Why the Victorians etiquette about dresses is so ridiculous | Fashion history myth busting
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- The Victorians etiquette was complicated, right? Victorian etiquette rules meant the wrong dress was social death? Let's bust some Victorian dress myths, see why we think the Victorians changed clothes 10 times a day, and talk about why Victorian era rules of etiquette seemed so riduculous.
We think that a Victorian gown was only for one occasion : a ball gown, a tea gown, an opera gown, et c. Victorian etiquette rules for ladies did require different styles of Victorian clothing for different social events, but Victorian era rules about clothing were not as hard and fast as we think. I read more than one Victorian era etiquette guide to learn about Victorian social rules for what to wear, and discovered that this particular bit of weird Victorian history has been confused by confirmation bias! Turns out, a Victorian ball gown was not that different from any other kind of Victorian evening gown, and Victorian clothing could easily be worn for multiple kinds of social occasions. It's a combination of classism and modern misunderstanding that makes us think Victorian manners dictated how you could dress so strictly, and made us think the Victorians changed clothes so often. I hope this bit of Victorian dress history makes more sense now, and that we can consider these Victorian myths busted.
This video is the first in my series on making an evening gown for a character from the Victorian novel Daniel Deronda. Subscribe and turn on notifications to see the rest of the dress-making process!
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0:00 You're wearing WHAT?!
0:27 Designing a Victorian dress
1:46 We're not doing Gone With The Wind.
2:40 General dress etiquette
5:10 Why so many rules?
6:27 Understanding primary sources
10:20 So what do you wear?
12:06 New project time!
Attributions :
Photo of a red Balenciaga dress, cropped, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Emoji from Twemoji v2 project, CC Attribution 4.0 International
creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Not a weird Victorian etiquette fact but my family has a formal dress from one of the ancestors (worn during a ball given for the king of Italy in 1880) and it has two bodices. one with 3/4 sleeves and a higer neckline for afternoon events and dinner and one sleevless and with a lower neckline for the actual ball and party. So maybe they changed multiple times during day but only the bodice or the accessories ? Aniway, this video helped me understand better this piece of family history.
Abby Cox shows such a dress (though 1860s, so a bit earlier than yours) in one of her videos.
Dresses like that seem to have been pretty common! Skirts took lots of fabric, so you could get more use out of it if you had multiple bodices.
Can you take a pic of it and show me?
Well that's extremely cool
It was normal if you were not at the top of the social scale to have 2 bodices- this is explored extensively in the British TV series from about 30 years ago about Lily Langtry- "Lily" the point is made that this economy was actually made fashionable by Lily.
"Enslavercore nonsense" I'm never never calling neoconfederate propaganda anything else from now on.
The alternative women s styles---see photos of US and other feminists/
abolitionists---simpler Victorian, but
still typical styles. Those movements mostly did NOT wear special designs
like bloomers. Dress like Elizabeth Stanton, Sarah and Angelina Grimke
(parents were S Carolina slavers),
Sojourned Truth, Harriet Tubman, etc!!
I watched Gone with the Wind for the first time a few months ago and found it deeply disturbing and unsettling. I don't even know how it became so popular, let alone why it inspired "Old South" nostalgia and why people want to emulate the enslavers, whose lifestyle and ideas don't even sound sensible within the parameters of this sickly-sweet movie that's so skewed in their favour.
"Enslavercore nonsense" is really the only word that fits.
@@kathilisi3019 Conservative ideology has always required denying reality and living in an overly simplistic fantasy.
Historical dancer here! There was often a difference between evening dresses and ball gowns specifically, in that ball gowns had a shorter hem. It’s all very nice to have the line of your bustle end in a train that trails behind you and shows off expensive fabric, but if dancing is going to be the main event of the evening, no one wants an expensive gown to be constantly stepped on, by yourself and other people. Even attaching it to your wrist doesn’t quite cut it - you can get away with that if you’re dancing a couple of waltzes and calling it a day, but there’s absolutely no way you can get through quadrilles, longway sets or other group dances in a crowded ballroom without ripping something or giving yourself RSI from carrying heavy fabric on one raised wrist all evening. Speaking from personal experience!
Hi!! Where can I learn more about historical dance and dress like you do? 😍
My five year old came over as you were showing the different dresses, and with each new dress she went 'how do you make that?' Cause she wants them all, but when I mentioned she doesn't like to wear dresses, I was informed that she wanted them for when she was older 😂
Eeeeexcellent she will be one of us when she grows up a bit :D
I love that, I can’t wait til my daughter asks me to make her pretty dresses (I have a few sort of vintage little girl dress patterns for exactly that occasion 😅)
At that age her dress would be knee-length and full enough to allow for plenty of mobility, and she’d have pantalettes under it for warmth.
I was definitely your daughter growing up. I hid all my dresses 🤣🤣 now I'm trying to only wear dresses
@@Meeptome I hate them cause I couldnt play in them
I read a lot of Louisa May Alcott as a preteen, and some of her diatribes against various aspects of fashion always baffled me. Like in "Eight Cousins," where Rose agrees to stop wearing earrings and let the holes grow back in exchange for her cousin quitting smoking, because obviously pierced ears are an equivalent vice to smoking.
Alcott was big into dress reform, which was subtext (text?) that totally went over my head at that age. Her whole rant about corsets vs flannel underwear is, like, peak dress reform discourse. The way she regularly complains about fashionable women's dress being cold and flimsy is from the same school of thought.
(Apologies if this is stuff you already know - I just discovered it a few months ago and it made a lot about that book make more sense)
I always intepreted that passage not so much as Alcott saying that pierced ears are as bad as smoking, but that Rose's motive for having pierced ears and her male cousins' motive for smoking was the same: that it was "trendy" and "all the cool kids were doing it"(basically). Alcott presents this as a sign of vanity, in the sense that they are caring too much about peer pressure, and this is something many of her books frequently moralize over e.g. Meg allowing her friends to dress her up in their clothes for a ball in Little Women, Amy going all out making a fancy picnic to impress her rich friends in Good Wives, etc. But yeah, a lot of Alcott's jabs at fashionable behaviour are definitely hard to intepret from a modern context!
I think the weirdest thing I've heard about Victorian etiquette is that ladies weren't supposed to blow out candles because pursing their lips was "suggestive" 😂 can't remember where I read that and I never bothered to check it because it just seemed so absurd.
"Tell me your mind is 100% in the gutter, without telling me your mind's in the gutter"
I had a friend who went to a Christian university and she could only eat bananas chopped up, because eating one out of the peel distracted the menfolk. Victorians would quietly approve.
@@mcwjes we had similar rules lol
Actually - sorry to disappoint - you didn’t want anyone blowing out a candle cause melted wax everywhere, huge mess especially on a tablecloth. They had all candles and needed to use a snuffer. Is likely somebody told children that to get them to do it right, like threatening them with the devil coming for them. 🙄 People say appalling things to children and young women.
I am fairly sure it was more safety issue as the number of deaths by fire from candles as in some poor person caught fire is horrific. You need to consider that men had better mobility and way less decorations not to forget less potentially dangerous hairstyles. The casual descriptions of lifes of close friends lost in sudden candle fire that lit up the PERSON or the room so badly that nothing could be done for them as they half burned half suffocated to death haunt me to this day. Fire in house full of beeswax and dry wood with textiles is no joke and only very brave few people attempted to help for fear how quickly the fire spreads.
This video gave me several thoughts:
1. Not only did the Industrial Revolution provide social mobility (and thus the risk of people passing for a higher class), it also made clothing much more affordable, so it was possible to have activity specific clothing for people other than the top 0.0001%.
2. Ladies magazines tended to be targeted at middle class audiences (women raised in the upper class would have been taught the rules from birth by their families and governesses), so it is actually possible that the rules were less about keeping lower classes out and more about how to fit in with the upper classes. I also think that the rules presented in those magazines were also often fabricated. To this day, average people are obsessed with how the rich and powerful live (think of how much American ink has been spilled over the British royal family) and media outlets care less about getting the facts right and more about what makes a good story or lets them sell a product.
3. The weirdest Victorian etiquette story I have ever heard was that some Victorians covered their table legs with fabric covers, because the idea of showing a bare leg would have been scandalous.
You couldn't say leg, or trousers. Trousers were called "Southern Consideration"
The table leg thing is false. They covered furniture legs for two reasons: to protect them from soot, and to conceal that they were made of a cheap wood like pine rather than an expensive one like mahogany.
With modern magazines, it's like the idea that we're going "from day to evening" all the time, which realistically most of us aren't.
