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