Front View, Back View - Underwear In America III

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

All unknown to Marjorie, in 1862 a certain Ebenezer Butterick was living at Sterling, Massachusetts. There, in that year so fraught with import for Marjorie's future, he became inspired with a great idea. Rather Mrs. Butterick conceived the idea. But at that period of our civilization, it would have been prejudicial to any public confidence in an idea to ascribe it to a wife. The husband was universally held to be the intelligent mind of a domestic partnership. Thus, Ebenezer Butterick became a clever man.

His idea was to make for sale tissue-paper patterns-patterns for the garments made in every household. Mrs. Butterick cut the first pattern. It was a pattern for a man's shirt—the first sewn garment, as the Professor reminds us, worn by the primitive male. The idea met with encouraging success. Mr. Butterick advanced upon New York in 1865 and set about forming a company, which shortly was duly incorporated under the law.

A little magazine was started—The Metropolitan: New York Fashions. Beneath the title, the first page of text carried the following announcement:

To those of the public who are not aware of the fact, we would say, that we are manufacturing patterns for all kinds of garments, either for Ladies, Misses, Boys, or Little Children of either sex. We send them by mail, post-paid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of price and order.

Below are descriptions of some of our new and most desirable patterns, with the prices annexed.

In the issue for July, 1869, we may not without historical emotion contemplate a description of two illustrations. They are reproduced from rather severe engravings, one giving "Front View," the other "Back View." The description follows:

No. 1025—These illustrations represent a pair of drawers for a lady. They were made of English long-cloth, and had openings at the sides, which were fastened with buttons and button holes. The upper edge of the front was gathered and joined to a yoke-band, and the back, which was quite free, was gathered a little, and sewed to a straight band, which was about twenty inches in length; a shirr was made in the centre of this band, and about three inches from the ends; eyelette holes were worked on the outside, at each end of the shirr, and two tapes were arranged through this to adjust the back of the figure. The tapes were sufficiently long to tie at the front over the body. The lower part of the drawers were ornamented alternately with clusters of tucks, and cambric inserting; the edge was finished with a narrow lace. This pattern is suitable for linen, bleached or unbleached muslin, and tucks, ruffles, edging or braid are suitable trimmings. If desired, the seam which joins the two parts together, may be left open to within four or five inches of the belt, both at the back and front, and the parts faced.

We have the pattern in sizes from 20 to 36 inches waist measure, and two yards of material, 36 inches wide, are required to make a garment in this style for a medium-sized lady.

Price of Plain Pattern, 25 cents. Trimmed and Plain, 75 cents.

Among the various scattered items relating to articles of intimate apparel, this number of The Metropolitan also presents a brace of illustrations, the customary Front View and Back View, representing a "Lady's Chemise." This is de-scribed as "rather novel and neatly fitting," with "the body slightly gored, and quite full where it is joined to the band." The pattern was to be had "in sizes for ladies from 28 to 46 inches bust measure." It required, we learn, "21/2 yards of material, 27 inches wide, to make a garment in this style for a medium-sized lady."

"E. Butterick and Co." steadily advanced to the position of a concern of eminence, with quarters both in London and New York. Within a few years the company had well under way another publication, The Tailors' Monthly Review. But, in a rather paradoxical metaphor, tissue-paper patterns were the solid rock on which the enterprise was builded. From the first magazine, devoted to "New York Fashions," emerged a "Monthly Magazine Illustrating European and American Fashions." This was called The Delineator. Price 15 cents; Yearly, One Dollar."

Marjorie's new magazine for some time strictly followed the original model which had worked so well. It was a magazine of sternly engraved illustrations coupled with descriptions of uninhabited feminine garments, each cut with a number below it—the number of a tissue paper pattern, with the price of the pattern given—twenty cents up.

From that cradle of civilization the Mediterranean basin to the Wabash Valley, the particular Marjorie upon whom we have had our eye has been a well-to-do and rather fashionable woman. And if, as an American lady at the beginning of the eighteen seventies, she read regularly a couple of fashion magazines, it should be noted that the feminine population in general was hardly aware of such publications. What were the other early sources of domestic clothes making information?

