Independent Study

To augment my thesis, I successfully convinced my professors to let me build a dress from the mid-1890s--for credit. Since this will require research into appropriate fabrics and construction methods, etc, it will be a welcome respite from statistics on turn-of-the-century middle-class spending habits in Chicago, and will of course inform a lot of the other work I...will do later.

A true minority of Marie Anna's clothing has a tag denoting a tailor or department store, and since I have not done better research into who put tags where--or didn't--I will continue to assume that our great tagless majority was home-made. Definitely a mix of machine sewing and hand-sewing. And quite a few cotton housedresses, seemingly from the same two or four patterns. One of those brilliant realizations that make this project so exciting.

That would be easier to "replicate", a sort of loose Mother Hubbard style (I've tried to find good pictures but can't quite find the right google search terms--too much "went to the cupboard" etc), but I think I will try for something "more exciting". Some sort of fitted, puff-sleeved taffeta....or maybe even OTTOMAN.....snappy little number.

Potentially against better judgement, I have decided to build a corset first. Marie Anna bought her corsets (the corsetmakers certainly made sure to tag--and patent), and seemingly barely needed them. She was so slim! Did most women buy their corsets? Again, no hard facts yet--my apologies.

But for my project, it is neither cost-effective nor advisable re: fit to buy some ready-made corset, and I have the skills, so here we go! The irony of my past experience is that I have built a corset before--an early 17th century corset. Nothing like this; much straighter, leaning toward conical, and with straight(er) pattern pieces, layers, and many more bones to help create that shape. The current corset (pattern from this book) will rely more on the shape of the pieces, especially those cut on the bias, for its hourglass effect....we hope, anyway.

Halfway pinned:


I'm out of pins....and it's time for bed. I will keep updating as the project moves forward, of course, and I would love any comments or suggestions!!

Old Photos.

I've been reading and reading and reading, and now I'm sick of it, so: photos!
A few weekends ago, my mother and I went to Marblehead and took a little time to go through a whole closet full of photos...a surprising number of which were of the Adam Mocks, the Augustus Heyls, and their children Jacob Mock and Marie Anna Heyl Mock, who are the main subject of my inquiry.

I found more photos of Marie Anna in clothing we have, and some in clothing we don't, but all are helpful. I also brought a photo album to Brooklyn, but I will have to think more about how I want to go about documenting and using those photos before spending the time scanning.

Some photos have been incorporated into Ken Scheyder's wonderful genealogy, and so here I present to you The Striped Silk Blouse. My classmate Jimena and I talked for a long time on Monday about what it should be called, based on our preliminary knowledge of contemporary terminology: a shirtwaist/waist? a bodice? It's never worn with a skirt of the same silk, but could a silk top and woolen bottom be called a suit? Of course, without color in the photos we cannot know if it was always worn with the same skirt, which may or may not enlighten us....

It seems as though there were many kinds of "shirtwaists" or "waists", which I found in the Jordan Marsh catalogs and Harper's Bazaar issues of the 1890s. We usually think of shirtwaists as white cotton, so often associated with the Gibson Girl and the working woman, but I am finding quite a range of "tops" under that name. Perhaps kind of like the word "top".

This garment is primarily of silk, white-ground faux-chiné floral overlaid with black stripes. There is velvet trim at the collar and cuffs, as well as at the sides and top of the plastron front, and finally in a small knotted swag of sorts across the mid-chest. For even more late nineteenth century splendor, there are accents of black lace "augmented" with multi-colored sequins, clear glass and gold seed beads, faux pearls and white lace.
The inside is lined with white polished cotton, boned with an unidentified material, and has the typical inch-wide grosgrain waistband, here in white. This waistband is marked, "Ramsyer, Boston", who is a rather elusive tailor. More research to be done there. However, she does have at least one other bodice with this marking, which is significant--and for another post.

She wears this bodice often for photographs, obviously on different days, and in various manifestations. Changing hats, sometimes with fur...was this her favorite dress? Her best? The most expensive? Or maybe the incidence is a coincidence, and based on "surviving" photos. However, a "Yes!" to any--or all--of those questions is very possible.

Hat, voluminous sleeves, tiny earrings (diamonds?). The picture of 1890s restraint.


Portrait with husband, Jacob Henry Mock. Note: a little less volume in the sleeves, and the sort of imperfect presentation of what is a boned and fitted "top". Dark skirt.


