2002.

Marshall, Nancy Rose. “’Transcripts of Modern Life’: The London Paintings of James Tissot 1871-1882.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1997.

Marshall, Nancy Rose and Malcolm Warner. James Tissot: Victorian Life/Modern Love. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Perrot, Philippe. Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Simon, Marie. Fashion in Art: The Second Empire and Impressionism. London: Zwemmer, 1995.

Wood, Christopher. Tissot. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1986.

Myth: It is ancient tradition that each of the clans of Scotland has it's own unique tartan.

The lords of three Scottish clans from Disney/Pixar's movie Brave (2012).

Sadly, this is a myth. I've always thought it was rather fun to find the family tartan. But this 'tradition' is actually the result of a 19th century marketing scheme to capitalize on the popularity of the romanticized Highlander myth.

The colorful tartan pattern seems to have originated in Flanders and came to the Highlands through the Lowlands. Sixteenth century writers note that the plaids of chiefs were colored and those of their followers were brown, indicating that any differentiation in color was a mark of social status rather than being connected with a particular clan. The clan system itself had been destroyed after the Scottish rebellion of 1745, when acts of Parliament removed chiefs from their jurisdictions and banned any Highland costume. This last act wasn't lifted until 1782, at which point the general population of the Highlands, having become used to trousers, didn't see any reason to return to the traditional belted plaid or tartan, or the new convenient kilts (invented in 1727, a topic for another post!) The upper classes, on the other hand, enthusiastically picked up the traditional garb reclaiming their lost 'heritage'.

The romantic movement had swept in, bringing with it the cult of the noble savage. The endangered traditional Highlander fit perfectly into this romantic notion. Romanticized Scottish history was given a further boost when King George IV made a momentous visit to Edinburgh in 1822. The King wished to see Highlanders in their traditional garb, and thus created a huge demand for tartans. The biggest manufacturing firm was William Wilson and Son of Bannockburn. Messrs., which released a "Key Pattern Book" in 1819 when the royal visit was first announced, showing samples of their various tartans and which clan they belonged to. When the King finally arrived in Scotland, he himself was dressed in a kilt and gave a toast to "the chieftains and clans of Scotland."

But the most important figures in the creation of clan tartans were the brothers Allen, an eccentric pair who often appeared at fashionable events dressed "in all the extravagance of which the Highland costume is capable-- every kind of tag and rag, false orders and tinsel ornaments." In 1829 they presented their aristocratic patron, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, with a manuscript entitled "Vestiarium Scoticum", or The Garde-robe of Scotland. According to the brothers, this manuscript had belonged to John Leslie, Bishop of Rosss, the confidant of Mary Queen of Scots. Supposedly it had been written much earlier by a knight named Sir Richard Urquhart, and featured descriptions of the different clan tartans. But it wasn't until 1842, and under the new patronage of Lord Lovat, that the Vestiarium was published in a lavish limited edition with colored illustrations. Then in 1844, the Allen brothers published an even more lavish folio, titled "The Costume of the Clans", which cited ancient sources and claimed that Highland dress was actually a relic of the universal dress of the Middle Ages.

Unfortunately for the Allen brothers, their works received little notice. They themselves were discredited in 1847. After making numerous claims of royal blood, the brothers, who had at this point changed their name to Sobieski Stuart, were exposed as phonies in an editorial in the Quarterly Review. The brothers never recovered, and their works never gained a great amount of publicity. However, the idea of clan tartans was growing ever more popular, and the rest of the century saw the publication of numerous books of clan tartans, all derived from the Vestiarium.


There is so much more fascinating detail to this story than what I have put here, so if you'd like to learn more I highly recommend the article The Highlander Myth by Hugh Trevor Roper.

