Paisley shawl remade into a dress, coat and bag, 1889 Museum at FIT
The Cashmere Shawl.
A new use for the pine-patterned cashmere shawls that have been handed down from the great-grandmother to the modern woman is now found in covering handbags and the numerous variety of the vanity bag with this fascinating Indian fabric. The subdued richness of the coloring has a fascinating effect, and to bring the scheme of the contrasting hues into harmony with the rest of the dress it is modish to introduce perhaps a belt, covered with the patterned fabric or revers and cuffs of the like material on the coat.
To complete the bag very long handles or knotted silk cord are used, finished with corded fringe, and by way of variety some women are introducing here and there a touch of a glittering cabochon in barbaric colors.
The antique pine-patterned shawls that show signs of wear in one or two places can be thus used for a variety of purposes in the fashioning of accessories for the autumn toilet. The borders may be cut off and applied on the skirt of a cloth gown, or a short waistcoat may be introduced between the shawl like revers of an autumn coat of velvet.
Use for Paisley.
So popular was the old-time Paisley shawl last winter, in its various adaptations, that it seems quite impossible to conceive of any new ways of using the garment of our grandmother’s day. However, those who know predict the vogue of the Paisley muff as well as of the Paisley bag this winter.
Norwich [CT] Bulletin 13 October 1910: p. 4
House of Lanvin (French, founded 1889)
Evening bag, 192535
French,
silk, metal Silk, metallic; 14 in. (35.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of the executors of the estate of Clara M. Blum in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Blum, 1966 (2009.300.2543)
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/157382
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The exotic patterns of the cashmere shawl have had many lives. Although Mrs Daffodil flinches at the very idea, one finds the massive shawls of the 1860s cut into mantles, visites, and even gowns, in the 1870s and 1880s.
Paisley shawl remade into a mantle, early 1870s, The John Bright Collection
1910 was a particularly good year for the paisley-revival.
Old Paisley Shawls Are Valuable.
The Paisley shawl is coming back into its own. In the old days the Paisley was one of the necessary units of every stylish outlay. After two generations the shawl’s vogue is returning. At present there is a decided fad for both cashmere and Paisley. It must be admitted, however, that it is the fabric and not the shawl itself which attracts. Paisley is now being substituted for leather in women’s handbags, card cases, belts and other novelties. The belts are especially popular. They are edged with patent leather and demand a good price at the stores which make a specialty of women’s wear. Even folding slippers are being made of Paisley. They are well adapted to travelers and very comfortable, although, as in the case of the belts, they are an expensive luxury.
Frank Leslie’s Weekly, 20 October 1910
Although Mrs Daffodil has not found an image of the historic shawl in this next article, she is grateful that Mr Thanhouser recognized its value before his mother chopped it into handbags or belts or it was sold to the rag collector.
TREASURE IN AN OLD TRUNK.
A Rare Paisley Shawl Worn at Victoria’s Coronation Found by Accident.
From the Milwaukee Sentinel.
A shawl valued at over $1,000 and worn by the great grandmother of Edwin Thanhouser, manager of the Academy theater at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, was found the other morning by Mrs. Julia Thanhouser, the manager’s mother, in one of her old trunks which she had not rummaged in years. Mr. Thanhouser happened to be in the house when the garment was brought to light and knew at once that the piece of goods was of more than ordinary value.
This prize among shawls was made in Paisley, Scotland, and bought by Mrs. Bertha Emmonds, great grandmother of Mr. Thanhouser, in London, while attending the coronation of Queen Victoria, for which purpose she came from her home in Germany. At her death the shawl passed into the possession of Mr. Thanhouser’s grandmother, and fifteen years ago while his mother, the present owner, was living in Fort Wayne, Ind., it was given to her. Mr. Thanhouser had often heard his mother speak of the shawl, but it was not until he saw it that he realized what a valuable piece of goods it was.
Threads almost as fine as it is possible to spin them are the material of which the shawl is made, and there are so many colors and shades of colors that it is almost impossible to count them. The design is exceedingly intricate and was undoubtedly the result of considerable hard study. The shawl measures about 10 by 5 feet.
The Kansas City [MO[ Star 14 June 1902: p. 5
There was also a brief vogue for the fabric in the 1920s, and again, in the psychedelic ’60s. In 1964, a Norwich shawl gave its life for this lounge suit with a fashionable Nehru jacket.
Paisley “Nehru jacket” 1964 The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
1920s platinum blonde cloche or wig. antiquedress.com
POWDER, PATCH, PERUKE
SHALL WE CHANGE OUR HAIR AS WE SHIFT OUR GOWNS?
Is the Wig to Be an Important Accessory of the Fashionable Wardrobe as in the Directory Days?
Hair-Dressing for 1889.
They say that Mme. Tallien had five-and-thirty wigs, each of which had cost thirty gold louis. There was a certain noble young Parisian named Mlle. Lepelletier de St. Fargeau, who was married not long after Robespierre lost his head. In her trousseau were included twelve fine blonde wigs, with twelve tulle, feather, flower, gauze and ribbon caps, worth, some of them, three hundred francs each, to adorn the coiffures.
We model our gowns after the fashion of the Directory. Are we to look to “ye olden times” also with regard to hair?
The query is suggested by a mass of superb pale gold tresses shown yesterday by one of the bright, business-like young women who form a majority of the city hairdressers. The silky lengths were very soft and fine and heavy, falling of their own will into wavy curls. The color was the rarest ever seen, a lovely white floss just tinged by sunbeams, such as one catches sometimes for a year and a month on the poll of a baby girl.
“What pretty actress is putting the $150 that it must cost into a single suit of hair?”
“Not for the stage; for the ball. This is a wig for Miss__,” naming a fleet-footed dancer of the society whirl.
“But Miss___ is a brunette. Besides, she has a magnificent head of hair of her own.”
“She is going to the ball in a Greek gown of pale green, and light hair is more becoming with that, you know. See, here is a bit of the stuff she left with me. She wanted the wig made up of the exact color which would look best with it and with its garniture,” and the little woman produced a scrap of Liberty silk worked with the Greek fret pattern in Japanese gold thread across one end.
“It’s to be made, she says, with classic draperies. This gold embroidery–it’s not a heavy tint and is not put on in masses–makes a border about the bottom of the skirt and about the waist, and there is just an edge of it around the neck opening. There is a scarf of pale green tissue caught up on the right shoulder and there is to be a band of green about the hair.”
“You dress the wig, then, before it goes home?”
“Why, certainly. The dressing, like the color, is to correspond with the gown. You let a wavy lock or two, not a bang, escape on the forehead. Then you gather the rest loosely and gracefully back into a soft, curly knot Then you thread the front hair, fillet-wise, with green ribbons. I think I shall add in this instance, if the lady will permit it, a ribbon wound about the knot, crossed below it, and having the two ends brought out on either side to join the fillet, and fastened by tiny jeweled crescents. Miss___ has a clear, delicate complexion, and in all that pale green with this straw-gold hair she will shine like a star.”
