In general, all women had a sound understanding of sewing, and many items were made at home. While Elias Howe invented the lock-stitch sewing machine in 1846, it would not come into widespread use until the following decade. The fashion plates published in these periodicals allowed all women to consume proposed fashions (Tortora 330-331 Severa 2-3).ĭuring the 1840s, women’s clothing was all hand-sewn, and had to be custom-made either at home or by a hired seamstress. In America, Godey’s Lady’s Book and Peterson’s Magazine reigned supreme, but French and English magazines could be found as well. Women became walking Gothic structures as their dresses were dominated by narrow arches and angles (Bassett 31, 49 Shrimpton 8).Įven the average woman of limited means was aware of fashionable trends due to the booming ladies’ magazine industry. Perhaps the clearest influence on womenswear was the Gothic Revival, a movement that imitated the architecture of the medieval period, and was closely tied to the historicism of the Romantics. For example, the long, inflexible bodice recalled those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Cunnington 135).Īnother tenet of Romanticism was historicism, and 1840s fashions reflected the period’s tendency to look backward for inspiration.
Women’s clothes became so constricting that her passivity in society was clear (C.W.
#Sketch fashion plates skin
Female moral virtue was displayed through fashions that while covering more skin than in the past few decades, also took on a rigid, almost Puritanical restraint. A pale complexion was the most fashionable, and it was considered almost vulgar to appear too healthy (Laver 170). Literature portrayed sentimental, subservient female heroines who died for love or women who were cold and cruel, causing heartbreak to those who loved them (Tortora 330).Įarly Victorian ideals of meek, delicate women were fully established during this period the ideal woman was quiet, modest, and the center of domestic life. Romanticism was reflected throughout culture during the first half of the nineteenth century, defined by an emphasis on emotion, the individual, and what was believed to be the moral perfection of nature (Bassett 16). The 1840s were the last years of the Romantic Era (Tortora 328), but the exuberant buoyancy of the Romanticism that marked womenswear in the 1820s and 1830s had developed into a drooping, subdued style more associated with the Gothic Revival (Byrde 45).
“Fashion illustrators no longer depicted the fashionable lady as a spirited and animated being, but rather as a timid, reticent and self-effacing person sheltering behind the ever-encroaching brim of her bonnet.” (193) Restraint and restriction characterized the demure style of women’s fashions in the 1840s (Fig.
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