Photo Credit

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Baudelaire on Fashion


Too Early (1873) is one of Tissot’s most celebrated and famous works. Louise Jopling, an artist and friend of Tissot, wrote that the painting “made a great sensation” when it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1873. She continued in her praise, saying that the painting was “a new departure in art, this witty representation of modern life.” Too Early shows a snapshot in time, a moment of awkward embarrassment in which guests have arrived too early to a party. As proclaimed by contemporary etiquette, “A ballroom should be entered at an hour suited to the habits of those who invite you. It is extremely inconvenient however, to be too early, as you may disconcert your friends.” The hostess administers last minute instructions to the musicians, while her guests fidget and avoid eye contact. In the back corner, too servants peer through a slightly opened door, seeming to laugh at the awkwardness of the scene before them. This social faux pas indicates that the guests are only pretenders, members of the nouveau riche with plenty of money but none of the social graces of a true aristocrat. Critics praised Too Early for this “truthfulness and delicate perception of the humor of the ‘situation,’ for a parallel to which we must look in the novels of Jane Austen, the great painter of humor in ‘polite society.’”


Hush! (1875) presents another snapshot, perhaps from a later moment at the party seen in Too Early. Like the previous painting, critics found themselves able to identify with the scene. “This is a picture which cannot fail to interest the majority of the visitors to the academy, because it deals with incidents and people with which the are abundantly familiar,” wrote one. Although all the guests have arrived, they still appear vastly uncomfortable. No one is interested in the impending performance, too concerned are they with appearing fashionably nonchalant. The sweeping curve of the staircase, viewed through a back doorway, and the circle of chairs around the violinist suggest a literal social circle, into which the viewer is invited. The room depicted is a salon in Kensington, and the party has been identified as one hosted by the Coope family and attended by Tissot. Although Tissot claimed the subjects were anonymous, scholars have identified various real figures: Sir Jules Benedict (the pianist), artists Giuseppe de Nittis and Ferdinant Heilbuth, and Vanity Fair publisher Thomas Gibson Bowles. Hush! was Tissot’s greatest commercial success, selling for 1200 guineas.


The Ball on Shipboard (1874) presents a different, although no less awkward, social scene. The painting is set on the royal yacht, the Victoria and Albert, at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. The ship is decorated with various national flags, and various members of London society have gathered for socializing and dancing. Yet once again, there is an overtone of boredom. The woman closest to the viewer, wearing a black and white striped gown, stares blankly into the distance. Two women in matching white dresses stand awkwardly, looking away from each other with neutral expressions while their elderly companion leans lazily against a railing.

Critical reception to The Ball on Shipboard was negative. The work was described as “vulgar”, a loaded term in the nineteenth century. According to John Ruskin, vulgarity could be defined as “an undue regard to appearances and manners… and an assumption of behavior, language, or dress, unsuited to them, by persons in inferior stations of life.” Indeed, although the figures on the ship seem to be members of good society, a deeper analysis suggests otherwise. The women in green and blue, seated in the background on the left of the canvas, display too much décolletage for the daytime. One commentator described the image as “a set of rather showy than elegant costumes, some few graceful, but more ungraceful attitudes, and not a lady in a score of female figures.” Furthermore, the gowns worn by many of the women are unnecessarily showy, with bright colors and multiple ruffles, suggesting the ‘vulgar’ ostentation associated with social climbers and the nouveau riche. These elements combine to suggest the instability of society of the period, where wealth was replacing heredity, an uneasy notion for many.

Part 1: Introduction



Tissot’s London paintings provide a detailed and nuanced look at contemporary society. He captures ‘modernity’, a word coined by Baudelaire in The Painter of Modern Life (1863). For Baudelaire, an important element of this modernity was the correct representation of contemporary fashion. He writes:

“The draperies of Rubens or Veronese will in no way teach you how to depict mouire antique, satin a la reine or any other fabric of modern manufacture, which we see supported and hung over crinoline or starched muslin petticoat… Finally the gesture and the bearing of the woman of today give to her dress a life and a special character which are not those of the woman of the past. In short, for any ‘modernity’ to be worthy of one day taking its place as ‘antiquity’, it is necessary for the mysterious beauty which human life accidentally puts into it to be distilled from it.”