“Isn’t it a new thing for a girl to come out in hair not her own?”‘
“Well, I could tell you of three of four women who have ordered wigs to correspond with their evening gowns, but I suppose should lose good customers if I let the names escape. Perhaps, though, Helen Dauvray wouldn’t mind my saying that the first wig I ever made for her was selected after she left the stage–there used to be a fuss, you know, because she wore her own hair on the boards and wouldn’t adapt her coiffures to her parts–for wear in London drawing rooms while Ward is in Australia. A beautiful suit, too, it was. And, honest now, isn’t it more sensible than bleaching? How many women do you suppose have ruined their hair completely by drenching it with golden washes? It costs more to buy a blonde wig than it does to bleach your own hair, but there is this advantage that you can change back again any day you please. And in the busy weeks of the social season it is so convenient A woman can send her wig to a hair-dresser and get it fixed for the opera or a ball without any trouble to herself, when, to have her own hair done as elaborately and becomingly would cost much time, cutting her out entirely from Mrs. A’s delightful tea or the charming drive which she has promised to take with Mrs. C. It adds from an hour to two hours to her day,” and the small hairdresser smiled convincingly.
And will it come to that? Are we going back to the days when a woman changed her hair almost as often as she did her gown, when the wardrobe of a blonde beauty was not complete without a couple of raven wigs, and when the brunette’s dressing room was not properly furnished unless it contained sunny tresses in as great abundance as black hair? It would be a dress novelty indeed when a toilet was to be ordered to shop first for the coiffure. The hair-dresser–a mighty man he used to be and a mighty woman she may be yet–should bring out golden switches curly and fine, auburn switches ruddy and soft. One should try on hair as one tries on bonnets, to suit the complexion and the style. Fitted with the suit which was judged most becoming, one should beg for a lock as one carries off samples of silk or gauze. Then would come the task of matching and comparing.
“What have you in evening silks to go with this shade of hair?”
And to the dressmaker.
“Would you advise a pale blue embroidered crepe or a rainbow tulle as likely to go better with a curly crop of this light yellow?”
“I thought you were wearing bronze waves this season.”
“So I was, but I saw this being made in Mlle. K’s this morning and it was so fluffy that I couldn’t resist getting it for the ___’s dance next week. I do adore fuzzy yellow curls.”
“Well, I should recommend black lace. The tint is so delicate that any other color would kill it, I’m afraid.”
“Suppose I call it black gauze; then I can have covered with those lovely cobwebs in silver threads, with enameled spiders and dragon flies in colored mother-of-pearl and wear blue and yellow butterflies in my hair!”
And so on and on ad infinitum would it go. The revival of powder certainly points in the direction of wigs. Not perhaps as powder is now used, with just a dust of silvery crystals scattered over the head or the faintest shadow of frosting about the temples and forehead, but patches–wee ones–are venturing out with the powder, and the unusual popularity of fancy balls will give both a chance to show themselves and to accustom the conservative to their presence, while the Pompadour gown will suggest them inevitably to the eccentric for almost any even big occasion. Powdering the hair was the most uncleanly of habits, and powder with wigs would be less of an outrage than powder without them. Whoever has worn a poudre dress at a fancy ball knows what an incredible amount of powder it takes to whiten thoroughly the hair. Again and again one dusts it on, and again and again it sifts down on the scalp and leaves a streaked and mottled coiffure. By the time one’s patience is exhausted and one’s powder, one has laid out gigantic task for one’s self, one’s maid or the shampoo man to restore things to their normal condition. Powder for the evening means wigs for the evening if one values one’s peace of mind next day.
Actress in powdered hair or wig.
Aside from powder, fashions in hair show great variety this winter. In general hair is going higher in front and lower behind. A small coil low in the neck with just a lock or two relieving the bareness of the forehead is a simple style for all informal occasions, which to many women is the most becoming coiffure possible. With the artistic and historical costumes which are now correct form for full dress occasions the hair is, or ought to be dressed, with modifications, to correspond. For the Marie Antoinette gown the directions given by a fashion writer of 1773 are, save in one particular, literally followed by fashionable dames of the year of grace 1889. “Every lady,” says this beau of a century gone, “who wishes to dress her hair with taste and elegance should purchase an elastic cushion exactly fitted to the head; then, having combed her hair and properly thickened it with powder and pomatum, let her turn it over her model in the recognized fashion.” The headdresses of towering weight in which the unlucky Queen delighted, and of which it is said that they placed the face of the wearer in the middle of her figure, are an absurdity which cannot return. There is no fear of a pouf like that of Louis Philippe’s mother, in which “every one might admire the Due de Beaujolais, her eldest son, in the arms of his nurse, a parrot pecking at a cherry, a little [servant] and a multitude of other designs,” making a coiffure so high that its owner must kneel on the floor of her carriage in order to accommodate it, but my lady in her Louis XVI. Watteau gown or flowered brocade at a Delmonico ball preserves a certain semblance of consistency by rolling her hair high over her forehead on a cushion, letting only a curl or two drop to her temples and planting a puff comb of gold and diamonds, a diamond crescent, an aigrette of feathers, a flower or a pompon to confine and ornament it.
Marie Antoinette fancy dress, Charles Whitaker Auctions
The modern Mme. Pompadour wears a flounced lace skirt with overdress of rich yellow brocade, paniers on hips, square cut neck, elbow sleeves lace – trimmed, ribbon tied in a bow about her throat, and hair drawn loosely back from her face and gathered in a bunch of light curls on top of her head with a tiny wreath or a fluff of marabout feathers set coquettishly to one side. With her promenades one of Napoleon’s dead beauties in a severe, statuesque Empire gown of dead white silk, her black hair brushed straight and braided glossy and tight in a smooth and shining coil on the back of her head. And so they pass, each one different from the other, for if we are attaining individuality in dress in any particular it is in hair dressing.
ELLEN OSBORN. Copyright, 1888.
The Times [Philadelphia PA] 19 January 1889: p. 3
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Rococo Revival flourished periodically throughout the nineteenth century. Second Empire and Belle Epoque beauties were fascinated by the ribbons and lace and dainty flower garlands of what was interpreted as “Marie Antoinette” style; Worth did a thriving business in rococo fancy-dress for the Empress Eugenie and her court; the designer Lucile decorated her salon in rococo gilt and satin and encouraged panniers and Louis-heeled shoes, and powdered/white hair allowed any lady to feel like the Queen of France, frolicking about the le Hameau de la Reine.