Hahahahah, I love the thought that the Victorian etiquette written about in magazines could be as fake as the "7 Sex Positions to Drive Him Wild" style articles one might find in a modern Cosmopolitan magazine, full to the brim with filled with comically absurd fake sex tips 🤣
@@spirit__fox My version is things you can sleep in but also leave the house in, or perhaps in singing exams, one outfit to suit a pirate, an ancient greek, a cabaret dancer, a teen goth and a future "lovely lady"
Those subtle social class cues are so difficult to describe. For example one of my housemates in the 90s needed a suit and tie for his work in retail. He bought a really cheap grey suit. If one had used words only he could have been dressed like any man of that time. However anyone at that time looking at him in his suit and the CEO of the chain of tech shops would instantly be able to tell the difference of these 2 men in their grey suits and ties. The fabrics, the fit, the accessories all define the social class. Two hundred years from now it will be much harder.
In terms of suits, I don't really think it's different 200 years later. If dress is used to catch social climbing to protect the "upper classes", it isn't just "does someone have a suit," it's fabric, how it's tailored, etcetcetc
A modern richpeep, surrounded daily by richpeeps who all possess tailored suits, ran into your friend wearing a cheap suit, the fit would probably give it away right off the bat.*
My husband has inexpensive suits which were sewn for his measurements, and boy howdy I can see exactly where and how I would change them if I were making them for him.
Now, I don't particularly LIKE that this is so, (I tend to be more of the opinion that the unwashed masses need to be protected from the rich), but if these things were in place to "protect" the rich from being "imposed upon" by the "unwashed masses" horning into their spaces via social mobility, the cut of your friend's suit likely would have served to do so by itself.
If someone was themselves a tailor, or knew a haute couture seamstress, and the whole cost of an immaculately-fitted suit or couture gown was the cost of fabric, yes. And that's explicitly the fantasy story about Cinderella: all it took was clothes that fit in to make HER fit in once, and that once was enough for her to fit in forever.
Anyway, complex subject. I do on the whole agree that it is easier to get things that LOOK right (there are very convincing knock offs blah blah blah) and I think it is truly hilarious watching people twist themselves in the most unique knots trying to justify (sunk cost fallacy) some prohibitively expensive name-brand purchase, maintaining extensive blogs on how to spot "fakes" and so forth
(If it's so hard to spot a "fake" that you need to do research, maybe the "original" isn't worth what you were charged 🤔)
TLDR: yes and no 😄
*incidentally, (and I am going to be unforgivably clothing nerdy here, so forgive me for that) we unwashed masses are so USED to what the poor tailoring looks like that comic book artists etc go out of their way to reproduce those tailoring faults on suits. I am sure they think they're "just drawing a suit" and are super proud of the detail they're putting in. One of the most common ill fits depicted in these pieces is the whisker shapes coming off the crotch, where the pant is too short in the run for the wearer. Anyway, it makes me laugh every time I see it in art now, one of those "once it has been seen it cannot be unseen" things. Of course, it isn't only comics that reproduce it. Anyway, thanks for reading my essay.
@@annedavis3340 you are correct in some ways. But just look at drawings of 1820s mens wear. And written descriptions. Then take your average costumer wanting to do early Victorian. Or even 100 years ago and understand the difference between a work day suit, a sporting outfit, a dinner jacket, and evening wear for a man. They are only subtly different in many cases but make a mistake and wear the wrong thing or the wrong fit and you show you don't belong. These things are not written down, like bread recipes, everyone who needs to know this already knows this.
@@lenabreijer1311 I do think modern people trying to replicate history and modern people trying to fit into their own society are two different things
I very much feel that in general costumers miss the mark greatly
I just also think cheap suits are unlikely to "pass," also. Purely based on fit.
As a Correlary, it’s spectacularly difficult for costumers to achieve proper fit, going purely off of extant garments, as we are looking at clothes that survived (usually too small or otherwise too ____ to fit someone else enough that they could wear it as a handmedown and wear through it) or looking at a garment with some peculiarity of cut to fashion it to a specific human, and so forth, but not with any notes saying "I lengthened this here for ___" so some of those seem like mistakes, and therefore you can't really use it as a learning opportunity for how they addressed sloped shoulders or whatever, and it's difficult to work back to quite what the vanilla shape would be. We can refer to portraits for the fit we're AIMING for, but portrait artists generally flattered their subjects, and subtracted things which would help a costumer later
I think this is all very interesting,
Thanks for chatting with me, this is very fun
@@annedavis3340 you've got a point but as one of the unwashed masses who's somewhat familiar with how a suit should look, ive DEFINITELY seen millionaires that are wearing suits I wouldn't be caught dead in because the fit is so laughably bad. But then again that might be something connected to the Vimes Boot theory of economics.
This is an area where I am in complete agreement with something that I read in a Victorian dress manual: A simple suit, made of lesser quality fabric but expertly tailored, is far better than an expensive suit that doesn't fit.
I would much rather spend perhaps a hundred dollars for a second-hand suit that fits in the key areas (mainly the shoulders and armscye), and an equal amount on tailoring to get the sleeve length altered, the trousers taken in and the hem let down or raised, and the waist altered to fit well than spend $200 or so on a brand new off-the-rack suit that doesn't fit at all.
I think the simplest and best way to explain how folks in the nineteenth century used the word 'dress' is to treat it as a verb instead of a noun. Dinner dress was how you dressed for dinner, that's it.
That's exactly how I have always used and understood the phrase, and I was born mid-20th-century.
I LOVE reading Victorian etiquette books, partly because it's hilariously obvious that the authors were just sticking in advice that followed their personal preferences. I have a book that claims authoritatively that one should never wear pink and green together, and that stout women should only wear plain, dark colors-like brown!
You can also find stuff that I'd hope would be so obvious to an adult as to not need to be mentioned. Like chewing with your mouth closed.
I love seeing someone else with an intense interest in the Victorian era, specifically fashion, that isn't even slightly about romanticising the time period. It's just so fascinating _sociologically_ . If you start from wanting to understand the dress it's inevitable you end up learning about almost everything else, in my opinion.
"enslavercore fantasy" really hit the nail on the head lol. gonna start using that word to describe people who do that
SOME people on costube who do that come to mind.
@@AemiliaJacobus ???
@@annasolovyeva1013 that is one of the reasons why any romanticised version of Russian Empire in films and series is yikes, especially when they depict serfdom, but white-wash it and portray it as if serfs didn't live that different from free people...
Yep. This was the line that made me subscribe!
Is she referring to Civil War reenactors?
Not the weirdest Victorian etiquette rule, but one I find hilarious, is the amount of wine that is acceptable for a lady to drink during a dinner party.
An un-wed woman could have 3 to 4 glasses of wine without raising any eyebrows, but a married woman could drink 5 or 6 glasses.
I realize they were likely drinking from smaller glasses, but that's still a good amount of wine 😅.
PS- getting the stuff together for that Victorian Ms Frizzle outfit. Let's just say it'll be out of this world 😉🪐
. . . how long were these dinner parties???
@@SnappyDragon 3 or 4 hours was common, especially in europe. one would have a different wine to pair with each course, plus after dinner port/cordial/etc, pre dinner cocktails, all kinds of things depending on the decade and place and class. they usually were MUCH smaller glasses though. like half the size we're used to seeing
Wine servings were much, much smaller than they are today. I used to have a formal place-setting of late 19th century glasses and the _largest_ wine glass held barely 8 ounces if filled to the brim (which was in extremely poor taste, wine glasses should be filled 1/3 to 1/2 full according to the old cookbooks I have in a box somewhere, so 2-1/2 to 4 ounces) and the next glass down was less than 6 ounces so the serving would have been 2-3 ounces... compare that to today when a 9-ounce pour is common in many restaurants and bars. You'd be soused before the meat course! The sherry glass held like 2-3 ounces and would have been filled half full, so you had not much more than a taste to sip while socializing. Sadly, my box of crystal did not survive my next-to-last move and arrived in shards.
Wines were also a LOT less strong than today. It was common that the alcohol percentage was around 4~5%. Since industrial revolution with better production system, warmer climates and better grapes, the percentage keeps on rising.
Married women could get away with SO much more in general!
Thanks for spending time to do the research! Appreciate it loads :D
My favourite silly "Victorians were bonkers" myth is that they covered piano-legs because "oh no, sexy piano-legs are corrupting the young women!"
... When of course it was just because people want to cover things up to keep them clean and safe - just as we do today!
If someone covered up the legs of their table, it was more likely to conceal that they were made of pine rather than mahogany than for any silly “modesty” reasons.
While lying in bed with my eyes closed in the midst of a fibro flare, "Spoiler alert: it's classism" made me crack a smile for the first time this morning. Thank you for being such an engaging, passionate researcher and teacher!