Baudelaire places emphasis on fashion and beauty, citing it as one of the key visual indicators of modernity. He argues that for a work of art to take its place in the annals of history, a human essence and sense of life must be present. The artist can best portray this intangible concept through capturing his surroundings, for example, the clothes, gestures, and particular beauty associated with that particular moment in time. It is that which the artist is most familiar with, which the artist truly understands, because that is the context in which the artist lives. As Nancy Rose Marhsall summarizes, “The clothing of the body in fashion, a procedure representing its socialization, worked to locate the female form in a particular moment, removing it from the realm of the ideal and investing it with cultural and historical specificity—with modernity, in fact, which Tissot embraced.”

Baudelaire places such an emphasis on fashion because he associates it with the essence of humanity itself. The artist must represent contemporary fashion because fashion is an essential part of humanity, and it is through fashion that this can be seen. He particularly focuses on women, writing:

“Everything that adorns woman, everything that serves to show off her beauty, is part of herself; and those artists who have made a particular study of this enigmatic being dote no less on all the details of the mandus muliebris than on Woman herself… What poet, in sitting down to paint the pleasure caused by the sight of a beautiful woman, would venture to separate her from her costume?”

Baudelaire's arguments have since become one of the key theories in the field of fashion history, but I believe that is a topic for another post.

Another month, another series of posts to give an in depth look at a particular fashion idea. This time, I'll be using Baudelaireian theory to analyze three paintings by James Tissot from the early 1870s. I hope you enjoy it!



In his seminal essay on painting and modernity, Charles Baudelaire wrote of the modern painter: “The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd.” James Tissot embodied this sense of modernity. His paintings of contemporary life read as snapshots into the lives of the upper classes in the late nineteenth century. In particular, three works, Too Early, The Ball on Shipboard, and Hush!, painted in the early 1870s while Tissot was living in London, give a particularly fertile glance into society. These snippets of bourgeois society demonstrate, as Baudelaire wrote, the “fugitive, fleeting beauty of present-day life, the distinguishing character of that quality… we have colled ‘modernity.’” In his essay, Baudelaire emphasizes fashion as a crucial component to modernity. Contemporary fashion is intimately connected to contemporary life, thus giving a living humanity to a painting. Most importantly, fashion is connected with women. Baudelaire writes that contemporary fashion is a part of a womans being, an element which cannot be separated. In his three paintings from the early 1870s, Tissot explores these ideas of modernity and the identity of fashion.

James Tissot painted by Edgar Degas c. 1867-68. In the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jacques-Joseph Tissot was born on October 15, 1836 in Nantes, France. His father, Marcel-Theodore, was a linen draper and his mother, Marie Durand, was a milliner, exposing Tissot to the world of fashion from his earliest years. He attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he befriended men such as James Whistler and Edgar Degas. However, the man who would have the most influence on his early career was Baron Hendryk Leys, who painted detailed scenes set in Northern Europe in the sixteenth century. Tissot admired the high degree of finish and real human interactions portrayed in Leys’ work. Tissot’s work was first exhibited in 1859, and to keep in line with a recent trend of anglophilia, Anglicized his first name to James. Through the early 1860s, Tissot displayed several ‘costume pieces’, set in previous centuries. In the mid 1860s Tissot broke from his historic style, keeping the focus on human emotions and interactions and a sumptuous materialism, but setting his pieces in the present day. With this work, Tissot finally began to achieve critical success.

In 1871, after the disastrous Franco-Prussian War, Tissot moved to London. He achieved great success, becoming a well-known public figure. In addition to full size paintings, he contributed several caricatures to newly launched Vanity Fair, a publication run by Tissot’s friend Thomas Gibson Bowles. In these sketches Tissot makes gentle mockery of public figures of the day, a theme repeated in his London paintings, which can be seen as a caricature of modern society. In 1876, Tissot met Kathleen Newton, a young divorcee. The two fell in love and began an affair. While many artists of the day had mistresses, few actually lived with them and non painted them with the frequency with which Tissot painted Newton. They lived together until 1882, when Newton died. Emotionally devastated, Tissot left London and returned to Paris. Increasingly interested in spiritualism and religion, Tissot’s art took a religious turn in the mid 1880s. His works on religious subjects were highly admired, once again earning Tissot fame and fortune. In the final years of his life, Tissot became increasingly recluse. He died on August 8, 1902 at Buillon, a private estate inherited from his father.