But why stop at wigs of natural hue, even to match one’s gown? In 1914 France, wigs in a rainbow of colours were touted as the essential fashion accessory:
Coloured wigs are the latest fad of fashion. These wigs are made in all colours to match the dresses, blue, pink, purple, white, etc., and displayed as they have been in the windows of one of the Paris retail shops, they do not seem so very extreme. A lady nowadays purchases shoes to match her dress, so why not a wig to harmonise the top portion of the colour scheme? A superb fashion parade has just come off in oneof the big hotels here (writes a Nice correspondent). The loveliest “mannequin” from Paris, dressed up in “the very latest” strolled in and out between the tea tables. An old lady who sat near us said rapturously, “My dear, what a sartorial feast,” and indeed it was that. Several of the pretty mannequins wore blue or green wigs, and as they matched their gowns the effect was rather splendid. One girl, for example, wore a bright green transformation with a ball gown composed of ivory and sea green chiffon. There was a pleated tunic, and under that long fringes in diamonds and crystal. The low bodice, of which there was very little, was a mass of diamond and crystal embroideries, and there was a green mirror velvet sash. Another mannequin pranced about in an extraordinary dinner gown made of tango-orange chiffon and striped taffetas, the stripes being in shades of rose, green, black, and yellow. The skirt was finely pleated—please take notice that pleats are the rage of the season—and there was a bunchy tunic which gave a pannier effect at the sides. There was a high Medici collar piped with dull rose velvet, and the transformation was bright orange.
Observer 4 July 1914: p. 21
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Spring, John La Farge 1901-2 Philadelphia Museum of Art
PORTRAITS
Painted on Window Glass
The Latest Fad in Those Who Have Fine Houses.
It Is a Luxury That Costs Those Who Indulge
In This Mode of Decorating Their Homes.
Local Art Concerns Are Receiving Many Orders For This Newest of Fashionable Whims.
Another costly vanity is being taken on by the world of big money spenders, including some Cincinnatians. It might be called a crusade against the possibility of having one’s picture turned toward the wall. At any rate, it’s a beautiful wrinkle, well calculated to wring “Papa, buy me one” from many a pair of scientifically reddened lips in Clifton, Avondale and other fat pocket-book precincts of the town. All you have to do to have one of them is to have a swell residence with a staircase window and bank account enough to draw for a few hundred. The manufacturer of “art glass portraits” will do the rest, and charge you from $100 to $10,000 for the job.
Your picture in a stained glass window–without a stain! Sunlight pouring through from the rear, making you look as many more times more beautiful than an oil painting or a seventy-nine-cent colored crayon portrait as you can imagine.
This costly “triumph” of portraiture work making the one portrayed seem to be “just speaking” may prevent many a daughter and wife getting the “old man” to loosen the twine on his purse for the price–but that’s no argument against the “triumph.” And you’d never guess how the price is regulated! The answer is startling.
To the maid or the matron in love with their décolleté loveliness and wanting it pictured in glass this latest vanity will prove much more expensive than to her of the
HIGH-NECKED DRESS.
Told in fewer words–in the plain, blushless words of the art glass window artist–the price of having your picture in fashion aforesaid is regulated by the amount of naked flesh to be pictured.
“Naked flesh is the most difficult thing that we reproduce in these pictures,” explained one of this new-thing artists. “The chemicals used in the coloring play desperate tricks on us when it comes to burning the colors into the glass. The varying flesh tints necessary in making a portrait of a lady’s face, breast, shoulders, arms and hands offer a multitude of opportunities for faulty development of the picture by means of the fires that burn it into the glass. This fact is why, in cathedral window work, we would any time rather produce a picture of the entire 12 Apostles than of Christ on the cross, the latter figure calling for picturing an almost nude human body. It is the necessary and very delicate process of burning the portrait into the glass–in order to make it permanent and capable of resisting atmospheric changes–that makes this class of work expensive, and very trying to the artist or operator. After the utmost skill and greatest care possible has been bestowed on the preparation of the portrait, and of the kilns in which the burning is done the result may be like this,” and the artist drew forth a two-foot square sheet of glass bearing the portrait of the beautiful wife of a banker living in the northern part of this state. The heat had broken the glass through the lower part of the picture, and warped a corner. “Three hundred dollars gone in a second!” commented the artist. “And the heat was identically the same, to a fraction of a degree, as that we always do
THIS BURNING WITH.
The glass was previously examined under a powerful microscope and found perfect, and precisely the same as others that we had used with entire success. Why this piece broke, why others break; why some tint develop wholly wrong; in the kilns–these are mysteries about the business which the greatest experts are incapable of solving. Owing to these many risks the charges for the work have to be heavy, as they are. In no case can one ever tell whether a contract will lose or make us money. And, owing to this same mysterious trickery, we can never tell a customer when a picture will be done. We never know how many times it will discolor or break in the kilns. Usually it requires three or four burnings of an hour apiece to complete the work.
“My having spoken of the difficulty of picturing flesh tints,” continued the artist, “reminds me to say that I am told the finest piece of work of this kind is in a window portrait in the boudoir of a certain very wealthy Avondale couple, neither of whom has any gray hairs yet–nor children, either. The portrait shows the wife posing in some classic character. All the clothes or drapery to be seen consists of a strip of billowy gauze, with which young Mme. Avondale seems to be trying to ‘jump the rope.’ The picture was posed for and made in New York City. I am told it cost $6,000, and that the artist had three copies of it ruined in the kilns before being successful. This, all owing to the desperate difficulty presented by having an entirely nude human body to portray. I happen to know that another swell young wife is now in New York posing for a somewhat similarly startling window portrait of herself. Almost, if not fully as fine work in this line is done right here in Cincinnati, but the society queens wanting these nude or semi-nude pictures can’t bring themselves to pose for the home artists. Hearing of a $5,000 job of this kind that was contemplated I figured around and got a lady to call on the one desirous of having the work done and suggest that a model–to be selected by the couple themselves–could be substituted for me to work from, for the body portion of the picture. But it developed that apparently that portion figured most prominently in the wishes of the people—the gentleman and his wife—as to
“Consequently the job went to New York. Mrs. Belmont, of New York, who is grandmother of a Duke, leads in having the most beautiful window portrait in this country. Only the beautiful but extravagant Queen of Italy has anything to show like the huge window of art glass that fits into space at the head of the stairs in Mrs. Belmont’s New York house. This window, 14 feet high by 8 feet broad, looks toward the west, and every one who enters the hall of the house cannot fail to look up at this window, through the many colors of which all the light for the hall comes. In a framework of marvelous glass roses the mistress of the mansion stands arrayed in the most gorgeous yellow brocaded satin, wearing her famous turquoise tiara, necklace and brooches. The window was designed and the glass work done by American artists, and the crystal pieces of glowing color and many degrees of thickness are put together in a framework of silver instead of lead. It required nearly two years to complete the work, and no one save the present owner and the maker of the window knows the price that was paid for it. At some points in the decoration genuine jewels are set in with the glass, and at night a heavy iron door closes at the back of the window, which, by cunningly arranged electric lights, is softly illuminated.”
Child’s art glass portrait in the Aesthetic style. Former eBay listing.
There are three or four places in Cincinnati where this art glass portrait work is done, and several others where orders are taken for it. If the idea is attracting considerable attention as a vanity it is being patronised from a more serious and more befitting point of view as well. Mr. Richard H. Mitchell, of Mitchell avenue, Avondale, has in his residence a beautiful art window portrait of his father, Mr. Albert Mitchell, deceased. The portrait is against a background of shamrocks. Superintendent Willis Tharp, of the Waterworks, has one in his residence of his little daughter. Colonel A. L. Anderson, of Newport. Ky., thus perpetuates the likeness of his little boy. A magnificent window, from which look forth the faces of a little boy and girl of the family, stands in the Schwegman residence, Avondale.