When I first uploaded this video we didn't have the thumbnail finished, and that frame was the one UA-cam autoselected. I almost kept it! I hope your flare calms down soon 💚
@Karin Larsen Oof! I feel ya my friend... 😔 Thank goodness for the myriad awesome costube, historical research & pop media review YT channels - so invaluable for providing simultaneous mental uplift & amusement in those hours when all one can do is collapse horizontal with one's phone!
Hope your symptoms are better today!
@@sarahvruwink3027 that's so kind of you! Thanks. I'm not sure if they're better, but I'm certainly more adjusted to them, which is sometimes the same thing on a practical level.
I'm so sorry you had a flare. I also have fibro. I hope you're feeling better today. Take care of yourself!
the future: omg you guys, today i'm making a historically accurate crop top
No, that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is going to be those low-rise jeans from the noughts that you had to shave to wear.
@@willabandler9280 haha pair them and you have an outstandingly ugly outfit!
Many outfits came with two bodices. One was acceptable for daytime wear, and the other bodice would be for evening wear. Often the fabric was the same, but the lace or trim would be fancier.
Bodices also often had multiple sleeves ...... to change things up (as in different styles) and also to replace sleeves as they wore out, but you wanted/needed to keep the dress serviceable. Clothes were expensive and thus you had to make do with what you had.
So glad someone has found George Elliott she tends to get overlooked because her subjects are a little more challenging than Austen etc. If you're sticking to Jewish history you'll need to explore Disreli at some time, not only a Prime Minister but also a novelist
I'm just trying to read Middlemarch for the 1st time and I'd say it's slow going not because of the subject matter, but because of the writing style. It's all very well observed, but often it seems like she's unable to give one sentence of what the character is doing/thinking without wrapping it in a paragraph of opinions, allusions and divagations. It's a good resource to find out about her time period, but definitely slows down the plot and can seem overwritten. I think Austen remains so accessible today because she focuses on the characters and their thoughts and actions - you could move them 50, 100 or 200 hundred years forward and they still seem relevant because people's characters are still the same. Whereas Elliott purposefully drowns the characters in references to the society and time period they inhabit, which can get out-of-date quickly. I understand why she was so popular back in her day, having captured it so well, but I also understand why these days she seems to be revered more than loved.
If you are looking for an Victorian/Edwardian Jew with red hair and a with a tendency for rebelling against what the society was expecting from a woman, have you heard of the French actress Sarah Bernardt? Granted, she converted to become a Catholic, but her mother was Jew, so Jew enough in my book. Plus so much Mucha poster with her on them!
I grew up in a very unique family. Half was very upper class (like my great great grandma was a Lady, her father an Earl, but my great great grandma married an Irish sailor, so her child was disowned, but he still grew up with all that. He came to America and married the daughter of a copper baron in Michigan's upper peninsula), their child (my grandpa) married a girl who came from founding families in northern Michigan who were in politics. That side is still very formal and proper. I knew some of them because they lived to be over 100 and died when I was between 8-14.
The other side is indigenous. My grandpa was from Northern Ontario, like really far north (we had to take a train for hours that just stopped in the middle of the woods to let us out. Then a boat.) He was in the Canadian army, and I never met any of his family besides his sister (who was very proper). My grandma didn't even have a birth certificate because natives weren't American citizens, grew up on a farm, and started smoking at 5. She was a teacher, so she had that old school marme thing going, but she had no problem getting in the dirt and planting stuff, and her sister never left the farm, raised bison.
I grew up wearing dresses and bows while climbing trees and fighting with boys, yet still sitting with my ankles crossed and knowing the correct utensils to use at a fancy dinner party lol. I'm still like that, wear dresses and look put together, but I drive a semi truck.
I have a lot of the jewelry from my victorian and edwardian relatives, some letters, but none of their clothes :( one of my cousins has a wedding dress from the 1860's that was her 3x great grandma's
I wonder if future generations will avoid clothing of our current era because of the exploitative practices of the modern textile and garment industry? We don't seem to have learned anything from history in this regard, sadly. 😒
capitalism and the banksters will never allow for the humanization of slaves
@@katjakatt836 I disagree people actually like to afford things. Stop having the Asiatic countries make clothing, and that $5 t-shirt from Walmart can go to $15 easily.
@@charissawilkinson9270 it's not a matter of "liking". it's a matter of ability. inflation has gone up dramatically over the last several decades, especially now, and wages have not gone up accordingly. we are forced to support this slavery because we ourselves are slaves, not paid what our labor is worth while executives and shareholders rake in all the money while doing literally nothing to earn it
Weirdest thing I know about Victorian etiquette was the whole posing with dead loved ones for photos. Seeing those pictures totally creeps me out.
It may be comforting to know that most "postmortem" photos shown today are, in fact, not postmortem at all. Like, the practice definitely existed, but modern viewers are so bad at determining the real ones that most of the pictures on the internet or in "Ten SHOCKING Things About the Victorian Era!!!"-style media are just...old photographs
Sometimes a post mortem photo might be the only image a grieving couple might have of a baby or small child during a time when child mortality was all too common.
8:30 I think a good way to think of it is this: picture a wedding dress. In general, you may imagine a white, ivory or cream floor-length dress, possibly with lace or embellishments, and perhaps sleeveless or with sheer lace sleeves. However, not all wedding dresses look like that. There are many, many exceptions, but they are all still wedding dresses, and unless they’re really out there, they will most likely still be recognizable as wedding dresses. Even in cases where the colors have been changed, or the cut is vastly different from a stereotypical wedding dress, they can usually still be recognized as long as they are given some context.
You could also look at modern lolita fashion and it’s many rules and substyles, as well as the differences in what a lolita may wear for a stroll through the park vs a tea party. Victorian fashion hasn’t died, just evolved- it lives on in the EGL community!
"Enslaver-core"... Oh my Gandalf, this is the BEST way to describe "antebellum chic".
It is important to remember Gone With the Wind was written in the 1930s by someone very sympathetic to the Confederacy and who had a romantacized view of what slavery was. It will reflect that. However, it is a significant window into history as viewed from the losing side. It answers questions about how an Irishman (who knows slavery and oppression first hand) can commit such an evil on others and how people justified it in general. Removing the problematic parts, it is also an incredible story about very well-written characters' resilience and survival.
I guess I'm trying to say this a very complicated book. We need to understand the flaws, but it's OK to appreciate the good in it to. At the least it is worth saving as a historically and culturally significant work to be taught (with sensitivity) in an academic setting.
That can definitely be argued, but portraying the book as “aesthetic literature “ and one that represents joy and happiness for all as many people seem to do is weird at best , and extremely ignorant , but racially insensitive and dismissive at worst .(I say as a Black history nerd)
I think the movie is more of the problem because it removes all chance of giving historical context when the scenario is "came on the movie channel when grandmas watching tv." Both the book and the movie are goldmines for understanding reconstruction and the 20th century view of reconstruction, but when you don't have that important lens, it's really disgusting enslaver 'good ol south' false nostalgia. That's why I think costuming definitely goes way too far, because you're celebrating a really terrible time period if you specifically want a plantation-princess dress.
I confess that as a very sheltered white kid, it was among my favorite books. I say that to offer perspective when I call BS on it being "a significant window into history". If MM had a romanticized view of things (which...is putting it mildly), what makes us think her view is insight into what Confederates thought? Her view is a window into what 1930s racists thought.
@@willabandler9280 She was from Atlanta, Georgia (Sherman's march is a big plot point in the book). She would have known people who had ties to the Confederacy, people who lived through the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Civil War veteran reunions (Confederacy and Union) were not that far in the past. She grew up in the culture shaped by these events. "The South will rise again" cultural movement of the time did a lot of romanticization of history. And yes, the rise again is a reference to the Confederacy. It isn't just a random generation of racist people. It's the last direct ties to the legacy of one of the most important periods in American history. And even if her generation isn't identical to the war generation they have their own perspective that helps us understand the Jim Crow era. This book is deeply, deeply flawed. However, it does have value.
If you are more interested in primary sources and a more concise and modern discussion of the Civil War look into What They Fought For by James M. McPherson.
I'm a white girl from Virginia. My perspective on this book has evolved with age too. I firmly believe we need to learn from the mistakes of the past. We can't do that by erasing what's left of it because it's not woke enough by 2021 standards.