The gown immediately caught the eye of the Empress, and Worth’s career as the great couturier of the nineteenth century began.

Most of us have heard of a dowry, the collection of properties and other valuable things which a young lady gives to her husband upon their marriage. It's a word bandied about in period movies all the time. But what is less well known is the grooms version, the corbeille de mariage.


From Le Bon Genre, 1820. Bibliotheque nationale de France.

An extremely important tradition in 19th century France, the corbeille de mariage was a gift basket given by the groom to the bride upon the signing of the wedding contract. Inside it was a host of lovely things, the objects that would transform the woman from a young daughter to a mature married lady. The corbeille was worth rougly five to ten percent of the dowry, and as the century progressed became an important piece of furniture, taking the form of a little desk or a trunk.

While corbeilles varied depending on budget, certain items were simply must haves. The March 1847 issue of La Mode describes two corbeilles:

"This week, in the salons of the Maison de commission Lasalle et Compagnie, we have seen two corbeilles de mariage, one of which priced at 12,000 francs and the other at 3000 francs.

The first one... contained a superb long Indian cashmere shawl, black background, a second Indian cashmere shawl, square and multicolored... an admirable handkerchief embroidered with the arms, a prayer book in crimson velvet with ornaments in cut gold..., and a sewing bag with sculpted pieces, an antique fan, a glove box, a rosewood handkerchief box...

The 3000 franc corbeille contained a square Indian shawl in dark green, a French shawl with four sides... a prayer book in dark blue velvet with clasp and monogram in silver, and embroidered handkerchief decorated with valenciennes*, a card holder, a fan, a bottle, a purse, a glove box with a dozen pairs of gloves."

*Valenciennes was a type of lace.

The cashmere shawl was an extremely important luxury item in the early to mid nineteenth century, and no corbeille was complete without one. Fans, gloves, purses, lace for decorating garments, jewels, and handkerchiefs were similarly requirements.

The corbeille had an important symbolic value as well. Young, unmarried women would generally dress in a demure manner. Light colors, little decoration, overall a not very flashy appearance. This was part of her allure, as a woman who dressed in an extravagant manner signaled an expensive lifestyle. Men didn't want a wife who would drain all their money with her spending. But a plain and modestly dressed woman showed good sense and would not bankrupt her future husband with her spending (supposedly). Married women, on the other hand, were reflections of the wealth of their husbands and subsequently were allowed to dress in a more decorative, flashy style. Thus the presentation of the corbeille, filled with the luxurious decorative items of a married woman, signaled the transition to a new status, that of the respectable married woman. It was symbolic of the young lady's entrance into adulthood.

Further Reading:  Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France by Susan Hiner

All the cool kids are following The Fashion Historian on twitter, @PastFashion.

Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) is widely considered the first couturier. My most popular blog post in history is about him, and can be found here. After Worth's death in 1895, his descendents continued the fashion house, until it was closed in 1952 after the death of his great-grandson. But in 2010, the House of Worth returned to the couture stage. The revival is done through the House of Worth Ltd, a new company created by Dilesh Mehta and Martin McCarthy. The head designer is Giovanni Bedin, a graduate of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, who has previously worked with Karl Lagerfeld and Thierry Mugler. "We're taking baby steps because Worth is a huge brand with a big heritage and it's brand new again and we have to tell this beautiful story and make people know again the heritage," said Bedin on his rather daunting task of reviving the great couture legend.


House of Worth, Spring/Summer 2011 Couture

My favorite so far is the Spring/Summer 2011 couture collection, which is particularly interesting from an historians perspective. The collection is called Night and Day, and was inspired by an original 19th century Worth dress, which embodied both night and day. “When I saw this dress – the Night and Day dress – it was like a revelation. It's cut in two – one side for day and the other for night with all of the elements like the sun, the moon, bees, flowers, a bat. It was so modern,” said Bedin.


