Get (un)Ready with Me in 1900

[QuatrinaVR]

Clothing was specifically itemized in many wills and legal documents BECAUSE it held so much value.

[vibeyandvibeless]

That robe is a piece of art, but the highlight of this video is your pup's expression😂 He's like "So many layers and yet not a single treat falls out? Unbelievable"

[hannahg]

I wonder at the lives of folks who don't know how to interpret this. I wake up in the morning, put on my office clothes, go to the office, come home, put on my work-out clothes, work-out, than change to my clothes again-- which may alter in what they are based on if I'm spending the evening dining with friends, laying on the couch, or scrubbing my bathtub. Then I shower, and put on my PJs. So on a regular day, I have 3-4 different outfits. It doesn't mean I own an excessive amount of clothes, it means I rotate them frequently, which is fundamentally different.

[leekestner]

I remember that when reading the Little House book series as a kid that Laura talked about how her mothers dress was twice turned. This was the process of picking out all the thread and reversing the pieces so that the less faded (by the sun) side of the cloth was on the outside. A twice turned dress was just short of being cut down for young children or rags.`

[krdiaz]

They also changed the look by adding different accessories. I don't know why a lot of people don't do this. I used to do this before I started working from home and people said I had a ton of clothes because I never wore the same outfit twice which wasn't true, but I would change the look of a dress by adding different belts, or broaches or whatever.

[AdrienneKushner-qicl]

It continued. My mom was born in 1931. She said she had 3-4 dresses for school and 1 party/go to church dress when she was in elementary school. She had hand-me-downs for playing.

[sarahno]

Having well fitting, long lasting clothes that you take good care of is apparently excessive.

[LittleBananaJoe]

We see that fact very well represented in the first season of downtown abbey when there’s only a budget for one dress per year for the three girls so they have to rotate, meaning each girl gets a dress once every three years. And Lord Clabuster was filthy rich (in the beginning)

[Mewhenifinalltgetallthebugs]

I love those Victorian women's help books that explain how to get rid of a stain or change a ruined dress into a skirt to save the pattern or how to dye it a completely different color to hide the stain. They did not throw this stuff out. Maybe did hand-me-downs with more tailoring than we do today

[AdellaWilliamson-gu]

No wonder closets in bedrooms of the era were about three feet wide.

[helenc]

Thank you for explaining this. It's a way of life that most couldn't imagine now. And most certainly not 'fast fashion', in any sense! I wish there was more acceptance (and ability!) to repair and repurpose clothes (and anything else). It's the better option for budget and environment. 💲🌏💚

(I know people who have thrown out a shirt because it lost a button (there was another on the inside)! Too lazy and inept to sew a button on?! 😤 Should be a crime...)

[davis]

The robe is to die for!! It’s so gorgeous!! Where/how do you acquire such exquisite pieces?? I wish to know the secrets

[Reicha]

I was so confused about my grandmother (Who was 10 when WW2 hit Finland, with parents well over 40 and 60 respectively) - because I knew she worked two jobs and dad's family were working class. Yet her clothes were pretty fancy and what she let me have before she died were all fancy brands and tailored. When she passed we went through her clothes and so much had been adapted to fit her as her shape changed, rather than sold or discarded. Dad told tales of her going to seamstresses often - and I think that's just something she had learned as a child. You bought good quality items and cared for them.

She was raised upper middle-class or upper class before she decided she'd rather be poor and free and ran away after the war. (Her parents were dead and she didn't like her older sister.) Ended up across the water.

[svetlanakholmetskaya]

The beginning was actually the post-war era, in the early 50s. A lot of things, including fabrics, were rationed during ww2. But the US experienced a rapid economic growth after the war and suddenly people had all that money they could spend on stuff that they hadn't been able to buy for several years. And not in the US only, it was Dior in Paris who invented those big ass skirts that took literal meters of fabric to make (though for sure Europe took much longer to get over the effects of ww2). People just wanted to have more after having little. The pendulum of fashion has a tendency to swing to the complete opposite.

[eetoved]

Amen. However, the scarcity, in many cases, was the cradle for the excess. Meaning (for example, in my family) a lot of poverty led to a lot of future generations of hoarders. 😂

[eyesofivy]

Also having specific outfits for specific functions and uses makes sense, if you have an outfit you go out walking in any daily wear and tear happens to that instead of your clothes you wear around the house, each item is worn for a smaller amount of time which reduces the stress on the garment, if you are cleaning or working in a garment anything related to that stays with that outfit and your nicer evening wear pieces don’t see any unnecessary damage!

[terribullwon]

Jo in Little Women scorched a couple of skirts from the fireplace and had patches over the burned spots. The idea that they would simply replace the skirts was out of the question. 😮

[LDaemontus]

People forget that the commercialization of fashion came about due to society gaining access to synthetics, something that eras before us didn't have, which allowed our (now) industralized society to produce waves of clothing at alarming rates at the expense of sweatshops.

This also meant that quality disappeared, meaning you're lucky if a standard top can outlast a year without severe holes.

The highlight of these fashions, too, was that you'd be supporting local seamstresses & tailors, knowing your clothing would be sewn to survive throughout the seasons.

What saddens me is that sewing is becoming a dying art. I've had to begin sourcing my clothing from actual tailors in other countries because western stores focus on generalizing sizes, meaning if you aren't "average" by their standards in arms, legs or even bust, you're out of luck for nice, long lasting clothes.

[ashleydavis]

I'm a genealogist. The number of times that I've seen clothing in wills furthers your point. You're not going to leave clothing as specific items in your will if clothing is as disposable as people seem to think it was.

[PhoenixMartinezRide]

It wasn’t like today where you can run down to store and get a full outfit at a moment’s notice for less than 20 bucks, clothing used to be a significant investment in both the money it took to buy it and the time it took to make it/have it made. Of course they would want to have multiple options that were all well looked after and continuously mended. You couldn’t just run down to the local department store and buy a new outfit if you ruined the old one