Working Girl.

Okay, so... I know I've taken a little bit of a hiatus from blogging, a month to be exact, but the "moving back to Memphis, new job, and trying to settle" madness is behind me I promise I will be more diligent. Besides blogging, other things that I need to tend to are studying for the GRE (yuck....) and getting on top of editing my paper that will be submitted with my grad school apps in the fall. I thought bringing the topic of this paper into today's blog post would be a nice way to kick start everything :]

Working girls..

In today's society working women are more than common place. In fact if a woman isn't working it's usually because she married wealthy, is retired, or is under 15. Before the late 1800s, however, a woman's "sphere" was restricted to domestic settings. As the Industrial Revolution took off in America during the late 19th century, work opportunities for women outside of the home also rose. Factories and shops needed cheap labor and there were plenty of single, immigrant women in the urban communities across the east that needed to support themselves.

Most commonly these women are known for the hardships they experienced such as dire working conditions, meager pay, long work hours, and the danger they encountered in the factories, like the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.* Historians like Kathy Peiss and Nan Enstad, however, have presented a different side of the story for these young women.

These young, single women made up a demographic that this country had never encountered before. The garment factories in which they worked were producing ready-to-wear fashions that they could afford to purchase in the department shops popping up in shopping districts across the metropolis's of America. Dance halls in which men and women intermingled were breaking down the Victorian concept of separate spheres for the sexes. In part, these women laid the foundation for the social revolutions of the 1920s and the middle class flapper girls.

The image of young working women in the early 1900s may look very different from my comrades and I running around bringing you your food and drinks in our Blue Monkey shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes, but essentially the ideals of making a living and taking steps toward bettering ourselves are there for the young working woman of 1911 as well as 2011.

*146 women perished in this industrial disaster due to locked doors and no fire exits in the factory.

Images from Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York by Kathy Peiss and Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Nan Enstad.

Downton Abbey

On the recommendation from my wonderful boss at the Chicago History Museum, Meghan Smith, I spent the majority of Sunday watching "Downton Abbey," a series put out by PBS as part of their Masterpiece Classic series. It is currently on Netflix Instant Streaming for anyone who wants to check it out for themselves. I was intrigued first and foremost because Meghan said the costumes were fantastic, and secondly because the time period it is set in, the 1910s, pre-WWI, is possibly my favorite period in history for a collection of reasons. As I began to watch the episodes I was delighted by the plot line, along with the costumes, which were designed by Sussanah Buxton. The story of Downton Abbey consists of an old world Victorian family, the Crawley's, and the world that they and their servants live in. The story is filled with scandal, betrayal, love, family duty, and inheritance against a backdrop that consists of a traditional 19th century family and their servants trying to maintain order and propriety in a social atmosphere that is rapidly changing. Needless to say, I was completely enveloped by the aesthetic and the story, and was disappointed to find out that the second season of the series is not due out until next year.

Dress during the Edwardian Period, the first decade of the 20th century, reflected much of the same aesthetic as dress had during the last half of the 19th century. This aesthetic was a highly-corseted, conservative look with a high neckline, long sleeves, and long skirts. The most prominent silhouette at the beginning of the 20th century was a "S-Shape" silhouette. This look had an exaggerated bust and bosom and tiny waist and was created through the use of tight corseting. The costumes of Lady Violet Crawley are reminiscent of this style of dress even though by 1912, the time the series begins in, this silhouette had been largely replaced by a simpler straight silhouette with an empire waist. The fact that Susannah Buxton chose to keep Lady Violet in a more traditional style of dress shows her attention to detail and to the characters themselves, because Lady Violet is and would be in real life if she had existed a very traditional character who is attempting to withstand the radical social changes occurring in the world around her.

The costumes of Lady Mary, the eldest daughter, and her two younger sisters, Edith and Cybil, are much more reflective of pre-WWI dress after 1910. Many women still wore corsets with this style of dress, although they were straight and less restrictive than the corsets required to achieve the "S-shape" of the previous decade. The empire waistline was very prominent as well as oriental influences, as seen in the picture with the chinoiserie style embroidery on Lady Mary's dress.

Just wanted to show one last look at a gorgeous image from the film of the three Crawley sisters. The fashion of the 1910s were changing in ways that had not occurred in the past because changes were happening throughout society for women that had not occurred in the past. Downton Abbey does a wonderful job of capturing the unseen war between the Victorian-minded traditionalists and the social revolutionists that were fighting for change in Europe and America at the time. Look out for my new Favorite Old Thing of the Week coming up in the next couple of days.

Thanks for tuning in,

Jane