House of Worth, Spring/Summer 2011 Couture

Another obvious inspiration is the tutu, the famous garment worn by ballet dancers the world over. Says Bedin on the tutus: “The tutus – I like the idea that women in the 19th Century didn’t wear mini skirts but the basque was very important and I like the idea of wearing the volume but reducing the length.” His creations certainly capture the opulence of 19th century Worth designs while bringing in a more modern concept of short skirts for women. But is it really that modern?


House of Worth, Spring/Summer 2011 Couture

Well if you wanted to be technical about it, the tutu did develop during the 19th century which most historians categorize as the modern period. The birth of the tutu is quite mysterious, but its first famous appearance was in 1832 in the ballet Les Sylphide, and was designed by Eugène Lami (however no renderings for the tutu remain). It was worn by celebrated ballerina Marie Taglioni, who starred in the ballet as a sylph- an otherworldy spirit who inhabited the air. Soon the tutu became the standard for ballerinas everywhere, its light and floaty qualities emphasizing the ethereal beauty and lightness of the dancers. As the century progressed, the tutu began to get shorter and stiffer, and by the 20th century became the pancake shaped tutu we know today.


Carlotta Grisi in Giselle by J. Brandard, c. 1841. Collection of Marie Rambert.

The history of the tutu is fascinating (and hopefully a lengthy article I have written on the subject will soon be published!) because of the dichotomy of its symbolism. On the one hand it transformed ballerinas into graceful, beautiful creatures, floating about the stage as fairies and princesses, the delicate fabrics and sparkly decorations of the tutu adding to the magic. But on the other hand, the tutu revealed the legs of women in a period when showing legs was a social taboo. It subsequently became an extremely controversial garment. Furthermore, the fairies and princesses of the stage were mostly low class girls in reality. While the famous prima ballerinas enjoyed a celebrity lifestyle, the majority of dancers were simply ballet girls, poor and transformed into sexual objects. The soliciting of sexual relationships with ballet girls was practically institutionalized. At the Paris Opera, rich and influential gentlemen known as abonnés could gain access to the backstage rehearsal hall, where they could flirt with the dancers. While not all ballet girls prostituted themselves, many did and the reputation of the ballet girl as a sexual object was widespread.


In The Wings No. 3, by Jean-Louis Forain, shows a rotund abonné flirting with a dancer. In the collection of the Boston Public Library.

So what does all this have to do with the beautiful couture creations of Bedin? The tutu was always beautiful, but it was also once a symbol of sexuality and immorality, only donned by the lowest class of women. It is true that ballerinas today have risen far above this heritage, but I think it's interesting to look at these couture tutus in the context of their inspiration- the 19th century. What was once a marker of a lower status has now become a marker of the highest status- the woman able to afford couture. The thought of the House of Worth designing tutus to be purchased by the wealthy and (hopefully) put on display in museums someday would have been absurd in the 19th century. Now it is perfectly normal. And furthermore, in featuring tutus as couture Bedin has taken them off the stage and put them into the "real world", they no longer belong in the realm of costumes but in fashion itself (not that costumes are not a part of fashion, but I think you know what I mean). This is a garment that has made quite a journey!!

This is a shortened version of a paper I wrote for my History of Sea Power class. Ignore the less than stellar prose, I was pretty tired when I wrote it. For further reading on the subject consult King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America by Frank Lawrence Owsley.



In 1861, a naval blockade was declared on Southern ports, as part of the Union effort to win the American Civil War. Southern society was agrarian, taking more interest in good manners than in industrialization, and thus depended on trade for necessities. This was especially important during the war, when the South needed to import weapons, uniforms, and other necessities. Thus, with no significant navy of its own, the Union blockade produced a serious problem for the South. The one thing the South could rely on was it’s dominance in the cotton market, in particular, the British dependence on American cotton. Cotton exports to England valued about $150 million at the outbreak of the war, and the British milling industry was the livelihood of one sixth of the British population. Thus the Union blockade was a serious threat to the British textile industry. Southern planters even tried to use this threat to their advantage, placing an embargo on cotton in the early years of the war in the hopes that the subsequent loss of raw materials to British mills would cause English intervention. However, the outcome was not to the favor of the South, and the British textile industry continued to thrive despite the short lived embargo and the Union blockade.