In all of this art glass portraiture work the face, and so much of the figure as possible, is first hand painted on the glass and then burnt not onto, but into the glass. The decorative background and framing of glass is of glass stained at the time of being manufactured. save as to the more delicate, finer bits of the work. An original design is prepared in the case of every order.
Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 13 March 1898: p. 12
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: What a very piquant idea: that naked flesh should cost more than a clothed portrait! Not entirely a compelling argument, one feels, for high-necked ball gowns and one imagines that the ladies who could afford Worth ball dresses wished to show them off in art glass.
“Mrs Belmont of New York” was Mrs Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, who forced her unhappy daughter Consuelo into marriage with the Duke of Marlborough. The house was Petit Chateau, also known as the William K. Vanderbilt House, on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. The turquoise parure and the stained glass sound sumptuous, but, alas, Mrs Daffodil cannot find any photographs.
Stained glass in houses, was, like the antique furniture and “Old Master” art-works bought by the pound from European agents, considered just a wee bit parvenu. Here is a joke on the subject:
A fashionable lady, in boasting of her new “palatial residence,” said that the windows were all of stained glass. “That’s too bad!” cried her mother; “but won’t soap and turpentine take the stains out?”
The Daily Sentinel [Garden City KS] 10 May 1887: p. 2
The little girl’s portrait is a rarity. The idiosyncratic nature of family portraits and changing tastes in decor meant that many of these pieces were destroyed or relegated to the attic.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Wealthy French Women Giving Parties and Wearing Elaborate Costumes.
In its story of how woman has come to the front and in Paris, at least, has made aviation a social pastime, Vogue says:
“As might be expected, woman has brought to ballooning, as to every other human endeavor shared by her, a softening and beautifying touch. At a recent fete given by the ‘Stella’ at the park of the Aero Club of France, flowers were made the keynote of the entertainment. Members of the club in six parties made ascensions in balloons of equal number, and all of these balloons were named for flowers and each was decorated with the living blossoms that corresponded. Thus Mme. Surcouf sailed away in Les Bluets, and her globular vessel was decked with corn flowers. Mme. Defosses-Dalloz, a vice president of the ‘Stella,’ and Mme. Omer-Decugis, also of the club, were borne aloft in Les Roses and the car of their air chariot was smothered under La France roses. Mme. Abulfeda and Mme. Dumas, other members, occupied Les Paquerettes, and accordingly employed Easter lilies for its floral embellishment. The Comte de Castillon de Saint-Victor acted as pilot of the balloon occupied by another ‘Stella’ enthusiast, Mme. Monnot, and on her car Les Pivoines she had lavished a wealth of peonies. And so it went, every car in the fete had its bank of flowers, and as the balloons rose over the beautiful park showers of blossoms descended to the feet of the spectators.
***
“And not only this, but the aeronautes of the ‘Stella’ have set the fashion in their ascensions en spherique of wearing dainty and becoming apparel. It had once been the case that a woman in preparing for a balloon trip discarded all her pretty garments and donned heavy boots, corduroy skirts or knickers, thick woolen or flannel sacques and velveteen or leather jackets. Not so with the ‘Stellas,’ as they have already been dubbed in the French capital. A trip in the clouds means less to them than a trip in a motor car, so far as change of raiment is concerned. A long veil, which may be used to tie on the hat and to keep confined rebellious locks which are disturbed by the upper currents of air, and a heavy coat that will keep one warm when passing through a cloudbank of mist or when in the higher and colder levels–and any afternoon toilette is transformed into your modern sky sailor’s equipment.
***
“There can be little doubt that with the wealthier French women ballooning is the fad of the hour. As a sport it has replaced motoring, which once, held such complete sway over Parisian society and which is now considered slow and passé. A glance at any smart Parisian journal will reveal the prevalence and the popularity of balloon riding, for the papers are filled with accounts of the dally ascensions made by this, that and the other group of pleasure seekers, while the advertising pages display notices of where balloons may be bought or hired, tell of what parks offer facilities for ascensions, and even print the schedules of rates at which skilled pilots may be hired by the hour.
“Week-end balloon parties are just as common as are week-end house parties in this country. The hostess need not ask her guests if they fly; it is taken for granted that they do, and that they will take a part in the fete as a matter of course. And as a matter of course, they do. With the large, double-envelope balloons, which are used for these social air trips, danger is reduced to a minimum, ballooning being far safer, for instance, than motoring or boating. Women frequently make these short flights alone, and two or three women will make up a balloon party which scorns the services of a masculine pilot.”
Buffalo [NY] Courier 1 September 1909: p. 5
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is, Mrs Daffodil is reliably informed, “Aviation Day” in the States. The United States press was all agog over the fair balloonists of France and, naturally, wished American ladies to come to the fore in this fashionable sport.
A great deal has been said and written about the formation of a woman’s aeronaut club in this country, but as yet no effort has been made to form such a club. Fame awaits the man or woman who shall make the first move in this direction. Necessarily, the founder of such an organization must be a person of wealth and leisure and an enthusiast on the subject of aviation.
And yet what the French women have accomplished in this respect can surely be done by American women and done with éclat. It is plainly evident that ballooning is the coming sport of the well-to-do.
Grand Forks [ND] Daily Herald 9 September 1909: p. 5
However, it was clear that the Parisian’s afternoon toilettes with the casual addition of a veil did not suit the practical English or American spirit. A fashion letter from the manager of the firm of Burberry gives some helpful suggestions for the would-be Queens of the Air:
LONDON FASHIONS.
By May Dawson
London, May 4. The exceptionally fine weather experience of late has induced balloonists to venture forth at an earlier date than usual, and the season for this new sport bids fair to be an exceptionally good one.
Only a few years ago a balloon trip was regarded as foolhardy. Now it is looked upon as an amusing hobby. Since Mrs. [Hugh] Iltid Nicholl first ventured up on “The City of York” balloon, many ladies having followed her example.
It is obvious, however, that the picture hat and long skirt of Mayfair are hardly suitable for aerial flight, and the West End tailors are turning their attention to the serious question of meeting the dress demands of the lady balloonist.
“The most practical dress for a lady balloonist,” said the manager of Messrs. Burberry, in an interview, “should be made of gabardine, slimber [Burberry’s proprietary weather-proof cloth] or, for the coldest weather, loden, which is a particularly thick yet light woven cloth worn by the Alpine guides.
“The fashionable color is a green with a slight ruddy brown tinge. The coat is worn short and lined with fleece or silk, with two breast pockets, two cross pockets, and two hand-rests for the purpose of keeping the hands warm.
“The skirt is an adjustable one, which means that it can be drawn up by invisible cords, which by forming a pleat half way down, enables the wearer to get out or in the car with great facility, while it can be let down while traveling to keep the feet warm.
“Over the coat comes a ‘slip-on’ waterproof lined with either fleece, silk, fur or wool. A tailor-made shirt of opal crepe should be worn beneath, with a broad belt of the same material as the coat or skirt.
