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

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Gilded Age Sights and Styles

 

Patterns for girls’ fashions of 1887 in Godey’s Lady’s Book or Godey’s Magazine 

The Latest Wrinkles in Society

Among the ridiculous sights of the hour are the little girls in short dresses whose parents are quite willing they should wear bustles. 

Liquor decanters now come in glass of a color to “match the liquor they are to contain,” absinthe, chartreuse, kümmel liqueur and all the rest. 

Brass teapots on a tripod are new, and as far as can be learned, are admirably adapted for upsetting and saturating the family table cloth.

Photograph stands or easels on “cattails” are having an extraordinary run. Introduced a year ago, they appear to have been neglected until now. There is a fashionable preference now for small photographs of the visiting-card size, but they are as good a cure for vanity as the large ones.

They make finger-bowl mats now of bolting cloth, hand-painted, and edged with lace, which, of course, one’s country cousins are warned never to use. 

Jeweled hairpins are fancy in Paris, and put in the hair hap-hazard, according to a correspondent, have a very charming effect at night. 

For all full-dress and ceremonious occasions this coming season, ladies will wear feathers in their hair, or on their head, in Mrs. J. Bull fashion.

In fall hats for women, masculine styles prevail, much to the disappointment of people who hoped the Tom-boy fashions and styles were dying out. Basques are a mass of the most elaborate and bewildering trimming or embroidery down the front, and we are told, as winter advances, will become more so.

Some new umbrella handles have in them a match box, but what is wanted more is a magnetic umbrella that will get it back to its owner when borrowed or purloined. 

A Swiss alarm clock produces at the hour for which it is set a rooster who crows loud and shrill enough to quickly awaken even the man who retired very late.—New York Mail, 1887

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia