By Gayle Converse
If you have searched your closet for light, comfortable apparel with which to tolerate Northern Virginia’s recent heat wave, you might want to consider yourself lucky. Most women in 18th-century Alexandria did not have a choice regarding fashion and traditionally dressed in heavy layers.
What one wore in Alexandria’s early days depended upon one’s income. That is where most similarities disappear. For the city’s middle classes, one to two sets of clothes per adult family member would need to last several years. Durability, practicality and economics drove the manner in which farmers, laundresses and tavern keepers dressed. Wools and plant-based fabrics like linen and buckram – a stiff heavy cotton, occasionally linen or horse hair – were locally available.
In skill sets handed down from mother to daughter, women spent many evenings after their daily chores were completed creating or repairing family garments by candlelight. Stitches – especially hems – had to endure colonial period daily wear-and-tear. Salvageable items were redesigned or served as hand-me-downs.
Most items of clothing featured strings or ties, allowing for weight losses and gains and the ability to dress oneself. Imported straight pins which secured many pieces were essential; the pins provided the flexibility vital for women’s clothing. As bodies changed – mainly due to pregnancy – skirts and dresses could easily be adjusted.
Female clothing consisted of multiple layers, beginning with a shift: an ingenious garment worn next to the skin. It served as an undergarment, shirt, petticoat and nightgown. The plain, colorless shift had no waist and was put on over the head. It was made of cotton or linen to absorb perspiration and body oils.
Stays, a precursor to the corset, was the next layer, topped off in warm weather by a heavy outer skirt, neck kerchief, heavy stockings, garters, hat or cap, shoes and a buckram apron. The essential apron did much more than keep one’s clothes a bit cleaner: the calf-length accessory substituted as oven mitts and served as a handy “basket” while harvesting garden and orchard crops.
In summer’s heat, women who lived on farms would often strip down to their shift, stays and apron to perform their chores.
While the middle class made its own clothes from locally produced materials, spent long hours repairing items and could dress itself 275 years ago, wealthy wives, mothers, daughters and sisters in Alexandria experienced their own sets of clothing issues and luxuries.
The city’s elite would order “the latest fashion” from France or England and wait months for ships to deliver materials to Alexandria’s ports. Heavy velvets, brocades, silks and laces were the rage. Dresses were designed by a “mantua-maker,” or a dressmaker,” to display as much of the expensive fabrics as possible.
The “pannier” – a collapsible framed device tied to the waist and worn on the sides of the hips – was used underneath the skirt to display the expanse of luxurious fabric. Gowns were fitted and closed with lacings, pins or hooks and eyes as buttons were reserved for men.
Due to these restrictive designs, wealthy women required help to dress. Ona Judge, the personal maid enslaved by Martha Washington, inherited her seamstress skills from her mother at Mount Vernon.
To complete the voluminous-skirted illusion, two to three petticoats were a must. Posture was important in the 18th century; therefore, all women of the middle and upper social strata wore stays. To assist wealthy women with posture, dress sleeves were intended to restrict movement and sewn in a manner which only allowed a woman of means to bend her elbows and place her hands in her lap.
Late 18th- and early 19th-century sewing and dressmaking techniques are preserved today by Mount Vernon, Gadsby’s Tavern Museum and Carlyle House restoration volunteer Susan Rees-Enis.
“For material and labor, a period garment could easily cost several thousand dollars today. I decided to learn to do it myself. It is rewarding to make something tangible,” Rees-Enis said.
Fifteen years after completing period costume classes in Williamsburg, Enis volunteers with others, using early American sewing techniques to create and restore period fashion. Dressmakers and seamstresses like Enis continue to play an integral role in meticulously threading the fabric of Alexandria.
Displays of replicated 18th century garments are available to see at the Fairfax Resolves Program on July 18, Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, Carlyle House or Mount Vernon.
The writer is a founder of Alexandria Celebrates Women, a nonprofit commemorating the centennial of women’s suffrage and highlighting influential women throughout the city’s history.