Exploring Extant Victorian and Edwardian Garments

My amazing aunt sent me some family treasures! Join me as I unfold and explore a men's nightgown, a pair of lady's cufflinks, a pair of collar studs, a chemise, and a frankly ridiculously cool Victorian jacket complete with boning.

[Pour_La_Victoire]

What lovely garments! The embellishments on the nightgown are called tucks, sometimes pintucks if they're really narrow, rather than pleats :)

[ipomoea]

Wow what lovely pieces of clothing and history. :)

[Nacanaca]

I don't know much about Victorian and Edwardian clothing (or clothing at all), but there are a few things I picked up from sewing and watching Abby Cox's videos.
The chemise seems to be partially machine stitched. The seam shown at 2:48 has a little loop of thread that matches a screw up my machine makes from time to time. When I sew things by hand, it never comes apart like that. The rolled hem, however, was hand-stitched.
The hooks shown at 12:15 probably attached to a skirt. They would help distribute the weight and hold it up.

[albinocavewoman]

Those pin tucks can be done on your treadle, if your attachments include the, aptly named, pin tucker. Also, LUCKY!

[clarekrmiller]

Whooooaaaa, those cameo cuff links are amazing!

[Blitzcomo]

Holy COW this is so cool!!! Great grandmother Betty did a great job sewing that shirt! What it came wrapped in looked like a handkerchief to me, despite the size and... fanciness? of it? The belt buckle is great! And the cameo cuff links...wow. Stunning! And that NIGHTGOWN. That’s amazing that your family has kept those garments around!!!

[shellyburpee]

Happily found your channel through CocoVid. I have now binged watched all of your videos. The initials are most likely from the laundry where he got his night shirt washed. Clothing was frequently marked with initials to make sure items got back to the right person. The detail you found is indeed piping, not all that hard to do. I look forward to your new videos.

[mycharliequinn]

I think the buttons attached with fabric is a cheap cufflink replacement?
like if you had a shirt that needed to be held together with cufflinks but either you didn't want to wear your best or you found the metal clunky and annoying, you'd just put in buttons.
do I have any historical evidence for buttons being used this way? no! but it feels right.
the sound and feel of metal cufflinks hitting the desk as you do things is annoying and if I had to wear them every day I'd find a way to replace them with plastic.

[theplussizecostumer]

What lovely gifts from your grandmother. First, the wrapping for the first garment is a linen table runner with linen appliques. Very fine workmanship! the garment is more a shirt waist, what is now simply called a blouse. The workmanship on that is exquisite. Looks like most of the seams were sewn on a machine, but there is also a lot of hand sewing, as well. Mostly in the fine rolled hems on the collar and cuffs. The gusset could be as you say, an expansion of the waist area because her body changed. But you should know that Victorians were not against piecing together part of the garment with scraps when there wasn't quite enough left for a particular part of the garment.

The buckle could be made of bone or plastic. To see if it's bone, touch it to the tip of your tongue. If it sticks, it's bone and that would place it to sometime around the turn of the last century. If it's plastic then it's closer to the 1950s. But not the 1970s. I was around then and we didn't have buckles that thick that weren't metal.

The buttons and cuff links are beautiful. The brass ones with the Mother of Pearl inlay are Shirt Studs. They were still used these days in some Tuxedo shirts. Because they have the inlay they would not have been used as Collar Buttons, used to hold a starched collar onto a collarless shirt.