“We are introducing a special ballooning cap made of a fine opal crepe in the very palest shade of green, which is not damaged by the rain. It is in the jelly-bag shape, the end being fastened down on the right side by a quill. An opal silk veil, which is woven in colored silks should also be worn with the costume, shading from the green of the ballooning cap, to the ruddy shade in the coat and skirt. Canadian mittens are made of the same material as the coat and skirt.
“To make the costume complete the lady balloonist should wear dark brown boots, or if she wishes, should have the leather dyed in exactly the same color as the coat and skirt.”
The Salt Lake [UT] Herald 5 May 1907: p. 20
The earliest American lady balloonist was Mary Myers, known professionally as “Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut.” One may be reasonably confident that she did not dress like the young lady on the cigarette card at the head of this post.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Bathing Machines, Ostend, c. 1910-1915 Library of Congress.
SEA-BATHING A LA MODE
The Interior of a Lady’s Bathhouse at Long Island.
As we all know, decorous Britishers of both sexes refuse to frolic in the big sea informally and in jovial fellowship as do the unconventional American “brethren and sisteren.” Mr. and Mrs. John Bull or the Misses Bull have little movable rooms, inside of which are the conveniences we enjoy in our seaside bathhouses, says Demorest for September. The rooms are on wheels. Enter Mrs. John Bull with a bathing-suit and a number of towels on her arm; a little pony is hitched, by primitive harness to the room, and when Mrs. J. B. gives a sign at the window of her queer little house the pony is driven down to the beach, even out into the water as far as he can go, is unhitched and trotted back to the shore. Out then, by the back door of her little room, comes Mrs. John Bull, arrayed for the sea, into which she hops and, so long as she wishes, enjoys a dip. The bath over she enters her wheeled room, the pony is sent down and hitched on, and the protean mermaid inside is brought back to terra firma. When the public seen her again she is clothed in the common garb of civilization.
Now this whole idea so pleased a friend of the Van Kortlandts, who went abroad for the first time last summer, that on settling down in her Long Island home she quite made up her mind to have a bathing-machine like those at Brighton. She had a little gable-roofed box built about 5 by 5 feet and at least 8 feet from floor to roof. Outside it is painted a clear sea green and it is swung on two big black wheels. There is a window in the roof and a door and pair of steps at the back.
Inside, madam’s imagination has worked wonders that would make Mrs. John Bull turn green with envy. The interior is all done in snow-white enamel paint, and one-half of the floor is pierced with many holes, to allow of free drainage form wet flannels. The other half of the little room is covered with a pretty green Japanese rug. In one corner is a big-mouthed green silk bag lined with rubber. Into this the wet bathing-togs are tossed out of the way. There are large bevel-edged mirrors let into either side of the room, and below one juts out a toilet shelf, on which is every appliance. There are pegs for towels and the bathrobe, and fixed in one corner is a little square seat that when turned up reveals a locker where clean towels, soap, perfumery, etc. are stowed. Ruffles of white muslin trimmed with lace and narrow green ribbons decorate every available space. When the mistress steps out of this bathing machine her maid dries and airs it, then ‘tis securely locked and wheeled high and dry behind the humble bathhouse of ye vulgar American.
The Morning Call [San Francisco, CA] 3 September 1893: p. 11
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Ah yes, “the maid dries and airs” the bathing machine. Mrs Daffodil shudders at those “ruffles of white muslin” decorating every available space. The lace and ribbonry required hand-washing and goffering and a heavy starch to keep them from going limp in the sea-breezes. A delightful effect, but scarcely a sea-side holiday.
Charming as is the description of the white-and-green bathing machine, Mrs Daffodil suggests that it exists primarily in fantasy. The reality is below:
MARINE EXCURSIONS.
We consider the essentials of a watering-place may be alliteratively summed up thus:— Sea, salt, sun, sand, shrimps, shells, sailors, and shingle…
A bathing-machine is an aquatic caravan, containing respectively two towels, two ricketty hat-pegs, a damp flooring, a strong smell of sea-weed, and a broken looking-glass, exhibiting the phenomena of oblique refraction. Though this last cannot be exactly considered the “glass of fashion,” it frequently exhibits the “mould of form” about to have a dip.
The Traveller’s Miscellany and Magazine of Entertainment, 1847
This post was originally published in 2013.
A story of a bathhouse scandal is found in The Bathing Machine Mystery part 1 and part 2. And the inside story of The Great Grampus Bath-House Tragedy is found here.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
American Girls Reviving the Fan, That Fit Symbol of Fluttering Femininity
Approach of Period of Coquetry Foreseen in New Popularity of Long Fashionable Appendage
By Esther Harney
Fans are coming back into vogue again. They never go out of fashion, of course, for they are as old as coquetry, as gallantry itself. But today they are appearing in full blaze of glory, a sure sign, we are told, that an age of coquetry and extreme femininity is approaching as a reaction from the stern period of the war.
Manufacturers will tell you this news happily. Not for years have they had so many orders for fans of every description from the hand-made lace and tortoise shell varieties of the duchess to the little inexpensive chiffon spangled fan which the high school girls “perfectly adore” to flutter at school “hops.”
Manufacturers will also tell you that there could be no stronger evidence of a general return on the part of woman to her ancient arts and wiles than this reinstatement of the fan. (They are qualified to speak—of course.) During the war there was little time for fans and for femininity. Nor in that period which preceded the war did woman fancy fans; instead she preferred a riding crop or a tennis bat. It was not the fashion then, you will recall, to be delicate and feminine.
But today with all our boys returning from overseas from harsh scenes of war and from other scenes and adventures (oh, the reputed wiles of les belles Francaises), American women are beginning to realize that they must rise to the occasion. Femininity must rule supreme. (The soldiers like womanly women, they say.) and as a symbol of lovely femininity the women have taken up the fan.
International Imagination.
Then, too, American girls are looking to France these days. (They are trying to cultivate an international imagination, you know.) And among the French, fans are popular. With them, for instance, the wedding fan is an important item of the marriage trousseau. And was it not Mme. E Stael who recognized an art in the graceful handling of the fan? “What graces,” she wrote, “are placed in woman’s power if she knows how to use a fan. In all her wardrobe there is no ornament with which she can produce so great an effect.” Verily the revival of the fan in American can be traced to the influence of France on the American doughboy…
All ages have contributed to the history of the fan. It has it pedigree like everything else. If a thorn was the first needle, no doubt a palm leaf was the first fan. Standards of rich plumage were present when the Queen of Sheba paid homage to Solomon. Queen Elizabeth gave the fan a place of distinction and was the cause of prosperity among the fan-makers of her day. She is said to have had as many as 30 fans for her use. During her reign ostrich feather fans were introduced in England. Charlotte Corday of French evolutionary fame is said to have used a fan expertly : She held a fan in one hand while she stabbed Marat with a dagger which she held in the other hand.
Great painters of all ages have tried their hands at fans. One famous artist spent nine years completing a fan for Mme. De Pompadour, which cost $30,000. Period fans arose to commemorate events, follies and fashions of the day. Besides an intermediary in the affairs of love a fan became a vehicle for satire, verse and epigram.
