Lives and Legacies

Tag: stays

  • No Buttons for the Ladies

    Whilst I costume actors, living historians, and myself from time to time in 18th century clothing, I find myself puzzled about the stark difference between the closures and attachments of ladies’ and men’s garb.  I have to lace myself into my stays, tie on layers of padding and petticoats around my waist, and finally pin my gown closed.  Men have the enjoyment of a few buttons on their breeches and waistcoat, but that is it.  It frequently makes me grumpy how long it takes me to dress in comparison to my male counterpart.  I did not understand this phenomenon, until recently. 

    To put 18th century clothing closures into perspective, you had hooks and eyes, buttons, and ties/laces.  Thomas Hancock created elastic for gloves, suspenders, and stockings in the 1820s, but it struggled to withstand heat and last through time.  The elastic we know and love in our garments today did not come around until the early 1900s.[1]  The modern zipper was patented in 1917 and was used mainly on boots and tobacco pouches.  It took another 20 years before the technology even made it to mass produced clothing.[2]  By comparison, the button first becomes functional over decorative around 1,000 BCE in Asia.  Buttons would eventually travel the Mediterranean during the crusades into European territories around the late 11th century CE.[3]  So George Washington did not have a zipper on his pants or elastic on his socks, but he definitely had buttons on his coat.   

    A eye from a hook and eye set. Source: Ferry Farm Archaeological Collections

    Hooks and eyes were sometimes used for gown closures for women in the 18th century.  They were not used as much as pins were because of the rigidity in size it created for the garment. 

    We have buttons from men’s garments in the archaeological collections here at Ferry Farm.  We also see buttons all around male portraiture in our curatorial collection.  The ladies, however, are stuck with laces, ribbons, and pins.  And boy, do we have the pins to prove it in the archaeology collections. 

    Two metal buttons most likely from men’s garments.  Source: Ferry Farm Archaeological Collections
    Bone buttons Source: Ferry Farm Archaeological Collections
    Pins were used for pinning jackets closed and keeping caps pinned to your hair.  They were a necessary part of dressing. Source: Ferry Farm Archaeological Collections

    A small sample of the large collection of brass dress pins found at Ferry Farm.  Pins were not used for sewing, as basting before sewing was the regular practice.  Pins were used for pinning jackets closed and keeping caps pinned to your hair.  They were a necessary part of dressing.

    The answer to why this phenomenon is how it is hit me one day after rewatching a lecture given by a former staff member entitled “Betty Washington Lewis and Women’s Health.”  Dr. Kelly Brennen Arehart spoke about maternity wardrobes and how women wore their everyday clothing throughout pregnancy.  For my contemporary mind, this was shocking, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. 

    Women go through a lot of fluctuations in body shape, weight, and proportions in their lifetime.  Between hitting puberty and development of curves, to many pregnancies, to the changes of menopause, women’s bodies go through so much.  Of course in between all of the big changes, there are also changes to the female body based on time in her menstrual cycle, metabolism fluctuations, or periods of eating more or less or different types of food that all change the body’s shape and size.  Unlike today, women of the past could not just go to the shop and buy a pair of pants in the size up.  Clothing was incredibly expensive and time consuming to make before sewing machines and mass production come into play.  In the 18th century, even the highest classes of women did not have the money or the time to go buy or have new clothing made when they gained a few pounds or got pregnant.  It was a matter of adjusting the clothing they already had.  And that is exactly what ties, pins, and laces allowed women to do. 

    The lacing, pinning, and tying made clothing far more adjustable compared to the rigidity of buttons.  Women tied their petticoats looser and simply covered the wider gap in the side with their jacket or gown.  Stays were either loosened significantly by the laces or they were left unlaced at the bottom entirely, especially in cases of late term pregnancies.  On top of the stays, jackets could be pinned further out to allow for more room in the bust and waist, or a stomacher could be added in the center opening of the jacket to expand the top even further.