In 1861, the Confederacy issued a cotton embargo in the hopes that the British would be so desperate for cotton that they would intervene on behalf of the Confederacy in the war. The embargo lasted until the spring of 1862, when cotton became the currency for supplies needed by the army. In the UK, a “cotton famine” coincided with the cotton embargo, causing unemployment rates to jump significantly in cotton mills. While some attribute a relationship between the embargo and the famine, this is not necessarily the case. Even during the cotton embargo, the British textile industry had a ready supply of raw cotton. The cotton crops of 1859 and 1860 were larger than normal, and the UK was beginning to import cotton from other countries such as India, Brazil, and Egypt, causing a surplus of raw cotton in the UK. In fact, there was such a surplus that the UK re-exported much of their cotton. The export of cotton increased every year from 1862 to 1866, and during the supposed cotton famine of 1861 to 1862, when the cotton embargo by the Confederacy was in place, the re-export of cotton to France was increased by a multiple of more than five. Clearly, the lack of American cotton was not severely affecting the supplies of the British textile industry.

In conjunction with the surplus of raw cotton, there was an overproduction of textiles in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Stores were packed with fabrics and yarns which greatly exceeded the actual demand of the public. Therefore it only made sense to close down textile production until the current stock could be sold off. Another theory is that, due to the threat of less cotton caused by the Union blockade, the prices for cotton soared during the early years of the war, and British cotton mills held onto their raw cotton stock, in hopes that they might use price increases to obtain a profit. Either way, it is clear that while unemployment rates in cotton mills were high during the cotton famine, the textile industry itself maintained efficiency and profit.

While there was a decrease in the cotton exported during the American Civil War, especially during the cotton embargo, the Confederacy soon realized that cotton was their only method of payment for much needed supplies. Thus the blockade runners were employed, slipping through the Union blockade to bring raw cotton to England in exchange for weapons and other necessities. Although many blockade runners made a limited amount of voyages, it was still a highly profitable and successful business. The Confederate coast stretched for 3,549 miles, and contained a great number of rivers and bays which provided access to the sea. Even with Union naval forces reached their peak, there was still plenty of room for Confederate ships to escape to the open ocean. Blockade runners such as the “Hattie”, the “Kate”, and the “Antonica” made multiple successful journeys through the blockade, and when the blockade was at its height only one out of six blockade runners failed.

The success of the blockade runners could also be attributed to their advanced construction. Steam power provided a greater speed than the ships of the US Navy could reach, the ships sat extremely low in the water, burned smokeless coal, and painted dull colors to provide a sense of invisibility. The content held in these blockade runners was cotton. Sources vary on how much cotton was actually exported, but some estimate that about one million bales were sent to Europe from 1862 to 1864. With this cotton, blockade runners were able to obtain both military and luxury goods to sell back to the Confederacy, captains making profits of $5000 during the height of the blockade.

Another important reason for the lack of impact of the Union blockade on the textile industry was the ready supply of cotton from markets outside of America. The potential for using India as an agricultural provider had been around since the 1820s, but the American Civil War spurred the British to action. They rapidly transported the necessary equipment for maintaining and harvesting a successful cotton crop, and even worked to redefine contract laws to give an advantage to merchants. By 1862 India provided seventy percent of the raw cotton used in the UK. In Egypt, the Ottoman viceroy Sa’id Pasha converted his lands into cotton farms, becoming one of the largest cotton producers in the world. This was part of a larger scheme to modernize Egypt via cotton sales, and in order to help Egyptian cotton production new canals, railroads, and processing technologies were built. Almost half of all fertile land in Egypt was devoted to cotton by the closing years of the American Civil War. Brazil doubled raw cotton exports during the war years, going from 32.4 million pounds in the 1850s to 61 million pounds in 1865. While these were the three biggest markets, they were by no means the only ones. Argentina, China, Central Asia, and parts of Africa all contributed to the cotton market.

As a lady of fashion in the 1830s, one must keep up with the latest trends. And nowadays that means really huge enormous big sleeves.