In the canons of “fanology” are described “the angry flutter, the modish flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, the amorous flutter.” A flutter for every type, you see.
American girls should then first choose their fan and then their flutter. Perhaps they will revive the art of miniature fan painting as a new profession for women. They should, of course, remember that they can learn much of the art of the fan from Europe (except from Germany. Can you fancy a German woman flirting with a fan?) and plan to obtain their practice on the back porch some hot July evening. That will surely amuse their soldier callers. And at least we all can afford a fan of the palm leaf variety. But if we must take up the fan, the symbol of the new age that is before us, just we also take up the spirit of the age in which it was wafted victoriously? Must we be Victorian?
Boston [MA] Herald 10 May 1919: p. 15
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: And what, Mrs Daffodil wishes to know, is wrong with being “Victorian?” Alas, the author of this piece was entirely too sanguine about a return to femininity. Far from becoming more womanly, young persons shingled their hair, abandoned proper corsetry, smoked in public, and adopted sexually ambiguous costumes and attitudes. The queenly curves of the pre-War years gave way to a flattened feminine figure that caused many physicians to despair of the continuation of the species. Still, in one detail, the author was correct: The beaded and brilliantined females who thronged the night clubs, did carry fans—immense, vampish affairs of ostrich feathers or sequined chiffon–but recognizably fans. One might suggest that these accessories lent their name to the Girl of the Period: the Flapper.
For a school of “fan-ology,” see this post. And for more details on how to select a fan, this post.
A vampish fan of the period.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
Feminine Fad That Causes the Masculine Gender Misery and Annoyance.
Men have many traits that the better half of humanity wot not of. One of the greatest of these in the estimation of a majority of the sex is the reed portiere that is found in so many private houses and public places in summer. Beside it melted collars and crumpled shirts and all the other aggravations incidental to the heat fade into insignificance. One man actually forgets them while he is trying to master the intricacies of those long beaded strings which swirl so maddeningly around his head, says the Chicago Chronicle.
In one of the hotels a wide door way is hung with such a portiere, and the methods pursued by the lords of creation greatly amused one woman spectator the other evening. Most of them came through shoulder first, only to be caught halfway by a sinuous length that wound itself around their necks and refused to be dislodged without coaxing. Others came head first and escaped with minor buffetings. One ingenious youth placed his hands wedge fashion and dove into the room with quite inelegant haste.
The men who were accompanied by women were in great stress of mind as to how to proceed, but they usually succeeded in corralling a sufficient number of the strands to allow the companions to pass and then they slipped through themselves, shaking off the ends that smote them as a water dog shakes off the liquid drops.
In private houses where the master is of an impatient temperament these portieres will be found parted m the middle and tied firmly back with ribbons, for, in the language of one such masculine, “life’s too short and the weather’s too hot to be eternally combating with a lot of elusive sticks that are always where you don t expect them to be.”
As a test of character the reed portiere is valuable, and a young woman might obtain some significant side lights on the disposition of her masculine callers by intrenching herself behind such a barrier and watching the emotions writ on their mobile faces as they endeavored to reach her side.
Emporia [KS] Daily Republican 13 August 1901: p. 2
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The disconcerting summer portieres that so rattled the gentlemen were to be found in reeds, bamboo, rolled bark, papier-mache, glass beads, and shells. They seem to have been a “happy hands at home” craft for ladies who found time hanging heavily on their hands.
If women staying at seashore resorts will spend part of their idle time in collecting a variety of shells, they may utilize them in the fall for a unique door drapery. Fasten the shells thickly on fish netting, then drape of the netting over a door casing and let it hang down at the sides. The shell trimmed netting also makes an attractive portiere by lining it with a light shade of sea green silk finished material. The Ypsilanti [MI] Commercial 12 August 1897: p. 5
Do you remember the thin, yellow, almost flat shells which are so abundant on all beaches? Of course you do, but when you saw them by hundreds in the white sand I am sure you never imagined what a beautiful portiere could be made from them. Yet to this use have they been put by my young friend. She pierced each shell with a hot wire, and then with a delicate wire fastened the narrow end of one to the wide end of the next until a string sufficiently long to reach form the curtain pole to the floor was made. Enough of these were fashioned for the entire portiere. At the top they are held in place by a narrow strip of cloth of the same color as the shells. The effect is something like the Japanese portieres, but the coloring being Nature’s own is prettier, and then the cost—twenty cents, the price of the wire, and twelve cents for the strip of cloth.
New York [NY] Herald 18 May 1890: p. 14
Home-Made Bead Portieres.
A very pretty work a great many energetic women are trying now is that of making their own bead portieres. The Japanese shops sell bamboo and strings of beads, so that one can make curtains to harmonize perfectly with each room. For instance, I saw a charming effect produced by a portiere of green beads used between a dining room and a small conservatory adjoining. You have no idea how exquisite the plants and flowers looked through this transparent screen of green. Gold beads give a sunshiny effect, and portieres of solid pink or blue beads are dainty in the extreme. A friend who has recently returned from Japan tells me that the curtains strung in patterns are made by having the designs drawn on large pieces of paper and laid on the floor, and then the beads are strung on just as we would trace out the lines in making lace.
The Times [Philadelphia PA] 22 October 1894: p. 7
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
“It would seem now and then as if society devices in delightful entertainment were about exhausted.” remarked a little lady just home from a summer up north, “but we were invited to a rarely charming garden party while away. It was called ‘a lantern party.’ and was given by a lady who owns a summer cottage set far back from a country road almost In the deep woods. The cards of Invitation were decorated with her own delicate drawings and water color sketches of Chinese lanterns and antique lanterns, and the guests were expected to carry lanterns with them; it was quietly noised around that a prize would be given to the bearer of the most unique or artistic lantern.
“As you can imagine, there was much energetic scurrying about in the small town to find something pretty in lanterns. Richard drove several miles out into the country to borrow a quaint old tin lantern he had seen at a farmhouse; but Louise and I contented ourselves with some pretty Japanese lanterns we had in the house. Little Richard was invited, too. and he got together quite a surprising and dazzling achievement in the way of a lantern out of an old cigar box and some red and yellow tissue paper.
“It was a great lot of fun, going after dark down the village street carrying our lighted lanterns. The sidewalks here and there were dotted with other guests, also carrying bright lanterns. People on the sidewalks and on the summer piazzas exclaimed at this unusual sight. When we reached the country road leading to the cottage of our hostess the spectacle was even more beautiful. Such a number of bright, yet subdued, lights flitting noiselessly along in the dark. As we neared the cottage we were all spellbound; a beautiful picture was presented house, porches and the long lane to the great gate hung with colored lanterns of all kinds and sizes. After we arrived in the garden and were seated, it was charming to watch all the new arrivals coming up the lane bearing lanterns a long vista of gigantic fireflies done in bright color. Those who wearied of carrying their lanterns could hang them, ticketed, on one of the verandas; and, before the evening was over, three judges quietly inspected them and made the awards. The chief prize was a lovely little Moorish lantern, and was won by a gentleman who carried a curious little Venetian lantern, which was said to have belonged to Robert Browning. He sent to his Chicago home for it. I learned, and as he was a much-traveled man, no doubt the little literary lantern was authentic.
