Category: Road to Ready to Wear

Silk Day Dress, 1925-26

The straight boxy styles of the 1920s were easy to achieve, not only at home but in the ready-to-wear industry, as they were less complicated and therefore cheaper to produce en masse. The trend toward less-constricting clothing went hand in hand with women who wanted more comfortable clothing for their increasingly active lives. This dress was made by Ruth Kyner of Bowie, Maryland, for her daughter Susanna, whose wardrobe Ruth sewed from Susanna’s high school years in the late 1910s through the 1930s. 

It took a while to get rid of the conventional wisdom that ready-made clothing was inferior to custom-made. At the turn of the twentieth century, ready-made clothing advertisements had to promise quality as good as home- or dressmaker-made. But once the industry had proven that its goods could meet customer expectations for quality, it was the home-sewn garment that lost status (a trend difficult to trace, because it would have varied by region and class). 

For many women, sewing at home was a matter of economics. Although the fashion industry aimed to offer ready-made garments at virtually every price point, these clothes remained out of reach to some. Buying a pattern and fabric might still be more economical. Making clothing—and remaking it, an entrenched habit (see Altering and Mending)—still held sway. This was even more true during the Depression and World War II, when fabric rationing demanded creative methods to extend a wardrobe. Rural women also faced another problem: many simply lived too far from retail establishments. 

By the second half of the twentieth century, fabric often exceeded the cost of most ready-made garments, and sewing for oneself became something of a luxury, or at least a chosen leisure activity, along with the perpetual rewards of personal expression, and the eternal quest for better fit and more distinctive individual style.

Made by Ruth Kyner. Lent by Fashion Archives and Museum of Shippensburg University

Shirtwaist, Glen D.L.R. & Co. label, 1895-1900 

The shirtwaist, a feminine version of a man’s shirt, revolutionized women’s fashion and its industry. Although white blouses were occasionally seen in earlier nineteenth-century fashion, especially in the 1830s and 1860s, it was not until 1890 that the separate shirt and skirt ensemble really burst on the fashion scene. They were initially offered in white cotton and other men’s shirting material, with sleeves following women’s fashion (leg-of-mutton sleeves in the 1890s, and so on). Soon enough, shirtwaists were also offered in more “feminine” versions made of softer, lightweight cottons and with lace insertions and embroidery, to add variety to how they might be worn. 

The longstanding fashion for snugly fitted dress bodices, which required custom-fitting to achieve the smooth fit that fashion and propriety demanded, had precluded widespread development of ready-made garments. Mass-produced garments in standardized sizes and proportions could never achieve that snug custom look; only unfitted outerwear and underwear could successfully be ready-made for women. 

The shirtwaist’s loose fit, along with the simple gored skirts of this decade, offered new possibilities for mass production, as both could be easily produced in a range of sizes, either ready-made or made-to-order. After 1890, factory-made shirtwaists were made by the hundreds of thousands in New York and other cities. They were worn by everyone from the fashionable elite to the factory workers who sewed them by the millions under atrocious working conditions. Young women made shirtwaists an unofficial uniform for college and the newly popular sports of golf, tennis, and bicycling. Thousands of women entering white-collar office jobs as stenographers, typists, and secretaries wore them with tailored jacket-and-skirt suits. Washable, affordable, and smart-looking, the shirtwaist led a young woman interviewed by Alexander Black in his 1899 book Modern Daughters: Conversations with Various American Girls and One Man to suggest that “the most important inventions of the century are the bicycle and the shirt waist. Each has had an immensely important influence on the physical and economic situation of women.” 

Cotton. Lent by The Smith College Historic Clothing Collection, Northampton, Massachusetts

Dress, 1889-90

Katie Huff of Buchanan, Michigan made this dress for her January 1890 wedding by using the cardboard pattern drafting system.

Silk with cotton lining, steel boning. Dress and Pattern system, Gift of Marta K. Dodd  98.69.1

Pattern Drafting System, 1884

Hollenbeck & Stodderd was one of dozens of companies offering pattern systems in the 1880s and 1890s. Using the curved piece to connect dots aligned with her measurements in the several rows of holes, a home seamstress could create a fitted bodice shape similar to the fit a dressmaker could provide, adding details to create an individual design. Although this seems daunting, it is not terribly difficult to use, assuming the dressmaker had rudimentary sewing skills; the challenge would come with adding the individual design features to create a custom look. The shapes created would eventually go out of style but were basic enough to last for several years. This one is dated 1884 but was used in the fall of 1889 by Katie Huff of Buchanan, Michigan, to make a dress for her January 1890 wedding.

Pattern systems coexisted with the paper-pattern industry, but by the 1890s, patterns had taken over in popularity. Patterns had to be adjusted for a custom fit, but seemed easier to use and were available in scores of designs updated every season, saving the trouble of inventing and patterning one’s own design details. Patterns also offered pieces for the entire dress, not just the bodice, as well as for every imaginable garment for women, children, and men (short of tailored garments). 