I mean, except I don’t really care. I know what they fought for and so does everyone else. And I don’t think that encouraging more people to read the OG enslavercore (love that term!) novel is going to help them understand it more. It would be like if a 40yo white woman from Boston wrote a novel today about the busing riots from the Irish point of view-is it important history, sure, but should we be reading a novelization of it when we could be spending that time reading, say, James Baldwin instead? Our time and attention are finite, and the work of people who actually lived through the Civil Rights era on the other side exists. Every minute we spend on understanding the plight of the poor put-upon white people via I researched hearsay is a minute we don’t spend lifting up the voices that have actually been silenced.
Not exactly about Victorian etiquette, but my grandmother (born ca. 1915) was adamant that certain handbags were only appropriate for dinner, not cocktails, while others were to be worn for evenings at the ballet/opera. A little black dress might be appropriate for each of those occasions, but the occasion-appropriate handbags were quite different, to her eye. This video reminded me of her so very much.
Well, there are still unspoken rules about which bags are ok to wear for which kind of events, though not that many people nowadays have chance to go to garden party or even coctail, it is becoming more business dinner or gala where I live. What were hers ok's and ko's?
@@leadandelion5127 Out to dinner were understated handbags. Pretty but not too ornate. Cocktail bags were fancier. That’s where you saw some beading. Bags for nights out at the ballet/opera were small clutches made of silk I think and sometimes embroidered. They could be quite beautiful in a very quiet way. For a gala, the shoes were dyed to match the dress and a small bag completed the look. Big enough for a lipstick and maybe a tiny mirror. The bags were either pouch like or highly structured and thei clasp was jewel-like. Also pretty much still true today, people had day pearls (mostly single strand and chokers) and evening pearls (multi strands and long length). Difference is, people wore their pearls all the time.
Thank you for sharing, that is very interesting! We definitely still do the big formal events = small pouche from silk or taft, or rarely this metal bag rectangle with swarowski style stones all over but always just clear set in silver or gold to keep it high event ok. : )
I can see the pearls, you need to wear them on skin often to keep them in good condition, otherwise they will start to look dull quickly, plus I remember in multiple countries the day pearls were supposed to be best the godmother or sometimes mother/aunt were able to afford as they were the first jewellery gift of young woman's young adult life and were supposed to serve as insurance money if she ever had to run out of her husband's house just with her maiden possessions or to help her future family in dire situation like starving or need for expensive medicine.
as someone who doesn't really do accessories . . . 😵💫😵💫😵💫
I own 3 handbags (tiny, medium, and giant) all in the same plain black fabric.
It took me more than halfway through this to realize this reminds me exactly of learning Israeli wedding etiquette. Which is mostly, don't actually get dressed up because who dresses up for weddings actually (like semi formal, it's still weird), give money for gifts amount based on how close you are and how expensive the wedding is, and don't go with your partner to their friends/coworkers etc wedding if you don't know them because why would you pay for 2 people if you don't really know the friend.
According to my teenage son current ideas for what to wear for a certain event is a confusing mess. He hates the formal, semi-formal, business, business casual, casual, and whatever other terms get thrown into the mix.
Hooray!! Research V is one of my favorite Vs! Weird Victorian etiquette favorite is the celery craze, where celery, being a new vegetable to England and the US, became a status symbol. Celery was proudly displayed on dinner tables in fancy cut glass vases as an edible table decoration.
This is HILARIOUS and I can completely see it.
@@SnappyDragon there are celery vases in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert, all sorts. And you are right, it is HILARIOUS!
They did the same with pineapples too! This is why you sometimes see legit stone pineapples immortalized on rich people's houses - they were gilding themselves by association. I've seen them before as finials on the grand gated entrances to manor houses 😂
This explains the Victorian fascination with celery juice as an all purpose tonic 😂
Apparently it was also hard to grow when it was first introduced until varieties more suited to the climate were developed. Which made it even more of a status symbol.
"Stay the frock away" is amazing
"how can I curse at racists without offending the algorithm/sponsors . . . "
It's a lot better than "let's go Brandon"
@@unrightist I happen to like let’s go Brandon.❤️
@@Ventura0404 that's just a poorly hidden, rude comment that encourages insurrectionists. I don't understand why some find that clever. It's vulgar and sophomoric.
@@nancycampbell8671 i mean historically America was founded on inserections.
Thanks for the perspective! I know it isn't victorian, but reading Jane Austin helped clear some myths for me. For example, how long do you think a guy is going to wait in the sitting room for the girls to get dressed? The conversations recorded as they wait aren't so long. And Austin's readers would have noticed if that was weird. No, they were down in 10 or 15 minutes. Also, there is no running to change clothes every couple hours as the day progresses. And if they needed so many different dresses, they would have needed another carriage when traveling to carry the luggage. But no, they are described as crammed in to a carriage together. Five women traveling with one carraige. Some of those clothes are pulling double duty. And victorian clothes take up even more space than georgian, so the principle applies even more.
Mariah Pattie’s video about the costumes in the most recent “Emma” movie shows how they actually tended to do it: rather than changing the whole outfit, they changed some of the accessories.
@@ragnkja Yeah, fichus weren't a thing later on, but a fichu on in the morning, and take it off and suddenly it's a visiting dress! Stuff like that. :)
i mean, i find modern dress codes just as ridiculous and complicated and classist. i feel horribly inappropriate in anything that isn't strictly casual in almost every situation. i also have a love of nice tailoring, historical clothing, and formal wear and never anywhere to wear any of it to because i am the lowest of the low class and we don't have such things as balls, cocktail parties, or luncheons. we have drunken house parties and rock concerts and plenty of sweaty dirty work
When I married out of poverty a few years back, I realized that there are different types of casual wear for middle class and above (street clothes, athleisure, loungewear, sportswear, and pajamas) as well, so I agree it's not that different.
I am happy to work at a job where nobody cares how I dress, so I can wear jeans, t-shirts and sweaters all the time. I don't like skirts and dresses, and wear them only on some events, and I don't wear heels at all
If you want an excuse to dress up, Google free or inexpensive museums/art museums nearby 😉 bonus: talking is usually discouraged so you don't have to deal with passive aggressive small talk
y'know, having "dress" mean "how you dress for a thing" rather than "one kind of garment in particular" actually makes a whole lot of sense. plus, with the way that various pieces can be dressed up and down given (perhaps!) an individual's social itinerary and just how much of a pain it would be to actually change your entire outfit multiple times in a day, actually makes everything make that much more Sense.
I'm going to a show with my younger sister tonight to see one of our favorite bands together, and I promised I would match her. she sent me pics of the two possible outfits she'd like to wear (low-key hobbitcore and/or "'Grimacing Victorian Child' -1888 Photographed by Lou Harvard (Colorized)" ), and I've got a literal STACK of clothes out that, were I not thinking of Very Specifically trying to match my sister in this one particular social instance, I totally could and would dress up or down depending on what kind of other event I'd be trying to attend.
it would make Sense that we've lost the general taste or understanding of certain words or phrases as they've fallen out of the fashion lexicon. just being able to look at it from this perspective is legit making victorian dress conventions make That Much More sense even in my own head! thank you for sharing!!
This is super cool! I think one day in my future I will want to make an outfit that my immigrant ancestors may have worn when it just after they moved to the US. It was from rural Norway to rural US (Minnesota and eventually settling in North Dakota) in 1868.
Star-belly sneeches! When you talked about the upper classes visually distinguishing themselves from the masses, I totally flashed back to the Dr. Seuss characters who needed to know who were "their people" by if they had stars on their bellies, and how mad they were when the undesirable sneeches started showing up with stars, and they needed a new way to distinguish themselves.
"the alternative was to stop dying my hair and i'm not doing that"
I fell that in my bones. Who cares if itcs not natural? This is my hair colour and i will protect and cherish it with my life. It's not like people have naturally purple hir colour anyway.
Great video, i have enjoyed it as always. Also i'm pretty sure that you will ace that singing part. Good luck!
Not really an etiquette thing, but the fact that so many Victorians had their nipples (other things) pierced & it was widely known in society as something you could do still tickles me to this day.
really!? i thought that was mostly a lower class "circus folks" sort of thing at the time? or was it on par with the prevalence of kinks or it being an acceptable (though slightly risque) past time for high class ladies to design naughty lingerie?
@@spiritussancto I'm no expert, but it definitely wasn't a circus thing. Maybe if you had a lot, like with tattoos? People went and got it done as a fashion thing or on behest of "special friends" or spouses. There was at least one piercer (who did other things too) on one of the fashionable streets on Paris, in magazines some (male) doctors warned it could interfere with breastfeeding while several mothers who had piercings sent in letters saying "nah, I've had 3 kids & nursing was never a problem"
I think they also did that because they thought there was a medical reason for it
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 nah, pretty sure that's a misconception/something later generations came up with to explain it away. From what I can tell the general consensus was "it's fine technically but there's risk of infection and you should always go to a proffesional". Though some claimed it could cause cancer or "a constant state of excitement" as well so...
