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excerpts from

WOMEN'S CLOTHING -  1900-1910

written and illustrated by Pepper Hume

 

In 1900, woman’s place was still in the home, her weekly routine still prescribed by social tradition. Lucky was the lady who could employ servants to maintain this regimen in her stead although her wifely prestige still depended on its success. Doors were opening to the world outside her home. Ready-made clothes were widely available for the first time in history.

Not every woman was a wife and mother, although that was the role for which all were raised and trained. Alternatives grew with the century. Women’s colleges made education and a profession possible and encouraged their students to participate in sports.  Many girls and unmarried women joined the work force as typewriters (as such employees were originally called) and telephone operators. These jobs were relegated to women when management discovered women could better handle the tedium and meticulous detail required. Women proved better factory hands for close work. All those ready-made clothes were produced by immigrant and/or poor girls and sold in shops and department stores by salesgirls. Ladies who need not work could get out of the house by joining a women’s club to do good works. Younger women took to the new safety bicycle without the perilous high wheel, and manufacturers obligingly added features to keep skirts out of wheels and mechanisms. Historians agree that the bicycle started the revolution against skirts that trailed across the floor. Female participation in tennis, college track sports and basketball soon followed. Mrs. Bloomer’s bloomers finally found their place in sports. 

Nonetheless, whether working girl or mother, no decent woman was yet free of the tyranny of the corset. The lovely S-curve of the Edwardian silhouette with its soft, floaty ruffles, flounces and fluff - collectively called frou frou - has undeniable feminine charm. The lady wearing it paid a dear price in corsetry that forced her to lean forward as though perpetually facing a stiff wind. The stance was called the kangaroo bend.  By the middle of the decade, the hourglass image was not an exaggeration. One’s corset now shoved up great mounds of bosom while dangerously crushing ribs and vital organs to achieve a straight front and an impossibly tiny waist. Everything else was squeezed out behind. Skirt sizes were listed as "from twenty to thirty-two inches waist measure, corresponding to thirty-seven to fifty-four and one-half inches hip measure." Hips were expected to be almost double the waist! The adored vaudeville star Anna Held maintained an eighteen-inch waist over monumental hips, and died of her corset for it. 

Fashion magazines and mail order catalogues abounded in pictures of impossibly wasp-waisted figures. Even the egalitarian Sears Roebuck catalogue showed women with waists little wider than their necks, hands barely two-thirds normal size, and feet smaller than hands! Add an enormous hat above the gargantuan bosom looming precariously beyond a tiny waist and tinier feet, and you have an amazing accomplishment of balance.  A British periodical, The Lady’s Realm, described the look, "...long sloping bust with straight front line and a graceful curve over the hips. The waist held in well below the figure; the chest carried well forward and the shoulders down; the waist long in front and short behind." The ideal waist measured between twenty and twenty-five inches. A woman’s ideal height in shoes was five feet six to six feet tall! 

Nonetheless, a lady, even one of modest means, managed to look dainty and decorous. She wore muted colors - mauve, lilac, smoke, peach, hunter, navy, or brown - in soft fabrics that whispered and swayed. Discreet accents of one strong color were acceptable as were pastels. Combinations of several shades of one color, such as champagne shading to tobacco were chic. Black and white, separately or together, were always in good taste. 

She never left the house without hat and gloves. Being tête-nue (bare headed) in public was as unacceptable for ladies as for men. She never exposed her throat except in evening dress and even then kept her arms encased in long gloves. Any sleeve that did not reach the wrist was firmly met by a glove. Theoretically, her limbs did not exist. No matter how exquisitely her layers of undergarments might be festooned with expensive lace and embroidery, that remained a secret and forbidden world. 

The ideal lady also had the confidence of maturity about her. Girls were considered inadequately developed for society before the age of twenty-one or -two.  Franz Lehar’s immensely popular operetta, The Merry Widow, played up this mature glamour in 1907. Scheherezade by the Ballet Russe spawned a craze for things oriental and exotic, such as bolero jackets with elaborately curved edges.

Change in women’s fashion accelerated along with everything else in the new century. The big "X" silhouette of the 1890s, with its ballooned shoulders, tight waist, and widely flared skirt, had softened as the century ended. Skirts wilted into a smooth-hipped, morning glory shape. Bulk shifted from the shoulders to a lower bosom and everything seemed slung toward the belly button to be balanced by a splendidly protruding fanny.

The silhouette started the decade with clean, slender lines. Sleeves and skirts were fairly narrow. Decoration was more a matter of applied surface pattern.  The "S" curve posture, which charmed both eye and ear with all its attendant frou frou, proved so uncomfortable to sustain, women endured it only a few years. Frou frou died with a collective sigh in 1908 when the ideal figure shifted to the rather tubular vertical look of the Empire revival. Women could stop all that thrusting fore and aft and stand more normally. They could even breathe more freely, albeit still corseted to maintain newly sleek hips. With care they could sometimes sit down.  Throughout this evolution, ruffles and fluffiness gave way to the languid droop of fringe and hanging lace tips. 

For this decade we will chronicle the dress of the average woman, including variations for the wife at home and the working girl, as well as seasonal differences, sports, formal wear, automobiling, bridal, maternity, and mourning. We will detail the changes in haute couture to keep our ladies of fashion up to date.