Another portrait, now alone. On the porch somewhere?


This one is regrettably harder to see, but is a great full-length portrait. One thing I love is that it feels sort of formally posed...but no one bothered to move the garden hose? This is probably the same day as the first (same hat), or perhaps even the "full version", but here we can see that beautiful dark skirt. She is holding gloves and a...fan? Something feathery. Shoes hard to see, but look to be leather (probably black?), and slightly worn, honestly.


Family portrait! I suppose, based on this cohort of photos, that it is possible these were all taken on the same day; I wonder which made me think otherwise? Anyway, Jacob H. Mock, Marie Anna Heyl Mock and Philip A. Mock in back. Then little Freddie Mock, Adam Mock (patriarch) and Eva Mueller Mock (matriarch) and little Elsie. Freddie is wearing some kid-sized fireman's gear; he would eventually become the "Mascot" for the Roxbury Veterans Firemen, of which his grandfather Adam was an enthusiastic member. I wonder if he asked to wear these or was asked to?


I wonder also if this was taken in their home? See the left side of the photograph; was a screen put up? I thought maybe it was an "accident" to show the nice things in their home, but then wouldn't they have just taken the photo in the parlor? I wonder what the vogue was for portraits at the time. Perhaps Joan Severa will help me answer that later. Anyway, does this look like a mistake? Maybe a better version, in which the illusion of a photography studio is upheld, can be found elsewhere? I do like this version of her in context; with an older woman and a younger, as well as in concert with the male fashions of all age groups. More like this to come!

Finally: Thesis

So, two months later, exhibition is off--we couldn't get the space, and none of us has enough time or resources to search for another, etc etc.
Instead, thesis is STARTED. I'm reading up on nineteenth century class theory, and to give you a little taste:
Notes for pages 6-9
30. Dale Johnson, as an orthodox Marxist, has complained about Giddens's "Marxized Weberian perspective...A rather indiscriminate eclecticism in his theoretical position leads to some provocative critiques but does not lend itself to the construction of a coherent theory." (Class and Social Development, pp.24-5n)
Oh, snap!
I'm also trying to decide what 1890s pattern to recreate, which is exciting and actually rather difficult! I'm thinking middle of the decade...big puffy sleeves.....

I might even read Marx.....now THIS is grad school.

Experiment.

A few of my fellow Visual Culture classmates and I are thinking of mounting a small exhibition this May. We are all doing museum/gallery/preservation/object-based theses, and they would dovetail nicely in this exhibition. We have no theme, no set plan; we will know better what we're doing once I survey the collection in a week or two.

Jimena is thinking about making exhibits sustainable (not as in, "we made these jeans out of organic cotton" but as in, "we only use florescent lighting and printed our programs with handmade potato stamps on recycled paper bags"). Lucie is looking at exhibition planning history and exploring its future. Marcella is doing her thesis on fashion copyright law, perhaps not the most apropos this specific exhibition, but has tons of awesome museum administration and research experience that will be invaluable.

I've been thinking a lot about the practicality of mounting whatever pieces we choose. So tonight I decided to try to make a seriously DIY mannequin out of recycled/found materials (gaff tape "inherited" from a show I worked on, a tshirt I've owned forever, newspaper from the paper recycling at work, a padded hanger donated to the cause by my boss) to see if it's a viable choice for this show.

It isn't.

Below, please find pictures of my experiment.
Bodies are so different, unsurprisingly. Especially with more than 100 years difference.

The finished product. Was so engrossed in taping myself into this shirt that I forgot to take a picture of the process.


Stands on its own. Very classical sculpture, especially with the uncut sleeve left on like a cut off arm.



The model, the dress.




Foreboding measurements.



Aaaaaand......mannequin fail. It won't even come close, even with newspaper being squished out and the bodice taken way in. It's a job for another woman. Any tiny friends want to volunteer?

"As Elizabeth Lawrence often said, 'To understand a designer, you have to get into his mind; to understand a dress, you must allow it to tell you what it is all about.'"
--From A Dressmaker Extraordinaire by Betty Kirke.

Also, a very interesting article here. O! The things to learn at the Costume Institute.

