Gilded Age Resort Sojourn Fashions

“Every watering place demands a different set of dresses. Richfield and Sharon demand cool, fresh ‘cottons,’ as our English friends call them. Saratoga demands everything, from the elaborate Valenciennes, Maltese or Breton, with India mull and ribbons, up to the magnificent gauze with satin and brocade. Newport demands thick silks and wraps, and carriage dresses, dinner dresses and evening ball dresses, morning dresses of every shade…” American or European Dress from 1888 – Public domain image from the Metropolitan Museum

Pity the Slaves to Fashion

Mrs. Sherwood, who is usually authority on clothes and manners, says in her latest letter, after speaking of the large outfits ladies must prepare for summer resort sojourns:

“Every watering place demands a different set of dresses. Richfield and Sharon demand cool, fresh ‘cottons,’ as our English friends call them. Saratoga demands everything, from the elaborate Valenciennes, Maltese or Breton, with India mull and ribbons, up to the magnificent gauze with satin and brocade. Newport demands thick silks and wraps, and carriage dresses, dinner dresses and evening ball dresses, morning dresses of every shade and of thickness, batiste, momie cloth, camel's hair, cashmere and barège, the tussore silks, the endless varieties of foulards (and could one see the ladies driving in the park of an afternoon they could see foulards of such an alarming and splashed pattern that they would fear that the well-dressed creatures had been under a shower of whitewash), all these are needed in the most variable of summer climates. 

“Mount Desert demands another set of garments. The percales, the cambrics, the woolens, the heavy ulster, the light cloak, the flannel, the yachting suits. Then come the bonnets. We must have one good one for church and several poor ones for every day; we must have a hat with yellow plumes and one crowned with poppies. These for the every-day, one for horse watering-places. But we must have an ‘edition deluxe’ for Newport, and two dozen of each for Saratoga. Then a good brown straw for traveling and a black bat for rainy days. And having got all these, how many boxes will it take to hold them?” –San Jose Herald, 1888

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