Womens Wear – And It Had A Fascinating Story One Warranting Further Research And Careful Contextualization
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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. Her forthcoming article, ‘He May Sneer at the Course We are Pursuing to Gain Justice’. With all that said… Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, The Sibyl and Corresponding about Women’s Suffrage, gonna be published in NYC History Journal. Generally, while Throwing off ‘the Draggling Dresses’, her dissertation. Furthermore, women and Dress Reform, 18201900, discusses the ways in which fashion and function intersected in the 19thcentury American dress reform movement.
‘shortterm’ research fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of NYC Dissertation Fellowship, and a Writing Across the Curriculum fellowship with the City University of NY while Ping is the recipient of the Thompn dissertation fellowship.
Ping holds a master’s degree in history from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor’s in history from the University of Iowa.
City University of NYC since Ping is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Center. NY since Ping is an adjunct lecturer in the history department at Queens College in Flushing. Whether since it appealed to her as an artist may never be known, or Carpenter owned a bloomer costume as long as she was sympathetic to women’s reform Ok, and now one of the most important parts. Though the trousers and sleeves of the jacket show wear and tear and some sloppy repairs will be well known on both pieces, it remains unclear whether we are looking at from age or from wear. By analyzing extant clothing historians can address cultural questions unanswered by textual sources, similar to how regular people interpreted social reform and whether these movements played a role in their daily lives.
I know that the question remains, the Carpenters possessed the financial means to have this kind of a garment made.
Determining the dominant textiles used, how a garment was constructed, the presence what really is apparent is that someone cared enough to patch the garment and to carefully store it in a trunk for safe keeping. Meriva Carpenter actually wear her bloomer costume? It was exciting for me to compare these conjectures to material evidence from the period. 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. Needless to say, the original design recommended by Amelia Bloomer included harem pants. As a result, 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. Some information can be found easily on the web. The bloomer trousers stood out as well.
Women in upstate New York City commonly wore their trousers in the style of men. 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. Like men’s pants, the bloomer trousers are split leg and almost white with matching blackish cloth sewn from knee to ankle and cut straight. Blouse was likely worn under the jacket. Whenever making the garment appear as one piece rather than two, the waistband of the skirt connected to the jacket by buttons. Then again, the blackish skirt buttoned down the front and ended below the knees, approximately 6 inches from the ankle. Although, her husband a good miller and dyer, Meriva Carpenter was a painter of miniatures. Known around wn for being artistic, Carpenter’s bloomer costume reflected her reputation. Created from grey cotton with silk applique and embroidered leaves, the 1855 garment includes a blackish jacket with long, turned cuff sleeves.
My research centers on the 19thcentury American women’s dress reform movement and the cultural roles of fashion and anti fashion.
Peterboro long appreciated for its significance to the history of the American antislavery movement had an intriguing part to play in the antebellum women’s reform movement as well.
Now look, the bloomer costume should later be adopted as the uniform of the women’s dress reform movement. In response, she began wearing a garment consisting of a shortened skirt and trousers. For example, in consonance with them, for women’s rights reformers, the bloomer costume symbolized their protest against ideas of feminine inferiority that, were perpetuated by fashionable clothing. It’s a well in my study, Peterboro, New York City, plays a significant role. Provide few details about regular women’s adoption of dress reform, textual sources detail the experiences of reformers in wearing the bloomer costume. In 1851, Peterboro resident and abolitionist Elizabeth Smith Miller became frustrated with her long skirts while gardening.
Right after journalist Amelia Bloomer publically endorsed it, that said, this clothing will become popularly known as the bloomer costume.
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.
In 1994, the Cortland County Historical Society received a phone call from the Homer National Bank about a trunk that had been stored there for an unknown interval. Inside the trunk lay a bloomer costume gether with documents indicating that it had been owned by Meriva Carpenter, a resident of Homer, New York City. Textile and costume historians are doing this kind of analysis for many years, and the results of their work was 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. Essentially, I should also recommend looking at the blog, Two Nerdy History Girls for more costume, textiles, and interesting sidelights on material culture and history.
