Victorian Era Dress Exhibit to be unveiled at the Chisholm Trail Museum, Saturday, September 13th at 1:00p.m. The Chisholm Trail Museum is proud to announce a new temporary exhibit on loan from one of the foremost collectors of Victorian era working dresses, Marna Davis of Hitchcock, will officially open on Saturday, September 13, at 1:00p.m. The Exhibit, “No Lady of Leisure” will display original rare Victorian Era working dresses from the mid-Victorian era through the early Edwardian period. The exhibit will detail not only original rare Victorian Era working dresses, but will also detail through photographs and narrative, “what a difficult situation most respectable but poor in the purse women found themselves in”, who out of necessity found a way to clothe themselves respectably, “yet still be able to perform household duties which were their sole domain.” The exhibit will also delve into the invention and availability of the sewing machine, the development of the sized sewing pattern, and the development of the network of roads and railroads. The dresses on display will represent various geographical and socio-economical styles from those who lived on the frontier during and after the Land Runs to those who lived in cities throughout the Victorian Era. Also on display are twelve original Victorian Era working dresses from the early 1870’s through 1910, an early post-Civil War era bustle era wrapper dress, an original 1883 “McDowell drafting system” made of adjustable brass strips, 1880s bright turkey red wrapper dress (turkey dye was commonly used, as it was fade resistant), and a late 1890s era original crochet booklet with pattern examples. According to widely distributed literature throughout the Victorian era, “the female who [was] utterly regardless of her appearance [would] be safely pronounced deficient in some of the more important qualities which the term “good character” implies.” The exhibit reveals the extremely difficult situation most middle-class women found themselves in regarding appropriate attire, while also bearing large numbers of children, and basically running households on the farm and in the cities. Women of this period would have overcome these challenges during some of the most difficult years of early Oklahoma Territorial and Statehood history, while making the land runs, and living in log cabins and sod houses.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:39:22 +0000
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