Front View, Back View - Underwear In America II

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

In 1830, a great thing indeed happens to American Marjorie. She has the privilege of subscribing to the first women's periodical in the United States—Godey's Lady's Book, published at Philadelphia by a gentleman of the name of Louis Antoine Godey. Though his name sounds to her quite foreign, she hears that he was born in New York City.

It is with no little excitement that she examines the first number of this treasure. At the top of the first page of the thrilling Lady's Book she reads that herein correct fashions are illustrated by "brightly colored plates" and "steel engravings in the best manner of the period." The text is set in that microscopic type to which she is accustomed. She does not seem to require, as you might think, a powerful magnifying glass.

As the magazine continues to arrive, Marjorie finds amid much reading matter of a refined nature pieces by the celebrated Mr. Poe. The major illustrations are all of ladies fully dressed, as billowy in effect, indeed, as a full-rigged, three-mast ship. The representations of underwear to be found, always strictly uninhabited, are miniature cuts labeled "Fig. I," "Fig. 2," et cetera. The fashion articles usually merely report displays current at the establishments of leading modistes flourishing in the center of Fashion where the magazine is published.

For instance, an article described as "Chit-Chat on Philadelphia Fashions for January," 1852, including a survey of "mantles" and dresses, states, "Of the lighter items of the toilet, little can be said." Why, is not exactly clear to us, though it probably seems natural enough to Marjorie. Any-how, the piece continues :

Chemisettes of a hundred different varieties are seen, and undersleeves of every conceivable pattern and material. The last are worn a trifle narrower, and, as the weather grows cool, of fine French and linen cambrics, or India muslin.

A frank discussion of the delicate subject of Under-sleeves is given in one issue. Two "very elegant and elaborate pat-terns for the present month" are presented. They are both closed by a band at the wrist, "as all should be at the present season." "Fig. 2," Marjorie reads, "has a plain cambric body, finished, in the first place, by a row of insertion and gauffered frill. The same at the wrist, and between the two are similar bands, placed en spiral." The cut labeled "Fig. 3" is described as a more ordinary style, and more easily made, or "done up." "The falls are of thick cambric edging, suit-able for a promenade or street dress."

In these undersleeves, as also in the chemisettes, we find a recurrence of the tendency, or instinct, for revealing or suggesting an article of underwear. Originally the actual chemise, long sleeved and higher at the bosom or throat than the overdress, was shown. Later, for the sake of economy, the undersleeves were made separate and "tacked," or lightly sewn, to the shorter sleeve of the dress. The bosom of the chemise became a chemisette or vestee and was fastened by light stitching to the front or neck of the dress. Separate collars, cuffs, and even shirt-bosoms for men arose in the same way.

It is 1848 and Marjorie is all agog—she is going as a delegate from Indianapolis to the Women's Rights Convention, to be held at Seneca Falls, New York. A great many people laugh at her, but Marjorie is much stirred by what is coming to be called the American feminist movement. But that is only the beginning. The startling demands of the Convention arouse wide indignation and ridicule.

One of Marjorie's most telling experiences there is her meeting with a Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer, of Homer, New York, a lecturer on the temperance question. And next year she subscribes to another new publication, The Lily, just started by this enthusiastic pioneer suffragette, who has settled at Seneca Falls. The first militant feminist newspaper published in the United States. Just think of that!

The Lily is amazing. Marjorie had worn to the convention a splendidly enormous, upholstered-looking dress with heavily trailing skirts, a considerable stock of drygoods underneath, and high heels. The paper denounces Marjorie's entire costume as unhygienic and declares that her multiplicity of waistbands restrict free breathing. The wonderful Mrs. Bloomer enthusiastically advocates a form of dress described as "full Syrian or Turkish trousers" worn with a skirt ending just below the knees; in summer the trousers to extend to the ankle, and in winter tucked into high top-boots.

