While no-one has mentioned the large sleeves of yesterday’s Rate the Dress as a problem yet, large sleeves have been almost universally unpopular among my readership. With that in mind, I thought you might find this fashion column from 1900 amusing: Anne Shirley would mourn. Young Emily would love the use of words though! And, for your edification, some tea gowns with suitably brobdingnagian sleeves from a few years earlier:
I’ve been waiting to tell you about this garment for years. From even before it existed – from the moment I laid eyes on the fabric. Before you read the post though, you need to set the mood. Put on Aloha Ka Manini (Love the fish, or ) by the wonderful Israel Kamakawiwo’ole and then Ka Uluwehi o ke Kai (The Plants of the Sea) by Hapa. These are the songs of my childhood, and the Hawai’ian songs of the sea. I grew up in Hawai’i, 10 minutes walk from the sea. My parents were farmers — land people, but we kids loved the sea. We went down to the beach every time they let us. We snorkeled and swam and kayaked. I knew the names of all the fishes, the kinds of seaweed and coral, the history of the fishponds that ringed the coast like stone necklaces. I was in a hula halau (dance troop) for years. I was never particularly good, but my favourite dance was always Ka Uluwehi o ke Kai, a …
For this week’s terminology post I go back to last week’s Rate the Dress, and Rae’s comment about whether Victorian women wore corsets outside of their dresses. The simple answer is, they didn’t. But they did wear Swiss waists & corselets outside of their dresses, and these can look a lot like corsets if you don’t look closely. So what are these things, and how are they different from corsets? A Swiss waist is a boned, pointed underbust garment worn over skirts and blouses or dresses. Unlike a corset, a swiss waist NEVER fastens with a metal front busk. Swiss waists can have a flat front, with no front opening, or can lace up the front with hand worked eyelets (never metal eyelets). The backs fasten with lacing (also with worked eyelets, not metal eyelets) or buttons. Swiss waists were extremely popular in the 1860s, worn by empresses and common women alike. In the 1860s they were more likely to be called corsages (an un-specific term for a bodice), swiss bodices, swiss belts, or swiss …
