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