Though almost at once this costume becomes indelibly identified with the name of its militant champion, Marjorie hears that the short skirt and balloon trousers were first worn into Seneca Falls by a daring "Congressman's wife," perhaps as a stunt. And Mrs. Bloomer in her writings expressly mentions a Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller as the originator of the garb, which she says she copied.

Though The Lily comes to an end in 1851, Mrs. Bloomer, the earliest crusader against current forms of feminine clothing, certainly does not. Now thirty-three years of age, she has the English-speaking world by the ears. The popular reaction to her proposed innovations in women's dress is well summarized by a cartoon by Leech in Punch in 1851. It is labeled Bloomerism, An American Custom and presents a pair of coarse females brazenly smoking cigars. Rigged out in a humorous representation of the new costume, they strut along a business street, to the horror of a couple of ladies of the smelling-salts school and the mockery of an assortment of gamins.

Marjorie is highly incensed. The publisher of The Lily . . that fine person she considers her friend . . . made the butt of all this hooting and ridicule! Marjorie doesn't believe she can look that way at all. She determines to make a pilgrimage back to Seneca Falls. She has barely arrived when she meets Mrs. Bloomer.

Her costume strikes Marjorie as distinctly fetching in its effect of modest femininity. The young woman before her, by no means deficient in loveliness and rather demure of mien, wears a wide, drooping hat, her dark hair looped down over her ears; a basque of black velvet, with bell sleeves, showing a chemisette and undersleeves. A gathered skirt of light-colored fabric billows out from her slender waist to droop slightly just below her knees, where it is decorated with a touch of embroidery. From beneath this extend very full trousers of the same light color gathered at the bottom about her ankles.

During Marjorie's stay in the East she finds it true that, as she has heard it asserted, some bold feminine spirits not only appear simply in public but even go to church in billowing trousers semi-concealed by voluminous skirts of little more than half length. She makes the acquaintance of other notable women who are also giving support to the Bloomer costume: Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Lucy Stone (Black-well), and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, first president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association.

She returns home, bent upon making a costume of her own exactly like Mrs. Bloomer's to show people how really nice it can be. But she never gets it done, for the dress agitation of the day dies away. Eventually all the personages who had promoted the garb resume a style of dress more in accord with prevailing convention. Amelia is the last to strike her colors, so to say. Dimming in the public eye, she is to live to be seventy-six. For long, the large, low, drooping hat associated with the costume continues to be known itself as a "Bloomer."

Marjorie forgets the sensible things she has heard about her unhygienic condition, her waistbands, and all. She resumes her deep interest in the Fashion intelligence of her Lady's Book.. She has kept pace with the swelling of skirts in foreign capitals, arriving at the crinoline.

Her family takes in a publication called the Democratic Age. In the issue of this magazine for February, 1859, she sees an elaborate advertisement of a product of Yankee ingenuity. There is a fascinating illustration of the device. She simply must have this! The advertisement reads:

DOUGLAS & SHERWOOD'S MATINEE SKIRT

Safety since it effectually obviates the danger arising from entangling the feet, or foreign substances, in the hoops!

Comfort!! because the muslin skirt can be instantaneously removed from the springs by Patent Detachable Fastenings, washed with other garments, and at no greater expense, and replaced on the hoops in a minute!

Elegance!! because the scientific cut of the muslin skirt, and the fine material of which it is composed, give a graceful fall to the robe worn over it, and will, in hot weather, enable the wearer to dispense with any intermediate skirt.

THE MATINEE SKIRT

has 11 hoops, weighs but 10 ounces.

Indeed, declares the Professor, around this time Marjorie's uncle—Uncle Sam—was doing a good deal for her in the way of Yankee ingenuity, and Marjorie, by showing her appreciation, was doing a good deal for her uncle. Some considerable time before the mighty industry for outfitting Marjorie with under apparel had been initiated, however humbly. The story begins with stockings.