One of the best examples of Victorian etiquette satire that I can think of is The Gilded Age, by Mark Twain, with, if I recall (in)correctly, a solid two pages devoted just to calling cards, then another page and a half detailing the correct length of time a morning call was supposed to last (I believe) more than fifteen minutes, but fewer than forty-five minutes, but not a half hour...
Yeah, I read it about ten years ago, in an omnibus edition with Puddin'head Wilson, which i also recommend as a scathing indictment of racism, prejudice, classism, and ableism, all wrapped up in a silly procedural courtroom drama
Edit: in Coniston, by Winston Churchill (the American), there is a chapter devoted entirely to the machinations of purchasing evening dress for a young lady, and how her indulgent guardian has no clue, and makes the wise decision of permitting a beloved matron friend select the final costume
I am really excited to see you bring this project to fruition. Also, thank you for the term "enslavercore". This very succintly puts paid to the idea that a period 'frock-up-and-waft-about-the-plantation' is an uncomplicated and harmless form of fun.
I like the relating of modern fashion mag day-to-night to older clothing stuff. I'm the person who stares at those current mags looks for the "One dress five ways" spreads. I'd totally enjoy watching someone do a much older decade dressing up, down and sideways the same dress like a period-costume transformer robot -- -now she's a car, now she's a plane, now she's a robot, now she's an evening dinner guest! All in the bits and pieces and, really, with such need for the newly factory-enabled shops to sell moneyed people new bits and pieces the game of convincing people one more purchase would give their wardrobe ultimate flexibility began.
I guess nothing much has changed there! 😂 Except now we additionally accessorize with our choice of electronic items... The thing I find most ridiculous about current celebrity fashion in particular is the scandalized reaction to re-wearing anything. In prior eras, even well-off people would reuse clothing and even have the same garment made over to fit new fashions. I guess it's conspicuous capitalist consumption taken to the extreme...?
Daniel Deronda is a beautiful book. Not a light read,but worth it.
The worst thing in my mind was visiting cards. You had to hand out visiting cards accompanied by one or two! of your husband's cards. If you wanted to accept an invite you delivered a card with a corner bent. If you sent a visiting card after a ball late that was offensive.If you wanted to end the friendship you folded over a DIFFERENT corner,or partially tore the edge. There must have been a lot of mistakes followed by hasty explanations!
It's such a good book! I've been listening to it as I work on this project and I have *so many thoughts* . I'll have to resist the urge to make the voiceover for these next few videos nothing but me reading my favorite passages aloud.
My word, P Heart! Couple that with the language of flowers, you have a cocktail of faux pas that would take a lifetime and a move of residence to eradicate. *)
I had to do cards as a debutante. You assume the culture you live in is somehow better, but would you go to Thailand and get attitude about how they were different? Or Mars? That’s what 1860 is. A very foreign place. Do not judge it against 2021 norms.
They didn’t have texting or Facebook, they had paper and used it to keep in touch. Calling cards are actually very efficient, perhaps you would see that if your head weren’t full of, say, how to drive a car or use a supermarket or use a computer. Things Victorians couldn’t comprehend. They didn’t have germ theory till around 1880, it was still the Middle Ages!
@@elizabethclaiborne6461 I think you're reading more into this than the OP intended. Paper folds and tears, and adding a load of secret-message subtext to something that could easily happen accidentally is stressful. I'm sure the Victorians would be equally flummoxed by the potential for faux pas inherent in autocorrect or butt-dialing or reply-all.
Being born in this era probably meant that people had sort of broad sense of what was appropriate...so dress for a dinner with friends probably was different to a dress for a dinner at grandma's
I happen to own a little etiquette book from (as far as I can tell) the 1870s or '80s which is great fun to read. The advice (or perhaps commandments would better describe the tone?) it contains oscillates wildly from perfectly reasonable things like "don't make rude comments about people behind their backs," to that immensely entertaining brand of Victorian judgement -- someday I should count how many times it calls something "vulgar." One things that stood out to me was that apparently there are some foods that men can pick up with their fingers, but for which women should use a fork.
I'm loving how we can finally acknowledge things were pretty but the exploitation was so horrible it's inexcusable.
I appreciate voices like yours
This was a fun romp through research. I think we often forget the way language changes and that context is useful in understanding what we read from the past. I am excited to see this dress and for the possible operatic reveal.
The weirdest thing I can think of from Victorian etiquette is that a lady must abstain from impure thoughts while pregnant lest she have an ugly baby. Heavens forbid!
A little later then Victorian, probably the from the 1910s, but my grandmother told my mother that it wasn't true that if a person of a different colour startled you that your baby would have that colour.
@@lenabreijer1311 Oh my goodness, the things they used to think. Good thing your grandmother was a sensible woman.
@@Chibihugs yes. Note that they came from the bottom of society. She left school at 9 to work in the kitchen of a rich household. Her sisters worked the waterfront and streets. She was the respectable one.
Is there also a connection to today and “never wearing the same look twice”? Which explains all the little things women of a certain class but not of a certain wealth did to make a dress look different when she wore it again … and again. And so, unless your husband had Darcy-level wealth and could wear as many different dresses as her manor house could store trunks, one made do, as you say. But if you were a wealthy Duke’s wife, maybe you did wear 10 outfits a day.
Thanks to the UA-cam algorithm I now have a new historical fashion channel to watch apparently. I am THRILLED 😃
Also, *Murdered By Petticoats* ought to be the name of a punk band of some form.
It's tied with " the Petticoated Swashbucklers" 😂
Oh gosh, as a trawler of Godey's and Peterson's as well as Der Bazar, Harper's Bazar, and La Moda Elegante I know the first two used tons of images "borrowed" from these larger and more expensive magazines, so things could have been either literally been lost in translation, or just have had the wrong type put on bellow the illustration XD.
Oh that's so interesteing!
I am a student of history, and social history (including technology and clothing etc. -- everything that isn't "kings, dates and battles") is a subject of endless fascination for me. HOWEVER, I have not done rigorous academic research into the clothing of this era. Nonetheless, given what I know, I would make a few points.
English as your sole language, when discussing Victorian-era clothing in Anglophone countries is probably fine.
Victorian-era (and later era) clothing could be much more strict in countries like America, due to the lack of an aristocracy to help constrain ("gate-keep") what rung on the ladder you stood on.
Customs were region-specific, particularly in the US. What was normative in Boston might not be in NYC, etc.
Magazines varied enormously in their actual helpfulness to their readership.
In general, among the Old Money classes, it was considered better to dress down rather than risk showing up overdressed. That likely wouldn't apply to a character who is being employed at a particular event, particularly depending on how eye-catching she intended to be -- and entertainers were often allowed a degree of leeway.
Some events could follow others. For example, after a dinner party, many / most of the (younger) guests could be expected to move on to another event. I am vague on this point, but I would guess that layers would probably be added during the transition from one event space to the next (people tended to avoid even removing hats in mixed company, so, probably whatever was the cloakroom etc. Also, many of the people hosting these events specifically did so to encourage youthful romance, so they made some effort to ensure that the ladies in particular had room to alter their "costume" comfortably.)
Actual balls, as opposed to events where dancing takes place, were pretty specific things.
A good general rule of thumb about whether or not something is a "ball gown" is this: if the gown, being worn by a young lady seated in church, and viewed from the back, looks as though she might be bathing, it's a ballgown.
Could a clever young lady have some sort of layer that employed sleeves, to turn a ballgown into a gown suitable for sitting at a dinner table (it has sleeves of some sort, however short)? I'm sure it happened.
Since you study social history, perhaps you might be just the person for my question. Recently I've become interested in understanding the ordinary everyday life of my family, First-Generation German immigrants to America, late Victorian, early Edwardian era. I find there is tons of information about Victorian/Edwardian England and America, lots of information about Germany, but very little about German-American communities at this time. How much influence would these rules and customs have had on German-Americans?
A lot of those rules are twentieth century ones. Young ladies did not go to after parties or nightclubs in the 19th century.
Judith Christ (Miss Manners) has an excellent definition of a ball gown, which some of us still wear today for actual balls. It does not require a tart to be scandalizing a church, which wouldn’t have let her in in such undress. Whatever wag made that remark originally was a blowhard and a stridently sexist jerk.
The US does have an aristocracy, a silent one that people know about. It’s planter society, always has been.