“To our great surprise, little Richard’s cigar-box lantern won the consolation prize–a pretty copy of Stevenson’s beautiful essay, ‘The Lantern Bearers.’ “Music, conversation and the usual summer refreshments were other features of the evening, but the charm of the lanterns really made all else seem superfluous. Our lantern hostess told me she had once given such a party at her city home, where she knew many artists and curio lovers; and the rallying of beautiful, rare old foreign lanterns on that occasion, she said, really made her heart ache with the envious greed of nonpossesslon.”
The Indianapolis [IN] Journal 14 September 1902: p.13
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Parties and cosy-corners were not the only venues for these pretty lanterns:
Some riders, in view of the fact that lamps are easily extinguished, have adopted the gaudy Chinese lantern, which, if it goes out, is readily noticed. In the evening these gay lanterns are very attractive.
Godey’s Lady’s Book [Philadelphia, PA] October 1896
Mrs Daffodil is sorry to dash her readers’ cherished beliefs, but Chinese lanterns were rarely made in that country:
The Chinese Lantern Trade.
During the last two or three years a large and regular demand for Chinese-lanterns has been created in this country, and the sale of these articles now constitutes one of the most important, if not the most important branch of the business of dealer in pyrotechnics. This has been especially true this season, when the demand for ordinary “fireworks” has been insignificant, but for Chinese-lanterns it has been larger than ever before. Garden parties, which are becoming very popular, are a profitable source of income to the manufacturers of Chinese-lanterns, as is also the custom now in vogue at some of the watering places of having a grand illumination once or twice each season. On two different occasions this summer Martha’s Vineyard has called upon Boston dealers for 15,000 lanterns for a single evening’s illumination.
The greater part of the “Chinese-lanterns” are made in this country, in the vicinity of New York, or in Germany, and as they have been in such active request of late years much ingenuity has been expended in producing them in the most attractive and convenient, and at the same time the cheapest, forms. The result of these ingenious efforts has been the manufacture of paper lanterns, some of which are surprisingly well adapted to the purposes for which they are designed, others being marvelously cheap, and many combining both of these desirable qualities to some extent. Pretty Chinese-lanterns of a cylindrical shape, and perhaps twelve inches long and four or five inches in diameter when in use, but capable of being compressed into about one-twelfth of their ordinary length for transportation, are sold as low as $6 per hundred; and large, gorgeously decorated globes, selling at $20 to $30 per hundred, are constructed with wire frames so as to be capable of being folded into the merest fraction of their usual space.
The Pittsfield [MA] Sun 7 November 1877: p. 7
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
It Is a Gorgeous Affair This Season And There are Fetching Gowns Which Go With It and Hosiery Like a Beautiful Italian Sunset
The girl who is spending the season at a fashionable hotel is forced to miss one of the most fascinating pleasures of summertime, namely, the hammock. At the really swell hotels now-a-days one rarely sees a hammock, for the reason, perhaps, that the hammock is a sure destroyer of lace, chiffon or the fashionable costumes that custom demands must be worn all day at the popular watering places.
It is only that fortunate young woman who is summering at some country farm house or big, roomy mountain hotel where there are plenty of trees about the shady piazza nooks that can enjoy the true comfort of the hammock. The watering place girl can only dream of the luxury and the piazza rocking chair is the nearest approach to the graceful swinging couch, canopied by green waving branches which her sister in the mountains spends the long morning hours in.
The tactful maiden studies her “type” before she makes up her mind to adopt the hammock as a permanent summer back ground. There are certain styles of girl that look as though made for a hammock. In it they are marvels of grace and prettiness, but the stout, comfortable, well fed young woman who may make a fetching picture on a bicycle is as much out of place in a hammock as it is possible to imagine. The slim waisted, “fluffy” girl is the kind that looks well in a hammock. She becomes a soft, limp mass of lace and ribbon, the moment she adjusts herself to its meshes, and if an inch or two of her stocking shows beneath the white lace of her skirt it doesn’t look at all shocking, but on the contrary, chic and appropriate. The Burne-Jones type of girl is therefore the special kind who makes her hammock the piece de resistance in the artillery with which she will wage successful warfare on the heart of the Summer Man.
First, she selects her hammock. If she is a blond she gets one of cool looking white cording, or in blue and white stripes, with bamboo rods stretched across the head and foot. Then she selects the place where it is to hang, always a corner somewhere out of the general.
If she is of a romantic disposition she finds out some rippling resting place, where the tree branches bend across, and she will have her pretty resting place suspended right across the water, climbing into it each time at the risk of a wetting. Here she makes a veritable illustration of the verse: “Summer day; babbling brook/Girl in hammock reading book!”
The girl with dark eyes and brown hair selects a hammock of brilliant red Mexican grass, or some other Oriental looking weave. She piles it with silken cushions of the same rich hues; deep crimson and olive greens and here and there a Persian covering that stands out among the others, making an effect that delights the soul of any artist which may be in the vicinity until he begs for the privilege of sketching the hammock’s occupant.
The fair haired blue eyed girl has blue and white cushions and little pillows for her ears, covered with white dotted Swiss and trimmed with Val. Lace. I picked up one of these ridiculous little things the other day and learned for the first time that they existed. Just imagine a cushion about five inches square stuffed with cotton and a suspicion of violet sachet, made specially for to tuck under your ear among the larger pillows.
The heart shaped cushion is one of the novelties for my lady’s hammock this year. It is shaped exactly like the real article which is supposed to exist even in the bosom of summer’s merriest maiden and it is embroidered over with its owner’s favorite flower, and sometimes a motto or sentiment.
One of the prettiest that I have seen is covered with marguerites embroidered in their natural colors and through the blossoms runs the line in gold thread: “He loves me; he loves me not?”
Another with a border of the ox-eyed daisies says:
“I don’t care what the daisies say;
I know I’ll be married some fine day!”
This summer girl not only has the regulation tag upon her hammock with her name thereon, but she attaches it with a huge bow of ribbon matching her cushions in color. The ends of this hang so low that they sweep the grass beneath the float in every passing breeze.
Of course there are frocks specially for hammock wear, and stockings and shoes of attractive design to be worn when reposing in this luxurious swing.
At no time in the career of a summer girl are her feet more in evidence than when she is poised in her hammock or getting in or out of it.
This last operation is one which it takes considerable dexterity and grace to accomplish successfully, but after a while most of these clever young women manage to do it without turning an eyelash and with a not-too-reckless display of ankle. It looks wonderfully difficult to a mere man, but it all depends on a little quickness and a certain curves of the limbs in getting out, which keeps the skirts in place.
A man is apt to get all tangled up in a hammock, and he emerges from one as a rule looking as though he had been in a collision. But the hammock maiden has it all down to a science.
She fixes up her last summer’s dresses to wear in the hammock. Of course there must not be too many buttons upon any frock for this purpose, as they catch in the meshes and come off, as a usual thing. But plenty of lace and soft ribbons can be worn and a gown which could never be worn anywhere else, owing to its last season’s cut, makes a most effective costume for hammock wear.
