Womans Clothes: The Bloomer Costume Would Later Be Adopted As The Uniform Of The Women’s Dress Reform Movement
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Instead, garments that can be worn again are sold in thrift stores or bundled for overseas bulk sales at just a few pennies a pound.
They are collecting far, far fewer clothes than they sell, executives admit, in the. LeviStrauss. Sometimes for as much as 20 percent on future purchases.
Downcycled for use in products like insulation, carpet padding, and stuffing for toys; incinerated for energy, or sent to landfills, Clothes that can’t be worn again are resold as rags. Historically the dress reform movement had been considered a failure as it did not result in any ‘long term’ changes in fashion.
This suggests that despite dress reformers’ assertions that men were compelling women to dress a certain way, women themselves embraced fashion.
Wanted a garment that was also attractive and feminine. Saw the functional merits of shortening the skirt and adding trousers. Now look, the fashionable hourglass shape is maintained and the embroidery is delicate and beautiful, the most radical element of the bloomer costume. Was embraced. Meriva Carpenter’s bloomer costume also reflects this view. While the idea of convenient clothing was appealing, plenty of women complained that, the bloomer costume was ugly. That’s where it starts getting very intriguing. The original design recommended by Amelia Bloomer included harem pants.
Bloomer trousers stood out as well.
I found no indication that Carpenter sewed her own clothing, and the skill level necessary to create this particular elaborate garment suggests that she had it commissioned.
It was exciting for me to compare these conjectures to material evidence from the period. Needless to say, women in upstate NYC commonly wore their trousers in the style of men. Consequently, though the bloomer costume was advertised as functional clothing, the detail work on this garment the elaborate silk applique and embroidery that adorned it implies that it was worn for show and not housework. Have you heard about something like that before? While others felt that adopting ‘male inspired’ trousers more bluntly asserted their gender equality, written accounts indicate that some women thought this design was more hygienic. Accordingly a short term research fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of NY Dissertation Fellowship, and a Writing Across the Curriculum fellowship with the City University of NYC since Ping is the recipient of the Thompn dissertation fellowship. Remember, her forthcoming article, ‘He May Sneer at the Course We are Pursuing to Gain Justice’. New York City since Ping is an adjunct lecturer in the history department at Queens College in Flushing.
Women and Dress Reform, ‘1820 1900′, discusses the ways in which fashion and function intersected in the ’19th century’ American dress reform movement.
City University of NY while Ping is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center.
Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, The Sibyl and Corresponding about Women’s Suffrage, should be published in NYC History Journal. Oftentimes ping holds a master’s degree in history from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor’s in history from the University of Iowa. Basically, while Throwing off ‘the Draggling Dresses’, her dissertation. In my study, Peterboro, NYC, plays a significant role. Did you know that the bloomer costume will later be adopted as the uniform of the women’s dress reform movement. Peterboro long appreciated for its significance to the history of the American ‘anti slavery’ movement had an intriguing part to play in the antebellum women’s reform movement as well. Provide few details about regular women’s adoption of dress reform, textual sources detail the experiences of reformers in wearing the bloomer costume.
In accordance with them, for women’s rights reformers, the bloomer costume symbolized their protest against ideas of feminine inferiority that, were perpetuated by fashionable clothing.
In response, she began wearing a garment consisting of a shortened skirt and trousers.
In 1851, Peterboro resident and abolitionist Elizabeth Smith Miller became frustrated with her long skirts while gardening. My research centers on the 19thcentury American women’s dress reform movement and the cultural roles of fashion and antifashion. Known after journalist Amelia Bloomer publically endorsed it, with that said, this clothing would become popularly known as the bloomer costume. Now look. While making the garment appear as one piece rather than two, the waistband of the skirt connected to the jacket by buttons. Made out of grey cotton with silk applique and embroidered leaves, the 1855 garment includes a blackish jacket with long, turned cuff sleeves.
Blouse was likely worn under the jacket.
The blackish skirt buttoned down the front and ended below the knees, approximately 6 inches from the ankle.
Known around wn for being artistic, Carpenter’s bloomer costume reflected her reputation. Basically, like men’s pants, the bloomer trousers are split leg and almost white with matching grey cloth sewn from knee to ankle and cut straight. You should take this seriously. Her husband a perfect miller and dyer, Meriva Carpenter was a painter of miniatures. On p of this, I would also recommend looking at the blog, Two Nerdy History Girls for more costume, textiles, and interesting sidelights on material culture and history. Lots of information can be found on the internet. Textile and costume historians are doing this kind of analysis for many years, and the results of their work are published in a couple of places, including the journal of the Costume Society of America, the quarterly bulletin of the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums as well as in the Proceedings of ALHFAM’s annual meetings, and the MESDA Journal.
Question remains, the Carpenters possessed the financial means to have this garment made. And now here’s the question. Meriva Carpenter actually wear her bloomer costume? By analyzing extant clothing historians can address cultural questions unanswered by textual sources, just like how regular people interpreted social reform and whether these movements played a role in their daily lives. What actually is apparent is that someone cared enough to patch the garment and to carefully store it in a trunk for safe keeping. It’s a well Whether as long as it appealed to her as an artist may never be known, or Carpenter owned a bloomer costume being that she was sympathetic to women’s reform determining the dominant textiles used, how a garment was constructed, the presence might be popular on both pieces, it remains unclear whether there are from age or from wear.
It had a fascinating story, one warranting further research and careful contextualization.
Most significantly for my research, an authentic bloomer costume from 1855, on loan from the Cortland County Historical Society, was also on display. Called In the Kitchen Tea, the fundraiser featured tea and finger sandwiches, volunteers in recreated bloomer costumes, a brief history of dress reform, and songs about the bloomer. When I was invited to Peterboro for a fundraiser to support the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the Smithfield Community Association an event that was all about women’s dress reform I jumped at the chance, in the fall of 2013. Essentially, piecing gether where the garment fits into the history of dress reform required that I combine genealogy with a material analysis of the item itself a close reading of the clothing, How the garment came to be in the bank’s possession is unknown.
