Costume History Exhibition: Three Centuries of Style
A new exhibition, Three Centuries of Style: Clothing from the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum , was conceived and curated by Ned Lazaro, Collections Manager at Historic Deerfield, to highlight the Museum's collection of women's clothing, spanning three centuries. The garments provide an excellent source for tracing the changes in American women's fashion from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. The exhibit, on view now through Columbus Day weekend, is part of the house tour and is displayed in three rooms of the Museum.
The seven gowns that represent Three Centuries of Style are divided into three comparative periods: 1770 and 1870; 1807 and 1907; and 1825 and 1925. By pairing garments that are, on average, created 100 years apart, changes in fashion, clothing construction, and silhouette, are placed into context. Some of the earlier garments were altered and worn again by family members around the turn of the twentieth century. These items reveal evolving aesthetic ideals.
Of particular interest is the wedding gown of Elizabeth Pitkin Porter. Elizabeth (1719-1798) married Moses Porter (1722-1755) in 1743, and they built the house, now the Museum, in 1752. This year marks the 250th anniversary of the construction of the house.
Nancy Rexford, a historic clothing specialist, said of the Museum's clothing collection in 1978: “The collection has importance because it represents the wear of a known family of known social class, who lived where the clothing is kept.”
Lazaro first got involved in the collection as a graduate student. He did independent work cataloguing clothing, which sparked his interest in comparing and contrasting garments in the collection. He said in a recent telephone interview that he developed the exhibit in an effort to educate the public about “the complexities involved in fashion and how it is tied to technology, the arts, and commerce.”
Lazaro received his master's degree in Costume History in 2001 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently on the Region I Board of the Costume Foundation Society of America. Lazaro will be a presenter at the Museum's fall colloquium, New Research at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum , on Sept. 28, 2002. His topic will focus on the wedding gown of Elizabeth Pitkin Porter and the eighteenth century life of the garment, including the imported fabric, silk brocade, and the context of the gown's ownership in the Connecticut River Valley.
----------------------------------------------------------Captions for the Exhibit:
About 1770 & 1870 Wedding gown (TC 10) 1743; About 1770 Polychrome silk brocade, linen, metal hook and eye closures Center Back Length: 56” The garment here was the wedding gown of Elizabeth Pitkin (1719-1798) when she married Moses Porter (1722-1755) in 1743. The gown is made of a rich silk brocade, possibly Dutch. This fabric would not have been made in the Colonies, but rather imported and available through merchants in Boston or the Connecticut River Valley. Extant diaries of the Porter family mention frequent trips to both of these areas to shop for fabric and accessories, among other things. As was customary in the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries, a woman's wedding gown (which was usually not white) became her best gown. Elizabeth Pitkin Porter likely had this garment altered around the 1760s or early 1770s, closing the bodice and skirt (making what was known as a round gown) and adding sleeve flounces. Sometime around 1900 the garment was altered again, this time for fancy dress, when it was worn by Catherine Sargent Huntington (). These last alterations included an extension of the linen bodice lining, and the addition of metal hook and eye closures down the bodice front. Day or walking dress (95.20) 1870-1875 Purple silk faille, purple silk velvet, metal hook and eye closures Label: MMES BOBARD /ROBES & CONFECTIONS/36, RUE DE BAC/PARIS Center Back Length: 75” This garment was the unfinished dress of Mrs. John O. Sargent. The color of this dress, a deep, bright purple, was made possible by the use of aniline or man-made dyes, first invented in 1856. Rather than many colors, as seen in the Pitkin garment, dresses by the 1870s preferred a minimal number of colors, to balance the large amount of trimming and layering present. This garment provides more insight as to its creation than we can glean from the Pitkin gown, thanks to a label inside that reveals the Bobard women of Paris as dressmakers. Clothing labels, which begin to appear inside dresses during the latter half of the nineteenth century, were an indication of the growing consumer culture at that time, and his one in particular cashes in on the cache of having a dress made in France. While dresses of the eighteenth century relied on the stays (later known as corsets) for much of the bodice shaping, later nineteenth dresses made frequent use of boning, stitched