@@elizabethclaiborne6461 I see. I understand that Christianity and propriety were very important for all people in the 19th century. My question is more about how much the specifically Victorian customs would have impacted German-American societies. During the 1800's, Prussians were very proud of their German-ness and considered many Victorian customs extravagant, foolish, and wasteful. Germans were known for their austerity, and indeed, prior to WW1, German-American communities fought assimilation very strongly. German-Americans lived in German towns, went to German schools and German churches, read German books and newspapers, and many spoke very little English. Nonetheless, they often still spoke of new German immigrants seeming foreign, and vice-versa, the new immigrants often remarked about how "English" their family seemed.
As an example of the differences, a German priest once publicly said that he had never met a German bride who had not already borne at least one child by her wedding night. Babies born out of wedlock were the norm, rather than the scandal they were in Victorian England and America.
@@ekaski1 Thank you for your question! I can give you some pointers, but unlike most subjects (maths, science), once you understand certain principles, you move on to others, history is often studied in chunks, and even where knowing earlier events can help give better context for later ones, the focus is still usually on one area or the other (unless it's specifically about the link between the two). That's by way of saying that there's always more history for even well-read historians to learn.
That said, there's still some underlying principles for research I think can help point you towards the answers you seek. Think very specifically and locally. What part of Germany were your ancestors from? Were they Catholic or Protestant? (Or, possibly, another faith entirely?) I know very little about German social history of this time, and even less about how it might have impacted immigrant communities. So I would start there.
Germany, for most of its history, hasn't be one, single country. It's possible, for example, that the history of German immigrants resisting assimilation could have been largely Prussian immigrants, who distinguished themselves from their less austere neighbors, or Bavarian immigrants, who, having felt pressure to assimilate under Prussian authority in Germany, were eager to have enclaves of their own in their new home.
Some genealogical research can be done free, and other services are often have free-trial starts. Getting an idea of who your ancestors were, where they were from, where they wound up, will give you important clues as to what customs they were exposed to, even possibly clues as to financial status etc. If any of them served in the military, they will likely show up in records from WWI.
Also, have a think back on family stories for clues. Any superstitions that got passed down, particular turns of phrase that were used, favorite saints (etc.), names that repeat in the family. Jot it all down, all the surnames you can think of, anything that might help you find a rough family tree. I know that's not what you're looking for, but it's the framework that will help you place them in history and find out a little bit about who they were.
@@elizabethclaiborne6461 "Whatever wag made that remark originally was a blowhard and a stridently sexist jerk." That was my remark, and I apologize for the offense I clearly caused.
I was attempting to paraphrase Miss Manners, from memory. If I recall correctly (and I usually do), she was commenting on the inappropriateness of certain bridesmaids gowns, which when viewed from the back, etc.
Ballgowns in this particular era were intended to be viewed either from the front, seated in a chair, generally not a table, or to be see in motion, dancing. They were elaborate and meant to showcase the beauty of the wearer. I do not believe Miss Manners was attempting to tart-shame anyone. I believe the sentiment was more that a ballgown being viewed almost entirely from the back, seated, or seated at a table, is an unhappy ballgown.
Her imagery does, nonetheless, provide an excellent guideline to the typical back and neckline of such ballgowns.
Also, and please forgive the contradiction, but Miss Manners' name is Judith Martin.
"The US does have an aristocracy, a silent one that people know about. It’s planter society, always has been." I would say this is more country gentry, but I take your point. For the purpose of the information that I was sharing: that lack of a fixed, legal, peerage system in the US, I stand by my original comments. I will expand/clarify them to say, the that lack of an actual, rigid, enforced-by-law, peerage does mean that gatekeeping was significantly more important both in terms of social customs that were introduced (and, more importantly, in laws that would ultimately be passed, overturned, debated, etc.) On that note I will end by saying that, if it's ever in your power to expand the franchise, I would implore anyone reading this comment to do so. It is past all my understanding that voter suppression is still a thing.
The weirdest Victorian etiquette thing that I can think of right now, I have the flu and my brain is not working properly, is that women always had to wear their hair up. Is this true? Also, what was the equivalent to t-shirt and jeans for Victorian era? I am very much looking forward to this series of videos.
Yup, hair stayed up if you were considered an "adult" rather than a child. In the days before modern haircare it was easier to keep it clean if it was up or braided, so there was actually some practical value there-- but the "moral" meanings applied to loose or messy hair were indeed quite ridiculous by modern standards.
Was always fascinated by the way in which lengthening ones skirts & putting one's hair up were considered such huge markers of reaching adulthood! I guess the guys' equivalent was the shift from shorts to long pants, although I don't think that was a thing pre-Victorian era? (Before that there was "breeching" a baby when he moved from little frocks to pants, but not sure about any further changes later?)
Wonder what the equivalent markers (if any) might be in our era, where earpiercing happens on toddlers in many cultures and preteens now often seem to wear miniskirts...?
The styling of all hair up for married women is also historically a thing in East Asia as far as I'm aware which has always interested me xD not related to hair but something I've seen that hasn't changed much since the Victorians seems to be young girls'/young women's fascination with higher heeled shoes--I've seen it in two different manga by two different authors and I've always thought that was a fun detail to include. I believe the idea there being that flat-bottomed "Mary Jane" shoes were worn by children in general, but only a grown up lady would wear the more elaborately styled heeled shoes and boots. Sorry I've had a bit of a tangent but your post somehow brought it to mind; I haven't read either of those series in a while but visually they're stunning and now I need to reread lol.
In case anyone reads this and is wondering, am referring to "Kuroshitsuji" (Black Butler) by Toboso Yana and "Shirley" by Kaoru Mori (whose other work "Emma" is also worth a look!).
@@hinachansansensei that's really interesting. I have been interested in Black Butler for a long time but haven't given manga or anime much time for a decade, I've been a mom now for that long, but I would love to jump back in so thank you for the recommendation
Engineering Knits has a few different videos where she puts together a Victorian loungewear outfit.
Weird but sorta something I wish we still had: mourning attire and timeframes. I’m a recent widow, and the timeframes around when you can “graduate” to something other than black are fascinating. At the same time, the concept that people were permitted time to grieve (longer for women than for men, but still) and that there were socially recognisable “grieving” tells are things I wish we still had. I think they’d make some of the awkward conversations less so and (hopefully) minimise “You’ll get over it” type advice.
This question is about a previous video, but I thought you would be more likely to see it here. I respect that your video about sewing the lacy undergarments in bed was a tribute to a person doing what she can do regardless of her limitations. I don’t want to minimize that message, but I am curious about the practical aspect of sewing in bed. Whenever I hand sew at anywhere but a table, I am constantly losing things, snips, thread, pincushion, everything, especially if I have a blanket on my lap. How do you keep track of your tools?
No worries! I keep all my tools in my hussif (old word for a sewing kit) when they're not in my hand, and usually set the hussif on my bedside table or the little folding table I just got for when I'm sitting in bed.
@@SnappyDragon Thank you. I keep my hand sewing supplies in a zippered bag. Everything inside is pretty jumbled, and as a result, I am not very motivated to put my snips or current spool of thread back in it during a sewing session,. A hussif would help.
When I was sewing elbow propped(sewed an entire coat propped on one elbow in bed!)I kept things in the teapot-and-cup tray on my bedside table. I can also remember having to search for my scissors under the pillow a lot.
I made mine out of scraps, so it's a good project to use up extra pieces too! Highly recommend.
@@pheart2381 🤦🏻♀️ Honestly I think scissors all have a mind of their own - no matter how organized you are, they will always disappear beneath something!! Sewing in bed does entail the extra hazard of pins escaping into the sheets, sigh 😂 But it's true, the repetitive action of sewing, mending or altering a little is an awesome way to calm the mind down enough to try and get to sleep!
That "broad category" makes a Lot of Sense to me considering that where i live "Business dress" can mean anything from a suit with skirt to trousers (Not Jeans) and a good blouse/Shirt. At the same time, you can absolutely wear Leggings to the Club, If you do it right, to the Gym or for Coffee with your friend. I have a Dress that i use for Business stuff, Job Interviews and work Events Like Christmas Parties. Or Dinner with the in laws.
... Yes, i have one Go to Uniform that makes me feel save, in Case it wasnt obvious 😂
I always thought that they had a couple base dresses (morning, afternoon and evening types) and - unless one was rich - the variety came from accessories. Different over- bodice, different sleeves, different neckline attachments, different over- skirts, mixing and matching all the above in many different ways...
Maybe because that's a LOT of what we do today? With a side of i was in the SCA in the 90s as a teen, and going to big events (like Pensic) i didn't have enough period clothes, so i mixed and matched...