No picture of Colonial domesticity, of course, is complete without the spinning wheel. It is the symbol of the era when everything that our Marjorie wore was made, from the be-ginning, in her own household. Except when Marjorie was wealthy enough to import certain articles. Her dwelling was, generally, a manufactory on a small scale, in many respects not unlike her home when she lived in ancient Greece. As she had come to wear more garments, however, there was much more work with her distaff, loom, and busy shuttle.

Just when stockings began to be made in America for sale is a matter of tangled dispute. Nor do we know how such stockings were first made here. At any rate, as early as Colonial times, knitters by trade had arrived at German-town, Pennsylvania. A gentleman of that period recorded that he bought there a pair of stockings for his "wife's sister" for $1.25, translated into modern money rates. A sizable sum for those times. For himself, "as a Christmas gift," he bought a pair for $1.50.

Did these early Germantown knitters have machines? The English, watchful of their invention and their trade, had imposed an exorbitant penalty on exporting one of their machines. There is a story that around 1723 stocking frames were bootlegged into Germantown by Germans. Undoubtedly Germantown, founded in 1689 by thirteen Mennonite families from Prussia, was doing a considerable business in hosiery by the middle of the eighteenth century. Other ac-counts declare that there were no machines in America be-fore 1822 and that credit for having and operating the first hosiery machine belongs to Ipswich, Massachusetts. A picturesque touch adds that then bobbins and needles of lace stocking machines were smuggled into Boston in pots of Yorkshire butter.

For a decade after that, all knitting machines were driven by man power. It is related that in 1831 a resident of Albany first harnessed power to William Lee's frame. Some say his name was Timothy Bailey; others insist that he was one Egbert Egberts, and place the date of the invention a year later. Whichever of them invented the new machine, it would require quite a flight of fancy to invent the name of Egbert Egberts.

Though the basis had now been laid for the development of a gigantic industry in knit goods for Marjorie, little was accomplished until 1841. The first goods made were for men; no goods for women were made until just prior to 1860. A few years later children's goods were made. In that era Marjorie was far more interested in hoops than in knit undies.

Obliging Marjorie now became a prime function of American business. Plants for manufacturing her hoops sprang up. Here we find some curious stories of evolution in. industry. For instance, there was Wallace Barnes, a Connecticut farmer. About the only asset his farm had was a river. Maybe he could manufacture something. Mr. Barnes dammed his river and thus obtained water power. The next thing was to think of something to manufacture. Well, there were all these women in hoop skirts—skirts supported by wire framework. Why not manufacture these frames? Mr. Barnes did a thriving business for some years.

Then, without a thought of Mr. Barnes, Marjorie's fancy changed about her silhouette, and his market was wiped out. Mr. Barnes perceived that clocks with metal works were sup-planting clocks with wooden works. Marjorie had left him with more or less metal on hand. He turned his attention to making steel clock springs. From making Marjorie's hoops, the onetime Yankee farmer developed into a manufacturer of springs for every purpose and the head of a company which was to become the largest concern of its kind in the world.

In 1861 one David Hale Fanning opened a hoop-skirt plant at Worcester, Massachusetts. Mr. Fanning seems to have had a very shrewd idea of Marjorie. He realized that whatever she might do as to her lower proportions, she would always hold tight, so to speak, to her upper structure. Changing his hoop-skirt plant to the first corset factory in the country, he founded the American corset industry.

The sound of drums. The Civil War. Kissing her sweet-heart good-bye is Marjorie, still in hoops and now in a store corset. That is, if she could afford it.

In the general conception of the period, crinoline undoubtedly plays a considerable role in giving the romantic flavor of "the South." A Virginia gentlewoman, however, who clearly remembers that day as a child, tells the Professor that at the time of the Civil War, "in the South at least," crinoline was not so generally worn as is supposed. Couldn't afford it. Also, it hampered women too much. And, further, they cut up petticoats for bandages and lint. During and after the Civil War Southern women sometimes wore "part of a hoop"—that is, one at the back not extending far down. This appealing makeshift, according to the recollection of this venerable lady, was the precursor of the bustle.