into the garment itself, in conjunction with corsets. The bodice of this garment has eleven areas of boning, made out of baleen, or “whalebone”. Three Centuries of Style: Clothing from the Porter Phelps Huntington Foundation About 1807 & 1907 Gown (TC 3) 1805-1810 White cotton (mull) with matching cotton embroidery Center Back Length: 50” By the 1770s, elements of classical revival, along with a desire for a return to all things “natural” had begun to make their way into everyday clothing. About the year 1800, dress had changed radically with previous styles, and many women adopted the sheer white, columnar gowns, which were usually cotton and significantly reduced in the amount of material used. Decoration to the fabric is minimal, and takes the form of small floral sprigs embroidered in matching white cotton thread. Side gores help to project what little fullness there is in the skirt towards the rear. The bodice back of this gown represents a period in costume history when the back achieved its narrowest width, in this case about 4 inches wide between each armhole (the modern back width to our shirts averages 12” wide). Stays or a corset worn underneath this garment would have helped the wearer to push her shoulders down and back. Generous armholes cut deep into the back would further the illusion of a small back. The accompanying portrait of Elizabeth Whiting Phelps Huntington (1779-1847) from about 1801 gives an idea of what the front of this garment resembles. Two piece wedding dress (TC 22 a & b) 1904-1905 Ivory silk, lace, metal hooks and eyes Center Back Length: 106” Alice Howland Mason (1880-1946) probably wore this dress at her marriage to Henry Barrett Huntington in 1905. In its present state, it is incomplete. The garment is deceptively similar to its mate of 100 years earlier, both in color and softness. However, the complexity of this dress is revealed after more careful study. The garment is two-piece, in keeping with dress styles at the turn of the twentieth century, and possesses a long train to the skirt. The silk is accented by matching lace around the sleeves and shoulders. In its quest to be modern, the 1907 garment actually harks back to eighteenth century garments for matching trim around the skirt and train. The bodice front possesses the pouter-pigeon front, with extra material to pouch in the bodice front. This pouching in front, combined with fullness in the rear of the skirt, produced the fashionable ‘S' curve silhouette of the early twentieth century. Three Centuries of Style: Clothing From the Porter Phelps Huntington Foundation About 1825 & 1925 Gown 1823-1827 (TC 8) Yellow silk crepe, satin, glazed linen, bone buttons, metal hooks Center Back Length: 49” This gown illustrates the increasing ornamentation seen on dresses by the 1820s, replacing the simplicity of the sheer white cotton gowns at the turn of the nineteenth century. Color has entered into gowns, in this case a pastel with a pattern woven into the silk fabric. Hems become more elaborate by this time; this example has rolleaux (padded rolls) at the bottom to weight and flare out the hem. The skirt is relatively short, and would have exposed the wearer's shoes. A military influence is observed, in the horizontal matching bands mimicking frogging found on men's military uniforms of the period. Instead of braid, however, the maker of this outfit chose a matching satin. Dress (TC 2) 1926-1927 Green rayon, metal snaps Center Back Length: 42” Solid-colored dresses during this period allowed for the subtleties of cut and clothing construction to be appreciated to the fullest extent. Often, decoration was reduced to the seams. This example illustrates that point with its many ‘V'-shaped seam details: the inverted shape of that letter is seen on the front and back of the upper bodice as well as at the cuffs. Even the garment taken as a whole, with its long sleeves, possesses an inverted “V” shape. The skirt exhibits vertical decoration with its knife pleating, which allowed for maximum movement, another characteristic of the clothing from the period. Skirts during the 1920s were the shortest they had ever been in western fashion; only in the 1960s would skirts become shorter, rising above the knee. The lace edging around the ‘V' collar is perhaps the only link to past clothing found on this thoroughly modern dress. Dress (TC 18) 1925-1930 Orange rayon, metal snaps Center Back Length: 53” Dresses of the 1920s are characterized by a low waistline and asymmetrical decoration. In this example, the aymmetrical decoration takes the form of the bow at the proper left, and the uneven hemline. The dress is made from the first of the man-made fibers, and has a straight silhouette like its counterpart (TC 2), ignorant of the body's curves. Horizontal bust darts, about 2” long, provide the only shaping to the garment. The flat, two-dimensional aspect of this garment is reflective of a wider trend at that time, when artistic movements such as cubism influenced fashion???