I enjoyed the Firefly/Mean Girls Mash Up in the opening bit. Love your videos! 😍
A lot of what you're saying here resonates with me from my years studying anthropology. We were taught repeatedly to stop evaluating other cultures with our own cultural lens, not just because of the obvious bias there in assuming our own culture was "correct", but also because if you're only looking through that lens, you miss things, you misinterpret things, and you forget that whatever the culture, people are indeed still people. I really appreciate your videos because not only do you work to deconstruct the problematic language and assumptions of both our culture and the culture you're examining, but you have such an excellent understanding of how to (and why it's important to) look beyond your own lens. That, and as a content creator myself who frequently issues ultimatums that if someone listening is okay with bigotry they are not welcome in my audience, and who gets told that I should not say that, I deeply, DEEPLY appreciate that you did likewise in here. I passionately believe that we don't make positive change by coddling those who won't even consider said changes, and it's really hard when we're scolded for that, so I'm here to tell you that you're amazing and awesome and a bright, shining star of historical delights. Your words and efforts are appreciated, and you should be told that regularly. (PS I'm not even here for making dresses, I'm medically prohibited from corseting and far too fat to fit into these shapes anyway...although I am learning a lot of sewing terms on the side which is useful...but I'm here for your wonderful historical analyses and applauding you as you go!)
I clearly remember the first time I was aware of dress etiquette - it was reading Jane Eyre when I was 12 years old. She seemed so concerned [yet trying not to be too upset about it] comparing her own plain dresses to Blanche Ingram's it made me relate to her really hard LOL The book is set in the 1810s, which matches the start of the more rigid/varied etiquette mentioned in the video [even though all movies set it in the 1840s] but the way the dress etiquette works makes me think maybe Bronte's victorian sensibilities influenced Jane's way of thinking in the novel. She has only 3 dresses, a black wool dress for everyday wear, a black silk dress that's a bit more formal and her 'best dress' made of light grey silk she basically never wears because she thinks it's too fine for most occasions.
I've been watching a lot of these historical videos, especially by you, and it makes me want to start a channel for lgbtq+ fashion analysis.
The weirdest Victoria etiquette rule I've ever heard (and I have no idea if it's even true) was that table and chair legs were sometimes covered to keep impure thoughts at bay. If true, that's taking uptight to a whole new level.
It’s not. If they covered up the furniture legs, it was typically to conceal that they were made of a cheap wood like pine rather than an expensive one like mahogany.
That’s not actually true though. Table, chair, piano and bed legs were covered for two reasons: 1) homes were heated with coal or wood and lit with oil lamps. Smoke residue was a constant problem. It’s easier to wash a cloth skirt than to polish your furniture all the time. 2) that whole upwards mobility thing. People tend not to buy furniture anywhere near as often as they buy clothes, indeed most families buy furniture exactly once. So you have a table from your days as a factory foreman, but now you’re the factory owner and you need to host fancy parties in your home. Your table’s plain and practical legs just aren’t going to cut it anymore. You don’t buy a new table, you give your table a skirt.
Hi! What would my great-great-great grandmother have worn during the Victorian era? She was married to a Scottish immigrant who was a farmer in rural East Tennessee. They had no slaves; in fact, he fought during the Civil War for the Union (as did many East Tennesseeans). BTW, I, too, am a redheaded Jewess! 😊
I don't know much about that specific location, but I'm guessing most of her wardrobe would look like very simplified versions of the extant morning/working dresses in the video. Probably a lot of cheaper printed cottons (I'm told these were popular because they hid stains and washed well), and sturdy warm wool for winter.
I wish I could claim to be a truly *redheaded* Jewess, but I'm actually a very convincing fake 😜
Unless they were especially wealthy, she would likely have worn sturdy, machine-woven fabrics available locally, and probably wouldn't have had much more than a few outfits, with one outfit reserved for religious services, holidays, important social events, and the rest kept in good repair through spot cleaning, sweat-pads, etc.
@@SnappyDragon Thank you!
@@saoirsevicteoiria2759 Thank you!
@@JPMJPM You're welcome!
An interesting and relatively modern twist on this. I am in my late fifties and was talking with a person in their late twenties at work. I said the phrase "school clothes". She had no idea what I was talking about. As in school clothes, play clothes, church clothes. After dinner was on the table I remember hearing my mother ask one of us, my sibs or I, "why are you still wearing your school clothes?". And the moment when you get home and change out of your church clothes or school clothes was much looked forward to. It never occurred to me an idea as common as that could disappear in thirty years. So the idea of specific outfits for specific tasks isn't as high brow, haute couture or antiquidated as some may think.
V, I love this channel because I really enjoy how you explain your subjects AND because I enjoy the subjects you explain! NOT just the historical fashion but also the religious based subjects (I was completely taken with your episode about how witches were depicted - with pointy hats and black clothing). The way you approach your explanations draws me right in and your enthusiasm is contagious! Thank you for so much entertainment!
This sounds like a fun project!! I can’t wait to see you work on it! And the way you’ve described the categories of Victorian Dress just make SO MUCH SENSE!
Awww, thank you! I'm excited to make it.
Also, even when they did change up their look depending on the occasion it didn’t necessarily involve changing their whole outfit. You might wear a lace shawl to a particularly fancy soirée, but opt for a woven one for a more relaxed occasion, for example.
Pweeeaaase make another video about ridiculous Victorian etiquette! I don’t know how much “adult” stuff you are allowed to put into your videos, but I would love to learn more about sexual etiquette. Another commenter said that a ball gown, if looked from behind, would make the lady seem as if she’s naked.
I read Daniel Deronda when I was in High School and was (and still am) 100% team Mira mostly because I hated Gwendolyn and I’ve always been a fierce defender of the sweet, innocent female character who gets dismissed as boring.
You explained this so well! I’m so glad your channel was recommended to me!! I can’t make clothes to save my life but I love history, fashion, theatre, etc. I am Jewish and particularly excited to watch your videos on Jewish dress throughout the Middle Ages! Soooo awesome!
Dear Small Dragon: your opening rantlette gives me life...so much so that, the minute I heard you mention your Patreon, I paused the video and joined. Thank you for being, and thank you for being you. Looking forward to being an active $ contributor to your wonderful creations!
Aww, thank you so much!
Anybody else go "oh Kaylee.." when Snappy said "you're wearing a dress that looks like you bought it in a shop!" ? Took me back to my Firefly lover days
My great Grandmother Carla Erba had a bunch of dresses in storage in the house on Lake Como (Villa Erba) and I had no end of fun playing dress up with those dresses.
Hey collector of historical information here, I think weirdest victorian etiquette I have found is the crazy rules there was for women in morning. Like if you are in full morning you are not allowed to where any clothes that show happiness, so no color, not jewelry and no flowers. Your house also had to show that you are in morning with no pretty flowers or decorations, with some house even covering the windows so that no light could come in. A women was not allowed to go to social activities or do anything that could make her happy.
Then there was half morning, where a women could start wearing color again, but only soft colors nothing too bright and she was allowed to go to church socials.
And there was specific requirements depending on your relation to the deseaced, like if you were only a first cousin the time in full morning was only like 3 months but if it was your husband a women was required to mourn for al least two years!
And all of this was written down in pamphlets to serve as a guide.
PS. This was all for the upper class of course, the lower classes mourning was a lot different.
The 20th century survivor of clothing etiquette book was a 1960s book on wedding planning. It included a section on dos and donts regarding wedding attire. The categories were morning formal, morning seni formal, morning casual, afternoon formal, afternoin semi formal, afternoon casual, evening semi formal, evening formal. It covered fabrics, lengths, necklines, style of gloves, suggested head pieces, train or no train and suggested lengths of train. It had suit and shoe suggestions for the groom. Sprcial sub categories for summer, fall, winter and spring weddings with fabric and color suggestions and appropriate flowers for each season. Nowadays its like anything goes at weddings governed by budget and personal preferences.
After living up north, I can understand the long sleeves and higher necklines for dinner wear. Even with proper heating it gets cold at night.
Thanks for reminding everyone that people are people! So many people act like these eras are weird and strict, and I'm like, go actually read a Scott novel or something.
That makes a lot of sense. I may like dresses and skirts, but I don't like dressing too fancy. I have an... alternative fashion sense, to say the least. Even if I was a Victorian lady, I would probably own mostly plain, casual dresses. Ball gowns look too fancy for the kind of lifestyle I personally live. I can imagine that I would be the girl who doesn't have an issue with flashing her ankles or drawers.
I'm going to reword my original comment because your video covered it much better, but: if you trace social and cultural (and religious, if you exclude Christians of Western European descent, no I don't know why) customs back far enough, they almost always have some sort of practical reasoning behind them. Western European Christians were notoriously terrible, unreliable record keepers so the original reasoning would be lost or mangled really quickly and I think that explains a lot of Victorian weirdness beyond the things present day and recent past folks already mangled. Of course, when bigots want to further bigotry, logic is immediately thrown away.