The use of these systems by aspiring dressmakers were something of a double-edged sword. They helpfully allowed women to learn the trade when they were unable to learn from an established dressmaker, a boon especially in rural and less-populated western settlements. But self-teaching did not always lead to proficiency. In the end, the legacy of pattern systems was in other industries, as they became the basis for sizing paper patterns and women’s ready-to-wear. 

Cardboard, made in Lafayette, Indiana. Gift of Marta K. Dodd  98.69.2

Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine, 1871

Sewing machines revolutionized sewing both in the home and industrially—but it took a while. The sewing machine’s early history is a complicated one of individual parts, patents, companies, and lawsuits. A “patent pool” finally agreed upon in 1856 by the four leading manufacturers—A.B. Howe, I.M. Singer, Grover & Baker, and Wheeler & Wilson—allowed them all (plus additional companies as licensees) to use each other’s patents, and the industry proceeded to grow rapidly.

Godey’s Lady’s Book magazine was one of many who saw the machine’s potential for improving women’s lives, calling it “The Queen of Inventions” predicting that women would finish their endless family sewing in a fraction of the usual time, fostering leisure for reading and “self-improvement” and hoping machines would help dressmakers and seamstresses earn more by increasing their output. Many dressmakers undoubtedly did invest in sewing machines. But their cost put them out of reach of the seamstress who, earning a pittance doing piecework and making shirts, could have benefited most from a device that allegedly could finish a shirt’s 20,000 stitches in an hour.

But as with most labor-saving devices, using a sewing machine did not necessarily save time or change spending habits about clothes. Conveniences notoriously raise our expectations rather than saving our time, and the sewing machine—the first home “appliance” or machine—certainly reflected this. Fashion plates of the 1860s show profusions of ruffles and trim, using, even surely exceeding, the time saved stitching seams by machine. And many parts of any garment, even the ostensibly simple shirt, still had to be executed or finished by hand. Women who hired dressmakers and seamstresses undoubtedly expected them to complete their commissions more quickly; hours and wages did not change.

The Civil War sped up the use of sewing machines for mass-production of garments (and shoes, flags, and tents), mostly in the North. After the war, the men’s ready-made industry took off (women’s wear followed later: see shirtwaist). Workers in factories, small-scale sweatshops, and in home-based piece work experienced these changes in dramatically different ways. Prices of sewing machines dropped significantly when the patent pool’s monopoly expired, and with the development of interchangeable parts. By the 1870s, some cost as little as $10 (though models with more elaborate decorative cases cost considerably more).

Although professional dressmakers embraced the sewing machine, it would, through its use in factories, eventually all but kill their profession. Factory seamstresses performed unskilled, repetitive tasks: sewing single pieces or seams, never progressing, as a dressmaker’s assistant’s work would have, to more demanding or interesting tasks. More skilled tasks were given to the male employees who were, of course, paid better. 

The manufacturers Wheeler & Wilson and Singer saw the potential in designing and marketing sewing machines for domestic use rather than industrially. Selling a mechanical device—“coded” as masculine, for use in the feminine domestic sphere, during this era of “separate spheres” for the sexes—demanded some ingenuity on the part of manufacturers.  Smaller-scale designs with names such as “Domestic,” “Family,” and “New Home” were offered, with lids and cases to conceal the machinery and make it appear to be part of the parlor or boudoir’s furniture. 

Cast iron, steel, paint; walnut case. Gift of Tara Harl in honor of our mothers and grandmothers 2023.23

Reception Dress, 1886

Bustle-era dresses challenged the home sewer with their complex draped skirts; up to ten bodice pieces; and layers of lining, stiffening, and padding. Drafting systems and paper patterns were meant to help but had their own challenges. Achieving the glove-tight fit fashion and propriety demanded of the bodice, without what we would now call a “muffin top” effect of flesh spilling over the top of the corset, was tricky. (Notice the underarm pads on this dress, which addressed the latter.) No wonder dressmaking manuals still advised getting a bodice fitted by a dressmaker, and copying it as needed at home. 

This dress’s elaborate construction—with beautifully cut and bound seam allowances in the bodice, pads under the arms, and multiple layers of interfacing and lining, among other details—proclaim it to be the work of a professional dressmaker, quite likely one with a workshop staffed by several cutters, fitters, and seamstresses. Such a designer/dressmaker was known as a “modiste” by the late nineteenth century, suggesting a higher level of elegance and a more established business than the local dressmaker who worked solo. 

The reception dress would have had trim around the neck and probably draped on the skirt, which has since been removed, probably to adorn another dress in typical practice of reuse and alteration. This was probably lace of some kind but might also have included beading. It was worn by Malvina “Mollie” Buttles Boals of Iowa City, Iowa, at a party celebrating her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in 1886.