Big sleeves began to come into fashion in the late 1820s, but really hit their stride in the 1830s. Called leg-of-mutton or gigot sleeves (the French translation of leg-of-mutton), they started slightly off the shoulder and puffed out before narrowing again towards the lower arm. In combination with the popular V-neckline and full skirt, gigot sleeves helped to give an illusion of a narrower waist.


From the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Unlike the big sleeves of the 1890s, gigot sleeves did not start directly where the sleeve and shoulder of the dress met. Instead, gigot sleeves began at the top of the arm, helping to create a fashionable sloped shoulder look. The most beautiful lady in the 1830s would have shoulders not extending in a horizontal line from the base of her neck, but sloping in a gentle diagonal down to her arms. This ideal was connected with the romanticism movement popular during the period, making a woman look as though she were pining away for a lover.

Sleeves were cut on the bias of the fabric. Imagine you have a square piece of fabric in front of you. The threads which make up the fabric go horizontally (the weft) and vertically (the warp). If you were to place a pattern diagonally on that piece of fabric, so that it made a diagonal across the warp and weft, that would be cut on the bias. Fabric cut on the bias has greater stretch and movement, allowing for softer curves. But a lot of fabric and a bias cut isn't going to make your sleeves stand out to poofy perfection.


From the LA County Museum of Art

What you need is a pair of sleeve plumpers, worn underneath the dress to help hold out the volume of the sleeves. Women could also use stiff lining on the inside of the sleeves to help keep up the volume.

Once you are armed with your gigot sleeves (BUH DUM CHING!!!), the only thing left to do is fine an equally fashionable man and go showing off to all your friends.

I recently stumbled upon this fabulous portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), painted in 1717.



Detail of portrait of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Jean Baptiste Vanmour

Lady Mary is a fascinating historic character, she traveled through and wrote extensively on Turkey, helped bring the smallpox vaccination to England, and was at one point engaged to a man with the greatest name in the history of the world- Clotworthy Skeffington (who looks exactly how his name sounds). She also seems to be a fashion psychic.

When Lady Mary's husband was appointed ambassador to Istanbul, she took the opportunity to absorb as much of this new culture as possible. When she did return to England, she brought a Turkish fashion sense with her which caused orientalist trends throughout Europe. Several of her portraits show her dressed in a Turkish or Turkish-esque style, attesting to her love for the exotic.

I find this particular portrait interesting due to it's contrast to the fashions of the day, which featured a natural waistline and a full skirt. This painting is from 1730, but gives you the general idea of the silhouette of the early 18th century.



Detail of A Tea Party at Lord Harrington's by C. Phillips from 1730.

Other portraits of Lady Mary in her Turkish garb show some nod to the fashionable silhouette of the day. The below portrait, for example, shows the full skirt and natural waistline featured in the fashions of the western world.




But Vanmour's portrait of Lady Mary shows her wearing a narrow dress with a waistline under the bust. I could not help but think of fashions from the Regency period, which would come about almost a century later.



Evening gown from 1814 featured in Ackerman's Repository of Arts

Lady Mary was a woman ahead of her time in many respects, but it also appears she was quite ahead of the trends in fashion!

Welcome to a new feature of The Fashion Historian! One of my favorite things to do, and one of my favorite research topics, is finding historic influences in modern haute couture. So every so often I'll put up a picture of couture next to a period image. No lengthy explanations about what the influence is or why it was chosen or the social relevance, I'll just let the images speak for themselves and let you enjoy some beautiful creations.


Left: Fashion plate from 1897, taken from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.
Right: Dior Fall 2007 haute couture, designed by John Galliano.

Myth: Did some Victorian women really have their lower ribs removed in order to have a smaller waist?

Short Answer: No.

Long Answer:

The idea of using surgery to fix some unsatisfactory part of the physical appearance is extremely new. Unnecessary surgery is only possible with highly developed, modern surgical practices.

In the early 19th century, surgery was mainly confined to amputations and the removal of external problems. Anesthesia of any kind was first used around the 1840s, which allowed surgeons to start fixing internal problems. The risk of infection was also extremely high, with the germ theory of disease first being applied to surgery by Joseph Lister around the 1870s. However, it would take quite some time for surgery to become as sterile as we know it today. Instruments were beginning to be sterilized, but there were still plenty of ways for bacteria to enter the body. Antibiotics were only just starting to be discovered around the same time, but the science wouldn't really take off until the 20th century.