Kirke wrote Madeleine Vionnet, full of beautiful photos, observations and, brilliantly, PATTERNS of MV's work. This is the kind of work I want to do, and the challenge of taking patterns from clothing that was not only cut on the bias to begin with but also had been worn, conforming to bodies and shifting shapes over the decades is daunting, but exciting. I feel the same about Marie Anna's clothing; so many different little pieces, and how do you figure the sleeves? I suppose you look at contemporary patterns. Or maybe find Janet Arnold's notebooks? Look for the grain, the grain! At least I'm not dealing with crepe or jersey. And anyways, that's just a fantasy for now....

But the above quotation best describes where I am in my thesis right now. I can read all I want about the middle class and Simmel's contemporary ideas about fashion, but I just need to look at these garments. I'm going home as soon as I can to start that very basic task of cataloging and choosing pieces....so exciting!

Refine the thesis.

Between schoolwork, working six days a week at New York Theatre Workshop (four-show weekends!) and two days of an internship at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I haven't had much time to write here. A lot of work I have been doing with this collection is more theoretical, soaking up information and practices from the CI, reading social theory (my man Veblen) and only gazing at our beautiful pieces from afar.

There is no formal thesis title yet, nor a good solid question to answer with 100 pages of original writing, but there is a concept. I have this incredible collection of things, and I was somehow mentally stuck on attempting to account for each object, and how I would figure out whose items were whose, etc etc. Instead, my advisor sagely suggested I do a sort of "greatest hits" thesis, an examination of exemplary or important pieces (as subjectively chosen by the author), and what they say about the visual identity of a(n upper?) middle class woman in Boston at the turn of the century.

I haven't had a moment to spare to get back to Connecticut and evaluate the collection as a whole, but am very much looking forward to setting aside a whole day to take full stock of what we have. Making lists, perhaps taking measurements, maybe even assigning some sort of numbering system? Definitely taking many photos. Our own little museum! But then the most exciting part, choosing which items to highlight in this thesis.

I have some preliminary choices: a post-maternity dress that I will start to describe later in this post, at least one wool walking suit, something in cotton, perhaps a parasol and hat? And do I include the mourning hat of her husband? Or is that more of an exhibition choice than a thesis choice? We shall see.

So, on to one of the beautiful pieces I have here in Brooklyn. Before Mimi Maternity and A Pea in the Pod, there were.....mothers. Or mothers-in-law....or perhaps sisters or friends? Someone to make you something to wear after the rigors of pregnancy.

The post-maternity nature of this dress is as yet only a guess on my part, for a few reasons.

Although the sleeve shape,

collar style,


and extensively pieced back body place this piece fashionably in the middle of the 1890s,


the shapelessness of the front in a substantially fitted decade leads me to believe this is a nursing gown.

There is an inner lining with as many darts as and similar piecing to those of many formal, boned bodices made for public wear I've examined,


but in this garment the lining is a simple muslin, and is not even turned under at the bottom edge.


There is no boning; this lining is not, as with the public bodices, added to create an understructure for the outside layer, since on this garment the front is extensively cartridge pleated.


In this case, it is to keep the carefully pieced backside tight to the body, in a flattering and fashionable manner. My theory is, then, that the free-flowing front is to hide any body "imperfections" that might have resulted from pregnancy and birth. Although the lining has many shaping darts, I am unsure whether a corset was worn underneath this item. With the presentist prejudices of a modern woman, I like to imagine it was worn without, the lining acting as Interim Corset, letting the body have time to heal and facilitate breastfeeding.

Another presentist reading of this garment would use the side opening as evidence of a post-maternity breastfeeding consideration, but many non-maternity garments from this decade opened similarly. However, the plastron fronts of the public bodices were better integrated, so perhaps there is some small arguing point. The lack of any closure along that side-front opening of this dress allows the lining to become visible, which argues the use of this garment outside the house.

Finally, she could have been breastfeeding in 1894-5, as her son Frederick Adam Mock was born in August 1893.

This beautiful piece is made of cotton, with a muslin lining, and lace around the collar that I assume is also cotton. The buttons are most likely of bone, or maybe wood, although they don't feel like wood. I understand that plastics were not in use yet, although that would have been my first guess from observation. There are metal hooks and eyes attached to the outer fabric to keep the piece together, although few in number. As with many garments in this decade, long, hidden seams are machine stitched, and finishing is done by hand.

More research to be done on contemporary maternity dresses....and any comments and questions are welcome, as always!

What about....

if I recreate three dresses from, say, 1890-1910? Or three somethings?