“Few ladies have the time to learn a good system of dress cutting…A very good pattern may be secured by going to a first-class dressmaker and having a basque [bodice] cut.”

Home Dressmaking; A Complete Guide to Household Sewing, 1892

Silk, cotton, metal boning and fastenings. Gift of Dianne Fitze and Judd Fitze  96.50.2

1: Silk dress with cotton and other materials in lining. Gift of Mrs. Dianne Fitze and Mr. Judd Fitze 96.50.2

2: Interior view

Day Dress, Late 1820s

Early nineteenth-century dresses were relatively simply constructed and easy for the home seamstress to complete. Dressmakers still used traditional draping methods for making a bodice pattern, but instead of being pinned to a lining as in the eighteenth century, this process produced a flat pattern. As The Book of Trades explained, its illustration of the “Dress-Maker” showed “the mantua-maker taking the pattern off from a lady, by means of a piece of paper, or of cloth. The pattern, if taken in cloth, becomes afterwards the lining of the dress.”  

This method made it easier for home sewers to copy the dressmaker’s pattern and make more dresses. Bodice styles were quite fitted, but nowhere near as glove-tight as they became in the 1840s, and a decent fit would not be too difficult for the amateur to achieve. This view of the dress’s interior shows the relatively simple construction, with a bodice of just a few pieces, a pair of darts, a full sleeve with gathers at the top, and a skirt made of a tube of fabric gathered into pleats. Running stitches on bodice darts and down the skirt lengths, backstitches around the armscye (armhole) where extra strength was needed, and whipstitched hems (this one is made with running stitches) were all basic stitches in the skillset of every woman who sewed. 

Silk satin, cotton. Gift of Margaret Merritt Broecker  82.138.16

Robe à l’Anglaise (English-style gown), about 1775–1780

The robe à l’anglaise (also called a nightgown, although it had nothing to do with nightwear and could be worn for both day and evening) has a back bodice made from a panel of fabric in the center, which is stitched down into curved pleats, avoiding wasteful cutting and piecing. The mantua-maker draped the bodice pattern, front and back, on the customer as she stood in her stays (corset). The center-back bodice panel continues without a waist seam into the skirt; additional rectangular skirt panels, usually sewn selvage to selvage, extend on each side around to the front. The remainder of the bodice is pieced. 

All forms of eighteenth-century dress—the robe à l’anglaise, the robe à la française, and earlier forms of the mantua—were patterned with similar strategies to minimize cutting and wasting the fabric, which also conveniently tended to display the textiles’ rich colors and weaves. This dress dates to the last years of the robe à l’anglaise’s popularity. Bodices made with four cut pieces in the back were introduced in the late 1770s. After the two forms coexisted for a while, the pieced bodice replaced the pleated, making home dressmaking less challenging and leading to flat patterning. 

Silk brocade robe à l’anglaise, made in America, DAR Museum 2006.23.

Paper Pattern (bodice piece),  1913

Pre-cut tissue paper pieces in multiple sizes were a big help to both home seamstresses and professional dressmakers. Notches and holes indicated pleats and where to match pieces: instructions were not printed on patterns until the 1920s. Then as now, adjustments might be needed to get a custom fit. These full-size individual (as opposed to overlapping, like Harper’s Bazar’s) patterns were first offered by Ellen Louise Curtis Demorest (known professionally as “Madame Demorest”) in 1854,  but it was Ebenezer Butterick who launched the true revolution in the industry by offering patterns in different sizes in 1863. Initially offering boys’ garments (Butterick was a tailor by training), his success spurred him to introduce girls’ and women’s designs soon afterward. 

The paper pattern industry took off rapidly starting in the 1870s, with numerous competing companies springing up. Despite the need for individual fitting adjustments, pre-cut, sized patterns–with  a wide array of styles available each month by mail order or at a local dry goods or fabric store–made it easy for both professional and amateur seamstresses to keep up with the latest developments in fashion. Their democratizing effect in making up-to-date styles available to an ever-widening spectrum of society should not be underestimated. By the last third of the nineteenth century, many Americans lived far from fashion centers or towns of any notable size, or without a local dressmaker to consult. Improved transportation, the postal system, and cheaper paper and printing methods (including less expensive ways of including illustrations in magazines) all contributed to helping women even in less settled and more rural areas keep up with fashion. 

Pictorial Review Pattern, loan Courtesy of Drs. K. & B. Bohleke

Harper’s Bazar magazine insert, 1896 

Full-scale patterns were printed in magazine supplements beginning in the 1860s. Both these and the small-scale patterns like those in Godey’s Lady’s Magazine were made in one general size for an average, youthful figure. A good deal of adjusting of the patterns (mostly of the bodices) was necessary to get the custom fit needed for an individual wearer. And first anyone wanting to make one of these patterns would have the challenge of finding and tracing the right coded lines on this page and its reverse, out of the 84 on both sides of this easily torn page and trace each piece onto paper. 

Private Lender