The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins, 1875
In the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Eakins' famous picture, The Gross Clinic, shows a typical Victorian surgical scene. The surgery is performed in an open auditorium with several spectators, and the doctors themselves are wearing street clothes and working with their bare hands. Even if the instruments were sterilized, it would still be extremely easy for an infection to take hold and the poor man being operated on to die.

If you survived all of that, there is still the pain that comes post surgery. Painkillers as we know them didn't really exist in the Victorian period, so for pain control a person had to turn to some sort of drug that was probably not very safe. For a point of comparison, remember when you had your wisdom teeth out? I recently had mine taken out, and even with my sophisticated, modern pain medication I was still pretty miserable for a few days afterwords. Now imagine an operation that didn't use modern surgical practices, and didn't involve modern painkillers to control post-operative pain.

No one in their right mind in the 19th century would voluntarily go under the knife unless it was absolutely necessary for their survival.



On the next episode of MythBusters: Fashion History Edition, underwear myths! Is it true that only lewd women wore underwear before the 20th century? Did Joan of Arc wear anything under all that armor? Find out soon! As always, if you have a myth you'd like to see busted, leave a comment and I'll research it!

As a sort of followup to my last head-to-toe post, where the cage crinoline was mentioned, I thought I'd write a bit about the social symbolism of the crinoline.



The cage crinoline first appeared in the mid 1850s and would continue to be popular until the 1870s, when it transformed into a bustle. At this time in history, women had very few rights and were generally second class citizens. They were seen as delicate, frivolous, submissive, and intellectually inferior to men. A woman was an ornament. They dressed in more colorful and decorative clothing (as opposed to men who wore dark, plain suits) to show off the wealth of either their fathers or their husbands. This stifling atmosphere did its best to confine a woman to the role of dutiful daughter and then dutiful wife, leaving little room for any other aspirations. You probably see where I'm going with this. Women were, metaphorically, caged by their society, just as their bodies were literally caged by a cage crinoline.


Modern fashion historians aren't the only ones who picked up on the idea of the cage crinoline as a literal cage. Here a cartoonist from the period shows how useful this cage can be for men.

Just as this was a period of female intellectual and social repression, it was also a period of sexual repression (although sexual repression was a hallmark of Victorian society as a whole, not just the women of the period). With the crinoline covering the lower half of the body, a woman's sexuality was literally in a cage, inaccessible to anyone except a husband. Interestingly, historically men weren't seen as the more sexual beings. Women were the sexually rapacious gender, and men were simply poor victims lured in by those pesky horny females. Thus the crinoline can be seen as a cage confining a woman's sexuality for the protection of men, just as one would put a ravenous animal in a cage for the protection of the people around it.

Interestingly, with all of it's symbols of female repression, many men thought the crinoline was incredibly stupid. It was way too big, taking up all of the room in carriages and making it that much harder to get close to a woman. Which leads to the other side of the social symbolism. In an increasingly industrialized society, cities were overcrowded and with any large city comes a large crime rate. Wearing a giant cage can be seen as a form of protection against the hundreds and thousands of suspicious strangers a woman might come into contact with walking down the street. Furthermore, caging a woman's sexuality can be seen from another angle. By putting her genitals behind a cage, a woman is at least symbolically protecting herself from sexual predators.

In addition to this social protection, the cage crinoline offered health benefits as well. Before it's invention, women achieved the fashionable wide-skirted silhouette by wearing many layers of heavy petticoats. This was not only uncomfortable but unhealthy. The cage crinoline offered a much better alternative. It was much lighter, wasn't nearly as hot as wearing multiple layers of cloth, and allowed for a greater range of movement. So on the one hand it symbolized female repression, but on the other it provided a sort of female liberation.



I'm no expert on gender studies, but these are just some of my thoughts on the possible symbolism of the cage crinoline. What do you all think? Is it a greater symbol of repression? Of liberation? A combination of both? Let me hear your thoughts!