 
Frills of narrow lace edged the armholes and round neckline of a filmy chemise of fine lawn or cambric, as well as the mid-calf-length flounce.

 

 
Rather than go about dishabille while tending to her hair and her toilette, a lady might well toss on a dressing sacque or kimono over her lingerie. This little hip-length jacket would keep her warm and decent until she donned her outer garments. Fitted or not, ruffled or plain, they conveniently opened down the front. The front fullness could always be belted with a ribbon tied in a bow in front. Some kimonos’ wide sleeves were turned up into a cuff. Lightweight sacques and kimonos would be lawn, dimity, or percale in pretty prints. To ward off a chill, plain wool eiderdown with crocheted edges and perhaps frog closures was snuggly.

 

Clothing reformers advocated Greek dress or at least Empire styled gowns to be worn at home without a corset. While some ladies might need a bust bodice with these soft loose gowns, freedom from the strain of a corset has to have been their chief appeal. Necklines were also lower and softer.  Such a gown hung in graceful folds from a short bodice with soft, fanciful sleeves that could be shorter than a lady would wear in public. Lots of dripping lace and a nice trailing sweep to the skirt produced a tea gown with a more leisured air. Refined ladies readily took to extravagant Empire gowns at home. For the hoi polloi, ladies’ magazines offered guidance in making such gowns from Mother Hubbard nightgown patterns. They suggested the addition of a sleeveless lace bolero and bunchy falling lace sleeves to further dress up an Empire gown.  Indeed, the October 1901 issue of McCall’s Magazine carried a feature article extolling Empire gowns, stating:  "While designed originally as a loose garment that was sufficiently formal to permit the wearer to appear in it, in the drawing-room when she was taking afternoon tea, after the fatigues of calling or entertaining, it has grown in favor and informally may now be worn at quiet home dinners and teas on the verandah of country houses."

 

Ankles were already being glimpsed in 1901. A round length skirt at instep level was called variously a rainy day, walking, golf or health skirt for obvious reasons. What better time to wear more fanciful hosiery or pretty shoes? Ridicule and resistance named both skirt and its wearer, "rainy-daisy."  Sweep skirts had an extra strip of sturdy fabric added behind the bottom edge called a "brush binding" to take the brunt of being dragged on the ground. This was replaced as it wore out, extending the life and looks of the skirt. Separate skirts made up in wool serge or broadcloth were more tailored. Decoration was limited to ribbon banding, rows of stitching, tiny tucks, or sometimes nothing more than topstitching to accent seams and hem. Winter skirts tended to be black, dark blue, brown, or grey, but always dark and neutral.

 

Bolero jackets lacked several inches of meeting the skirt and could have any length sleeve up to none at all. Exotic styled boleros with intricately shaped edges would have those edges beautifully decorated, giving a nice dressy finish to a plain dress or waist. A bolero as delicate as a single layer of lace could dress up an evening toilette or a tea gown.

 

Probably the most popular masculine hat among the ladies was the boater, with its hard flat brim and crown. It was the summer hat a fashion-oblivious  lady might wear level as most men did. She’d probably wear a man’s fedora level, too. Other women called the boater a sailor and often buried it in decoration. The brim might be made narrower in back or the rim curled up an inch and a half all around.

 

A fur boa was one long strip of fur (sewn into a tube with the fur out) that one could wrap in a number of fetching arrangements.  Fur scarves were shorter boas that went round the neck to hook together side by side in front.

 

At first, a lady’s bathing costume consisted of the same sports costume with the addition of a matching knee-length skirt. The middy collar was especially popular and the sleeves were even shorter. The bloomers gathered neatly below the knee with a modest frill. A line or two of soutache might adorn the collar and skirt. A matching rubber-lined mob cap protected one’s hair, but the really fair-skinned lady could resort to a bonnet to shade her face as well. A corset, opaque black stockings, and some kind of canvas athletic shoes were advised. Such advice was not always followed. Shoes and corsets might be omitted and stockings in - gasp - stripes worn. As the decade wore on, the skirt was sometimes omitted by more daring bathers.

 
Ladies used fans to combat becoming overheated and faint and kept them hung from the waist on a length of narrow satin ribbon. Silk or paper Japanese fans were painted with fanciful flowers and curlicues. China silk fans could be lavishly decorated with any combination of lace, bows and spangles. Such fans were usually black or white, but could be a pastel to match one’s gown. Feather fans for evening could be ostrich or coque feathers in white, natural, or pastel to match the gown, perhaps with a pretty ribbon bow for accent. Larger than silk fans, feather fans flirted more extravagantly, yet so softly.
Another antique style, a shoulder scarf called a fichu,  enjoyed a revival at mid-decade. This time it was made as filmy and soft as possible. Lace or shirred chiffon, perhaps  with long silky fringe, a fichu could be  draped close around the neck or barely  cap the shoulders. It would be pinned  together at yoke level with a nice  brooch, or tied in a sailor’s knot.

 
Construction of a lady’s costume underwent radical change at the end of the decade. A skirt was no longer a monolithic, petticoated shape independent of the waist and decorated around the bottom third. Skirt and waist became a vertically integrated dress. This unified dress developed layers of panels and wraps neck-to-hem.

 

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Last modified: March 27, 2004