The sale of paper patterns in the stores in city and town had, of course, begun with the Butterick idea. Before the time of paper patterns, little diagrams were to be found in volumes termed Household Books. In general much alike, these works of miscellaneous lore covered an enormous field. This included instruction in the making of simple clothing, such as aprons, mob- or dustcaps, and underwear. Also: home nursing, emergency surgery, and medicine; the making of preserves, jams, jellies, and candies; the care of infants and young children, and the making of most of their clothing; the treatment of floors, furniture, and silver, with recipes for various polishing oils, pastes, or powders; and how to make mole, rabbit, and fly traps.

A notable household book was called Home Comforts, a hefty volume published perhaps in the eighties. Aside from the subjects mentioned, this book contained many recipes and schedules of meals and recipes for liniments and medicines, face bleaches and beauty creams, hair tonic, and so on. Such books as this were in their homely way fulfilling something of the functions of the great women's magazines to come.

Even when patterns had come in, for some considerable time they were mostly for outer garments. The main channel of information concerning undergarments was for long what is termed the grapevine route; that is, news of the styles passed among women by word of mouth. An old lady tells us that the prime source of the fashions in these articles as in others was Paris. Thus, such intelligence traveled slowly; and the underclothes of a belle in the hinter-land were not, alas! the latest thing in such loveliness. The Professor says that he remembers when a boy in the mid-lands his mother's occasionally remarking that the styles there were always about "a year behind" those in "the East."

Nevertheless, Marjorie kept up pretty well. Take the phenomenon of her stockings in the seventies, for instance. Though her legs then were not permitted to be publicly admired, even by so much as a peep, she evidently much admired them herself. Maybe it was because her legs were so lonesome. Anyhow, hidden away from the caressing glance of the world of men, she indulged them in brighter hues and gayer patterns than she ever has since that day.

She had a very elegant design in lisle. A panel of black open-work ran up the instep of stockings otherwise white half way to the knee and black above. She had French blue silk stockings decorated with white polka dots. Other giddy patterns were of stripes in variegated colors, Roman stripes, and mixtures of several sorts. She used freely intense reds, greens, and yellows.

Two styles were especially swell. One was the pantalette stocking, black, adorned from calf to ankle with three tiers of white flounces. This was particularly fetching in its femininity. The other represented a very roguish flight of fancy in quite a different vein. This was her military boot stocking, with a row of small gold buttons up the side and a tassel at the top of the simulated boot.

Perhaps the most extraordinary passage in Marjorie's en-tire history occurs very early in the seventies. Heavily upholstered standards of propriety quite aside, it is a startling picture for any period—from the days of Cleopatra to those of the future flapper. In 1869 Marjorie had worn a rather bulletproof-looking night-garment of no stinted length. But Marjorie moving about in her bedroom in her nightgown of 1872 is an apparition indeed. With her muffled upbringing! How can she regard herself as chaste?

A muslin nightgown, this, extending merely from shoulder to hip. She calls it a shift. The Professor, who himself is quite appalled, says he finds it implied in the recollections of the venerable that this short measure in night attire was an economy measure. "Nether extremities" were permitted to be thus uncovered, supposedly in order to save material. And it is true that an economic depression then clouding the land was at its extreme point just about that time.

However, according to the testimony of an eye witness, thrift was not exercised in fashioning the upper part of this gown. Ruffle upon ruffle, yoke upon yoke, and a weight of collar embroidery were lavished upon that section of the garment protruding from the bedclothes which, when Marjorie was tucked in, shielded that considerable portion of her not garmented.

No pictorial representation of this nightgown is known —to our regret. Of course, graphic reproductions of this garment, inhabited, would have been impossible at that time. Even literature was apparently struck dumb by this phenomenon. Apparently it is not mentioned in any book. This strange article, however, was shown at an exhibition given in 1926 by the pioneer underwear manufacturer of the United States. To most of the visitors its function was not self-explanatory. It was estimated by the veteran manufacturer that one of these highly abbreviated shifts of 1872 would fill a box capable of holding eleven long nightgowns in fashion a half century later.