    Whether these closures were intentionally created to be adjustable or if it was just a byproduct of lacking clothing technology, I am not entirely sure.  But the idea that buttons were only used on men’s not so fluctuating bodies (for the most part) says something.  A button is sewn down and cannot be easily moved or adjusted on a regular basis.  Once a button is sewn into place, there is no room for variation in body shape, unless one wanted to move the buttons every time he ate a large meal the previous day. 

    Even though Betty Washington Lewis had Charlotte, who we believe to be an enslaved woman acting as the seamstress of the Lewis household, Betty was pregnant on and off for twenty years.  If Charlotte or another enslaved seamstress had to make a maternity wardrobe for Betty every time she was with child, the seamstress would have no time to do any other tasks whatsoever.  It was not economical with precious time or expensive cloth for women to need new clothes every few weeks. 

    So to tie all this together, I am still not happy that it is so inconvenient for me to dress myself in 18th century clothing, but I understand why getting dressed was this way.  The adjustability of women’s clothing was so intentionally created to conform to their bodies in any season it was in.  It also opens my eyes to why pins were so important.  Without them, a woman could not dress. 

    Letter from Abigail to John Adams, June 14, 1775.  Source: Massachusetts Historical Society

    …I have a request to make you. Something like the Barrel of Sand suppose you will think it, but really of much more importance to me. It is that you would send out Mr. Bass and purchase me a bundle of pins and put in your trunk for me. The cry for pins is so great that what we used to Buy for 7.6 are now 20 Shillings and not to be had for that. A bundle contains 6 thousand for which I used to give a Dollor, but if you can procure them for 50 [shillings] or 3 pound, pray let me have them. Mr. Welch who carries this to head Quarters waits which prevents my adding more than that I am with the tenderest Regard

    your

    Portia

    Allison Ellis

    Manager of Public Programs

    [1] “Questions About Elastic,” Maggie May Clothing, Accessed July 10, 2023, https://maggiemayfashions.com/questions-about-elastic-2/.

    [2] Ninette Dean, “The Up and Down History of the Zipper,” The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Accessed July 10, 2023, https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2010/05/03/the-up-an-down-history-of-the-zipper/.

    [3] Caroline Stone, “The Westward Journeys of Buttons,” AramcoWorld, Accessed July 10, 2023, https://www.aramcoworld.com/Articles/November-2020/The-Westward-Journeys-of-Buttons.

  • Stay Informed About Historical Undergarments

    You have probably seen an enormous amount of corsetry imagery in your life. Whether it was the scene in Gone with the Wind where Mammy is lacing Scarlet into her corset as she holds onto the bedpost or a social media post about waist training using a modern piece of shapewear. Needless to say, you probably think that corsetry was restricting, painful, and dangerous for all women in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Enter me, a corsetry enthusiast, here to break the wall of misconceptions surrounding women’s boned undergarments. 

    I would like to start by differentiating between stays and corsets. Stays are the fully or partially boned shaping garments worn by women in the 18th century. Stays gave support to the bust and created an inverted conical shape by holding the shoulders back, trimming the waist, and supporting the mantua, or gown. Stays can be laced in the front, back, or both. Corsets became fashionable in the early to the mid-19th century. Corsets give the more famous hourglass shape, are laced in the back, and fastened in the front with hooks. I will be focusing on 18th-century stays, but know that many misconceptions about stays and corsets fall into similar categories. Some differences are the spark to the misconceptions, though. 

    Early 18th Century silk stays in collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

    1880s Silk Corset in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Take everything you think you know about stays and throw it out the window. The most common misconceptions about historical boned shapewear can be debunked if you step outside of the 21st century’s media-driven view of corsetry.

    Weren’t stays painful and hazardous to women’s health? No, actually. This misconception comes from the idea that women tight-laced their stays, meaning they pulled the laces tighter to force waste reduction. Most women did not practice tight lacing. Additionally, the boning was made of baleen (whalebone), which looks rigid but is quite flexible and molds to the wearer’s body over time. Stays were meant to be supportive, not restrictive. Organs were not squeezed, and ribs were not broken. Think of stays as a garment, not unlike a modern bra: snug, supportive, but wearable in an everyday setting. Women were able to work, eat, and breathe in their stays. It was probably more likely you would faint from the smells in the street than you would from the tightness of your stays in the 1700s. 

