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Clothing
: Introduction
: Looking at Eighteenth-Century Clothing
by Linda Baumgarten
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| Gown and Matching
Petticoat. Cream silk taffeta with crisp finish-lustring"-trimmed
with pinked self-fabric,linen bodice and sleeve linings. By tradition
made in England in 1778 and bought to Virginia by Mrs. Frances Norton.
G1946-133. |
Many Virginia women favored
gowns made of lustring, a crisp, light silk that was often ordered for wear
during the summer months. When the hot weather became unbearable, some women
went without their stays for informal occasions and at home, although formal
occasions still required them. One Virginia woman related
in her diary that she did not
bother to get dressed immediately on a particularly "sulterry" day; she remained
"up stairs in only shift and petticoat till after Tea."
Clothing that reaches a
museum collection has been culled by time, by curatorial selectivity, and by
a process we might call "the survival of the finest." Most collections contain
garments that are of the elegant, dress type, simply because everyday clothing
has not survived. No one thought to save the plain, worn garments of a lower-class
man or woman – if there was anything left to save but rags.
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| Unlined Coat and Breeches. Coat of coarse homespun cotton and wool, breeches of
cotton, Isle of Wight County or Goochland County, Virgina, 1780-1790.
the suit is sized to fit a youth ( the beeches have a 27-inch waist).1964-174. |
To understand what most people wore in the past, museum collections need to be supplemented
by carefully analyzed print sources and written records.
Some questions about people's appearance cannot be answered to our satisfaction, even after poring
over all the surviving sources. We would very much like to know the size of
the "average" person in the eighteenth century, but we can offer only partial
answers. We do know that the unaltered bodices and stays in Williamsburg's collections
have waistlines ranging from 21 1/2 inches to 34 inches, with an average of
slightly over 25 inches. Two hundred and twenty-five
men advertised as being runaways in the Virginia Gazette between the years 1750
to 1770 had an average height of 5 feet, 7 1/2 inches. Based on limited, non-scientific
samples, these figures cannot be taken as averages for an entire period. Research
continues in all aspects of appearance and clothing.
Article written by Linda Baumgarten, Curator of Textiles of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The article is an excerpt from the catalog Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg.
To place an a credit card order for a copy of Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg
call the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center Bookstore at (757) 229-1000, Ext. 2691.
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Historic Triangle