A pretty little girl who affects the hammock pose to a considerable extent, confided to me the other day that she discarded stays in her hours of open air repose. She wore some mysterious sort of waist made with whale bone, but without steels.
“When I’ve been out tramping, or fishing, or driving, and get home tired out,” she told me, “I just run up to my room and have a sponge bath. Then I slip into one of these waists, which is ever so much cooler you know, put on my loosest and fluffiest hammock frock and get down here under the trees, and in a minute I’m enjoying as pleasant a nap as it is possible to imagine.”
This girl has a collection of pretty hosiery and shoes for her afternoon siesta. She has one pair of the daintiest French morocco “mules” or slippers without any upper part in the back, which she wears with red silk stockings. Then she has Japanese slippers in all colors and hose to match, some of them quite vivid in design. One of the oddest conceits are her “rainbow” stockings.
Her pleasure in wearing them must be that of the small boy with his first cigar; “purely intellectual,” for they are strictly invisible, but I suppose there must be sort of conscious delight in the possession of such frivols as these. They are worn with a small, innocent-looking brown suede slipper which buttons over the instep with three large brown buttons. The stocking which shows over the ankle is brown, the same as the shoe, but as it reaches the calf of the leg it lightens by degrees to a golden yellow, turning with a sort of beautiful Italian sunset effect into palest violet, and then deepening into purple at the top. The garters worn with this are of black elastic, through which runs a violet ribbon. The side knot is of the same ribbon and the buckles are of engraved and oxidized silver, an owl on one symbolizing night, and a lark on the other for morning. These are the most fetching of all her hammock properties, and it seems a pity that they are so unobtrusively worn undiscovered, unless a hammock costume of bloomers be adopted.
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Pleasant as are the solitary delights of the hammock, dual occupancy is where the sparks really fly:
THE FATEFUL HAMMOCK
A Potent Factor in Midsummer Joys and Midwinter Repentance.
The hammock has much to answer for.
It has developed from nothing into a potent factor in midsummer social joys and sorrows.
A decade ago the hammock was sporadic. It is now universal. Certain tourists from this heretofore unhammocked land of the free, journeying into Mexico and in Cuba noted the meshed crescent with interest first and with admiration afterwards, insomuch that they brought one of the swaying couches with them.
The result has been remarkable. Americans have taken the hammock to their very hearts, and American ingenuity has devised machinery capable of turning out hammocks almost as fast as the finished article will turn out its occupant. A summer bereft of a hammock would be to the American lad and lass a dreary and unromantic period.
Given a good article of moonlight and a hammock big enough for two, and there is no combination which will more rapidly and thoroughly advance the cause of Cupid and bring about the lighting of Hymen’s torch.
Between the moon and the hammock there is a certain analogy. A young moon is very like a hammock, and when Luna appears in the west, her crescent apparently swung between two invisible trees and fastened with a pair of bright stars, the analogy is complete. One can readily fancy an angel swaying in the celestial hammock, which is said also to contain a man. And the idea is so apt to fix itself in the mind of the ardent mortal who gazes westward that his first impulse is to get a hammock, and an earthly angel of his own, and then to sway joyously to the rhythm of two hearts that beat as one.
As an aid to flirtation it is twin sister to a fan.
If a young couple ever trust themselves to the support of the same hammock at the same time, Cupid has his own way thereafter. The pair must of necessity be brought into such sweet proximity that every particle of formality and reserve is melted away. One may withdraw from his fair one on a bench, may hold aloof while seated on the same grassy bank, and may hitch his chair away, or closer, as his feelings dictate. But in the same hammock one can do none of these things. He can only submit to fate and propinquity and be led delightfully to the momentous question.
The hammock…is fashioned much like a spider’s web. But who would not willingly be a fly when the web holds a charming maiden? And what man is there with soul so dead who is not glad that the hammock has come to stay.
The Macon [MS] Beacon 16 August 1890: p. 4
[This post originally appeared in August of 2017]
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
But from across the Atlantic comes a real novelty, nothing more or less than hats woven from lavender stalks and twigs of Highland heather. Those familiar with English gardens know the lavender color shading to gray-green of the sterns of the sweet-scented lavender flower, arid no one who has seen the Scotch heather can forget its exquisite coloring. Some clever person evolved the idea of weaving these shrubs into hat shapes, so we now have hats made of the stems of lavender and of twined heather:
The lavender hats at first glance appear to be woven of rather coarse silvery straw, but on looking closer it is seen that the stalks of the lavender bush are woven in and out, forming the shape.
They are woven when the lavender is fresh picked and the stems pliable: afterward they are dried, when the stalks become hard and tough, not brittle. By some process the little bud-like flowers of the lavender are preserved, and these are used as trimming, sprays of them being poised in osprey form at one side. They have rather the effect of dried fancy grasses, and are most attractive. Pale lavender satin ribbon put around the crown in folds and tied in a smashing bow at one side, the lavender flowers pulled through the center loop, is a favorite trimming for these novel hats. Most fragrant these hats are, and need no sachet bags tucked into the crown to perfume them.
The hats made all of heather are quite as fascinating and more delicate in effect. The little mauve bells of the heather are used as trimming, the shape itself being covered with the brown mossy stems. Usually the model chosen for a heather hat is of fairly small size, with high crown and not too wide brim. Then a wreath of the heather blossoms is laid around the crown, or the crown itself is woven of sprigs of heather bearing the little flowers, and the trimming is of mauve-colored ribbon. If some of the rare white heather can be obtained to use in trimming it is considered particularly desirable, but it must be the real thing, picked on the moors, not grown in a conservatory, or no good luck will come of it.
St. Louis [MO] Globe-Democrat 20 June 1909: p. 54
Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Lavender, in the Victorian language of flowers, symbolises “devotion,” although it may also signal “distrust,” based on a legend that the fatal asp was brought to Cleopatra in a basket of lavender.
White heather, of course, is considered a lucky talisman:
Happy is the married life of her who wears the white heather at her wedding…Every Highland knows that white heather brings rare good luck to the finer, and that the luck can be passed on to his friends….They say in the far north that when the sheep, hardy devourers of the tender stem of the heather, come across it in their grazing, they avoid harming it, and that the grouse have never been known to crush it with their wings…On great occasions the table of a Highland chieftain would be poor indeed without its sprig of white heather. When the heir-presumptive reaches man’s estate he wears it for luck, and it is considered the height of hospitality to present it to the stranger guest.
The Star [Saint Peter Port, Guernsey England] 28 July 1885: p. 4
Mrs Daffodil regrets that she has not been able to locate a contemporary photo-gravure of these fascinating objects. They sound quite delightful–save for one caveat: these fragrant hats will, inevitably, draw bees. A few sprigs of marigold, geranium, or basil tucked among the flowers should repel these useful, yet unsettling, insects.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.
British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Carys Hudson (Queen's University Belfast) and Hollie Geary-Jones (University of Chester)
Mrs Daffodil Digresses 