    1777 Satire of fashion print, British Museum

    Women of all classes in society wore stays. From the lowest of working classes to the highest of nobility, everyone wore them. You were not considered properly dressed without your stays on. Materials differed based on what you could afford, but some iteration was necessary for every woman. Working women often wore stays without straps so as not to restrict any movement of the arms or shoulders. Wealthier women who were not doing physical labor tended to enjoy the extra support the straps gave.

    Stays were not worn up against the skin. No matter what the covers of romance novels or the saucy scenes in period dramas portray, there was always a layer of clothing between the woman and her support garment. Laundry was not as simple as throwing everything into a machine and hitting start in the 18th century. Therefore, women wore foundational garments called shifts that were washed frequently and protected outer garments like gowns and stays that were not washed as often. A shift was a nightgown-like garment usually made of linen. This was considered your base layer. It absorbed sweat and oils, protecting the rest of the clothing and stays from the elements of the body. 

    Linen shift in the collections of Colonial Williamsburg

    Stays were never laced in a crossed pattern; they were always spiral laced.    That crisscross lacing that you see so often was not commonly used until 19th-century corsets. Spiral lacing was achieved by anchoring one end of the lacing chord at either the top or bottom and running it in a circular pattern through the offset laces until the other end of the stays were reached, then it was anchored off at that other end. This is a common mistake made in period films. If it isn’t spiral laced, it isn’t the 18th century. 

    Spiral-laced early 18th Century linen stays in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
    Cross-laced 1890s silk corset in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Another lacing myth is that women in the upper classes were the ones who wore back-lacing stays, and women in the lower classes wore front or front and back-lacing stays. This idea came to be from the thought that women needed help to get into back-lacing stays; therefore, they needed a servant or enslaved person to place them in while lower-class or poorer women could lace their own stays in the front. Experts know this is not true as stays in fancier fabrics, like silk, worn by wealthier women are often front lacing, and stays in common fabrics, like linen, are often back lacing and vice versa with no real correlation. This tells us that the lacings of stays were not exclusive to class. I can also confirm that this was most likely the case as I have worn and laced my own back lacing stays by myself. It is not a magic trick or due to any extreme flexibility. I do what I was shown: lace the stays loosely in front, then spin them around, so the lacing is on my back and tightens them up. Simple, fast, and effective. 

    Something surprising that I learned while constructing my stays is that stays were not made by the milliner or mantua maker. Stays were most frequently made by a specialty staymaker or the tailor. That’s right, and this is such a specific and complicated garment to construct that it was often made by a specific craftsman. It took many years for someone to master the art of stay-making. Despite mantua making and millinery work being a female dominated trade in the 18th century, stay making and tailoring was a male-dominated trade. It took a lot of strength to process the whalebone, a job more suited to men. Next time you hear an actress from a period drama complain about how tight the corsetry was and how she could barely breathe, know that her corset was most likely not fitted properly and made historically; therefore, it just did not fit. Stays were made to fit the wearer, which would take an enormous amount of time to do for a film’s costumes. Premade corsets are bound to be uncomfortable to wear. Staymakers knew exactly how to fit a set of stays to the wearer, an art that is now nearly lost to time. 

    1780s stays from the Victoria & Albert Museum Collections (linen)
    1780s stays from the Victoria & Albert Museum Collections (silk)

    Stepping back into our 21st-century lenses, what can you see? Do you see oppressed women fainting in the street or strong women working in their homes and out in the world going about their business? I hope this has made you think twice about regarding corsetry as the worst garment ever to grace the body, but also about appreciating the women who wore them and what they did to get us to where we are today. 

    Allison Ellis

    Manager of Public Programs