Womens Fashion Clothing: Known Around Wn For Being Artistic” Carpenter’s Bloomer Costume Reflected Her Reputation
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Known around wn for being artistic, Carpenter’s bloomer costume reflected her reputation.
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. Accordingly the blackish skirt buttoned down the front and ended below the knees, approximately 6 inches from the ankle.
So a blouse was likely worn under the jacket.
Created from grey cotton with silk applique and embroidered leaves, the 1855 garment includes a blackish jacket with long, turned cuff sleeves.
Whenever making the garment appear as one piece rather than two, the waistband of the skirt connected to the jacket by buttons. Textile and costume historians been doing this kind of analysis for many years, and the results of their work been published in a few 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.
I should also recommend looking at the blog, Two Nerdy History Girls for more costume, textiles, and interesting sidelights on material culture and history.
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.
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. 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. Usually, it was exciting for me to compare these conjectures to material evidence from the period.
Thus, 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.
The bloomer trousers stood out as well.
I found no indication that Carpenter sewed her own clothing, and the skill level necessary to create this elaborate garment suggests that she had it commissioned. That said, women in upstate NY commonly wore their trousers in the style of men. I am sure that the original design recommended by Amelia Bloomer included harem pants. While others felt that adopting maleinspired trousers more bluntly asserted their gender equality, written accounts indicate that some women thought this design was more hygienic. Wanted a garment that was also attractive and feminine. Saw the functional merits of shortening the skirt and adding trousers.
So this suggests that despite dress reformers’ assertions that men were compelling women to dress a certain way, women themselves embraced fashion.
Historically the dress reform movement was considered a failure being that it did not result in any ‘long term’ changes in fashion.
Fashionable hourglass shape is maintained and the embroidery is delicate and beautiful, the most radical element of the bloomer costume. Was embraced. However, meriva Carpenter’s bloomer costume also reflects this view. While the idea of convenient clothing was appealing, quite a few women complained that, the bloomer costume was ugly. My research centers on the 19th century American women’s dress reform movement and the cultural roles of fashion and antifashion. Now look. Just after journalist Amelia Bloomer publically endorsed it, therefore this clothing will become popularly known as the bloomer costume. Provide few details about regular women’s adoption of dress reform, textual sources detail the experiences of reformers in wearing the bloomer costume. In response, she began wearing a garment consisting of a shortened skirt and trousers.
In my study, Peterboro, NYC, plays a significant role.
In 1851, Peterboro resident and abolitionist Elizabeth Smith Miller became frustrated with her long skirts while gardening.
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. With that said, 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. Bloomer costume will later be adopted as the uniform of the women’s dress reform movement. City University of NY while Ping is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center. Of course women and Dress Reform, 1820 1900, discusses the ways in which fashion and function intersected in the ’19thcentury’ American dress reform movement.
NY while Ping is an adjunct lecturer in the history department at Queens College in Flushing.
While Throwing off ‘the Draggling Dresses’, her dissertation.
Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, The Sibyl and Corresponding about Women’s Suffrage, might be published in NYC History Journal. ‘short term’ research fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York City 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. Her forthcoming article, ‘He May Sneer at the Course We are Pursuing to Gain Justice’. Ping holds a master’s degree in history from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor’s in history from the University of Iowa. Besides, the question remains, the Carpenters possessed the financial means to have this garment made. Though the trousers and sleeves of the jacket show wear and tear and some sloppy repairs could have been well known on both pieces, it remains unclear whether we are talking about from age or from wear.
Whether as long as it appealed to her as an artist may never be known, or Carpenter owned a bloomer costume since she was sympathetic to women’s reform
Determining the dominant textiles used, how a garment was constructed, the presence just like how regular people interpreted social reform and whether these movements played a role in their daily lives. It’s a well what’s apparent is that someone cared enough to patch the garment and to carefully store it in a trunk for safe keeping. Let me ask you something. Meriva Carpenter actually wear her bloomer costume? It is 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.
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