EDIT: I'm wondering if perhaps the number of outfit changes per day correlates with epidemics at all? If your hygiene is middling and your water is filthy, it's very reasonable to want to change for chores, staying in with friends, going out, and designated pajamas. It's also something I'm anecdotally observing now.
I can't think of what my favourite weird Victorian etiquette thing, unfortunately, but I loved your dive into Victorian dress etiquette.
To be fair, I'm sure that some future person might look into late 20th century etiquette guides and go "the FUCK are these people talking about?!" too. My parents used to have a copy of a diplomatic etiquette manual from the 1970s or 1980s, and some of the dress categories (including fairly detailed advice on what each category meant in terms of clothing styles and fabrics) were eye opening. I read odd things in my teens :D
That sounds like *excellent* reading!
@@SnappyDragon oh, it was 😁 It's a shame they must have gotten rid of it during a move, because I haven't seen it in almost 20 years.
Somewhere around here I have an Avon makeup etiquette book from the 1980s, it’s instructional for an Avon sales lady on how to give makeovers, and it’s highly detailed with full color pictures. I remember looking through it as a kid & being so interested. I should dig it up. I have a few home improvement magazines from the 1960s & a some cookbooks from as early as the 1910s (and various ones from then until modern times, some great mid-century ones with all kinds of menu planning & table setting & etiquette rules for hosting & attending) but finding books with rules about dressing is definitely harder. Your book sounds amazing, any idea about the title?
@@BlueRoseFaery I can't remember what it was called, I'm afraid. It was published by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Finnish diplomatic core though, so unless you happen to speak Finnish, it wouldn't be that helpful for that many people worldwide :D
Miss Manners' Guides to etiquette (by Judith Martin) are a similarly entertaining read! There's a huge helping of humour and snark, and they've been somewhat updated, but occasionally the social rules and etiquette concerns from the 1980s still pop up fairly frequently when reading them and cause real moments of "What the heck? They really worried about that?" I'd love to see what the equivalent from our own era is going to be! 😋
Not gonna lie, I would make a million evening dresses and day dresses, wear them once and hide them away because I dont wanna be seen in the same dress twice unless theyre a changeable dress with multiple bodices and a couple of skirts (for cleanliness reasons). Also Gone With The Wind is quite a good movie when it comes to costume design and I have made and are making a couple of Scarlett’s dresses just for fun and I dont want to seem racist at all because I find the dresses from the film beautiful and I just want to have them somehow.
Don't know if they still did it in Victorian times, but in the Regency, you were expected to arrive at evening events in a carriage, even if the event was being held at the next house. If the doors were 20 feet apart, you would get in your carriage, ride 20 feet, and get out of your carriage.
I'm in LOVE with your content. I hope you get the recognition you deserve for your work.
I find your voice surprisingly soothing to this awful headache I have while watching it. Love the, "get the frock outta here entitled enslaver-core sickos!" Comments, that was rad. Have recently struggled with feeling more weird for some of my history bounding attire for fear of being mistaken as one of these people. (Esp. cause I live in AZ, which is the Mississippi of the Southwest.)
I applaud your humanitarianism. Thank you for stating the obvious: "Wearing this dress in certain contexts and settings would be deeply disrespectful. In this instance, wearing "Victorian" attire to attend events on American plantations which were once use to enslave and brutally torture kidnapped people and their descendants is not only disrespectful but a way to continue to spread hate. Your insight is much greater than your years. Thank you.
I can't believe how much I learned from this video! (I shouldn't be surprised since you are always so well researched but still. It was awesome.) Thank you for the clarification on the terms. It makes complete sense that the Victorians had the equivalent of scrubby house clothes, out of the house clothes and going to a formal clothes. I suspected this from contextual clues but your examples helped considerably with the grey areas
Thank you!
I love love your videos especially when you incorporate your social commentary in it
Cool video, thank you! 😊 For both genders accessorizing was definitely a huge part of dressing up or down too, for various parts of the day or styles of event...
I know you're focusing more on creating a woman's dress, but would've really loved to see guys' attire get a wee bit more of a look-in here...? 😉 There were some fun & occasionally slightly bonkers rules in there too! E.g. NO breeches allowed at Almacks' dancing rooms - pantaloons only! (I guess a modern equivalent might be "no jeans allowed in the club"?) Or the conventions about where you had to take off your hat + gloves (plus how to hold them "correctly" when you did!) and when you had to keep them on....
I see even a plain dress that people added accessories (hats, shawls, aprons, overskirts) to so you can dress it up or down depending on the situation.
I am pleased to have discovered your channel!! I love it so much!
I still can never understand what people say when they say Gone with the Wind glorifies something. I read it as a teenager and all I could see was stupidity and appalling human relationships. How do you manage to find anything to glorify there... if we do not speak only of how good the dresses in the movie looked?
I just want to cosplay Jenny Marx, and so like it's like "Date outfit" or "Dinner outfit" "Party dress" which like... party dresses and cocktail dresses and formal dresses have a lot of overlap
"Enslavercore" and "Stay the frock away" made me hit the Like. Bless you for this very direct form of boundary setting, and it's a darned fine boundary to set. Kol hakavod (that's "all the glory," non-Hebrew speakers)!
Thank you so much for inspiring and helping me woth my Scarlett o'hara with a whip slavercore outfit!
I would have never thought of such a thing. But you put such a wonderful idea into my head. Thank you!
I am really looking forward to following this dress journey 😁
I love how straightforward you are about human BS
Really excited to see how this project develops! And also now I have to go put on one of the Daniel Deronda mini series to refresh my memory on the story while I’m sewing!
Did anyone else think of Kaylee from Firefly during the opening sequence?
I certainly did when I wrote it!
This is such a good video. I'd been puzzling over the differences between evening gowns, ball gowns and dinner dresses, thinking it had to do with neckline and sleeve length. That there wasn't a firm systematic distinction was something which hadn't occurred to me.
Thanks V, interesting history lesson! And I’m looking forward to the dress making videos.
I love that you actually get out of the plantation mentality that some use as their reference point. However, Gone With the Wind wasn't a plantation fantasy movie. It was a social commentary on the the societal changes taking place during that time. If you read the deeper context, it isn't actually glorifying slavery or the plantation mindset. It follows the maturing of a community going from the frivolity of youth into facing the harsh realities of life as tragedies (not ust the war, but also illness and personal relationships), death of loved ones, and having to figure out solutions to grown-up problems arise. Anyone who thinks it's just a plantation love story either hasn't read the book, or is not actually understand the subtext.
I've loved Daniel Deronda since high school, when I first started to get into older books, and I haven't gone back to it since. I will absolutely be rereading it now (well, when I return to my beloved home library at Thanksgiving and have access to it and time away from research papers). I have a list of dream book character costumes and Mirah was always one I wanted to put on the list but wasn't sure about due to people who aren't in my life any more telling me I wasn't Jewish enough to have opinions on the book or to even really talk about Judaism.
As for a favorite ridiculous thing about Victorian etiquette, I'm partial to flower language. I understand tact and social graces for the most part, but the need to send secret coded messages through plants seems a bit much. In the most fun way, of course. I use flower language in my writing and it will be all over my new bookshelves.
It sounds like it's as hard and fast as the word "formalwear" would be for us. I'm sure in 200 years, costume fans of the 20th/21st century era would think it means one thing only, or would look askance at someone cosplaying a 20th century woman wearing a smokey eye look in the day. It would have been considered a more formal look, but there are always people who'll wear a ton of makeup and a pair of sweatpants to go to the supermarket. In a few centuries, we'll be just as confusing to our descendants. :-)
And I've heard of people having formal dances and weddings at plantations, and it always struck me as ... um, so you're holding your wedding at a forced labor camp. Right ...
I find it similar to modern clothing rules. Can I receive a friend in my pjs? Is it enough if I put on a bathrobe when I talk to the neighbour? Am I sitting around the house in old clothes/sweats? Am I going out for brunch with a friend in sneakers and whatever jeans I put on? Am I going to work? Will they expect me to wear a shirt or fancy blouse? I'm going to dinner, should I wear a cocktail dress, slacks and a nice shirt, or are tshirt and jeans enough? What dress code does this party have? Would I look extra if I wore heels? Or will stand out badly if I wear low-tops?
While we're more flexible in our approach to fashion nowadays and won't suffer socially as much if we wear just whatever, there are still rules and people DO enforce them.
This was very interesting and I can't wait to see how the dress comes together! Thanks so much!