TRADITIONS GOING AWAY

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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The wedding dress has been considered the quintessential part of every bride’s big day since the

Victorian Era.  

Custom bridal gowns by Evellyon Atelier. These elaborate, runway-ready gowns are the pinnacle of many brides' dreams
for their big day. Photo courtesy of Nicole Dice of Evellyon Atelier.

The tradition of big dresses and even bigger ceremonies is a relatively modern development and has become a large part of pop culture. Shows like Say Yes to the Dress and movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding capitalize on the cultural importance of that oh-so-important day. What’s truly interesting, on the other hand, isn’t the tradition we all expect and follow. It’s the one that we’ve seemingly forgotten about: the going away outfit.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the practice, the going away outfit is the clothes the bride changes into just before she and her groom rush out and away to their romantic honeymoon. This outfit would be bridal in feel, but more comfortable and easier to move around in. The idea of it was to keep up the feeling of ceremony while also providing the bride with a new outfit to greet her new life in.

The traditions of the going away outfit closely follow existing wedding traditions from different cultures and time periods.

A fashion plate from 1820 detailing different wedding dresses, styles, and colours. Source.

Back before the Victorian era, brides would simply wear their best clothing on their wedding day and would get married in any colour that dress happened to be. If they commissioned custom wedding clothes, the idea was that they would continue to wear that dress until it fell out of fashion or until it fell apart. Sometimes dresses were more elaborate on the big day but were then adjusted so they were more suitable for every-day wear. These Georgian era brides still had ceremonies as elaborate as they could afford, it was their wedding day, after all, and a time to show off.

 19th Century wedding veil from the collections of the
Aurora Museum & Archives. The veil has a crown of wax orange
blossoms. Photo courtesy of Rong Zhou.

Wearing white wasn't really a style until the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. Along with white puffy dresses came the style of orange blossoms as the wedding flower of choice.

Many eastern wedding traditions involve changing outfits throughout the ceremony or for an after-party. Some, such as Chinese or Hindu weddings, involve wearing a bright red dress for luck and good fortune in the bride’s upcoming life. It has now become popular for Chinese brides to include a photo-shoot in a western-style white dress before changing back into traditional red.

While these traditions may hint at why going away outfits came into style, nothing actually mentions when the tradition started. Several contemporary wedding blogs and websites mention bringing the tradition back, and while one blog provides a picture of a couple in their going away clothes from 1940, there isn’t any other information. My mother fondly remembers her going away outfit from her first wedding. She made herself a cream pantsuit with a cinched waist and padded shoulders, quite a daring look for the late 80s. My grandmother always smiles when she looks

Ines Petrella and George Borg. Ines, my grandmother, wears
her going away outfit as they wave goodbye like movie stars
to their wedding guests. Photo courtesy of Rachel Dice.

at the photos of her going away outfit, and if you ask just right, she’ll take out the old Eaton’s box that holds the matching hat and purse —they were patent alligator leather, which was something she says only movie stars wore. Sometimes the going away outfit had even better memories associated with it than the wedding dress! 

Traditions like this are truly reflective of the intricacies of contemporary culture. They fade out of common use within a generation, yet no one can remember when they started or why. This is a challenge to all museums that collect textiles and local memory. Why do we only keep wedding dresses, but no going away outfits, or even bridesmaid clothes? With no rhyme or reason to most contemporary traditions, you never know what will appear or disappear next.

If I ever get married, you can bet that my going away outfit will be just as spectacular as the dress I first show up in!

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While digital going away outfits aren't a thing, I'd like to say that my U of T sweatpants and my fuzzy sweater are the pinnacle of fashion for these types of events. It has been a pleasure and a privilege writing for the Sew What column of Musings! Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my posts thus far! May our next writer continue to enjoy your readership.  

CONTEXTUAL TEXTILES

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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Having worked with museum textile collections quite often over the last year and a half, it has come to my attention that textile collections are consistently inconsistent. Even when preparing for my own exhibition—which is entirely textile-based—I found that I spent more time getting lost amongst the clothes and fabrics than actually finding what I set out to find. This could be due to my own shortcomings, of course, though I doubt anyone could simply ignore splendid gowns and garments when given the chance to freely look at them.

These baby trousers are made of grey wool
and red crochet trim. They close at the front
in a "Y" shape with buttons to make dressing
a baby easier. Photos courtesy of Rachel Dice. 

Some of the greatest challenges of working with textile collections involve curiosity. For example, if a garment is buttoned, suddenly you want to know what it looks like unbuttoned and laid flat, or the opposite; an unbuttoned, flat garment creates the desire to know what it looks like completely put together. This goes beyond simple things like shirts or coats. If the face of a garment changes because it is fastened or unfastened, wouldn’t it fascinate you to see? While working at the Aurora Museum & Archives, I found a tiny pair of wool trousers, obviously meant for a baby.

They were horribly bug-eaten, and just as clearly home-made. The little trousers are entirely one piece with no seams at all and join in the front with rows of little buttons. They were designed to be buttoned onto a baby without having to force little legs through pants, much like snap-together baby rompers work now. In short, playing around with the teeny trousers to see how they work was irresistible, but how can you know whether or not some textiles can stand up to the abuse of use?

Most of the time, the textiles will tell you themselves.

Wool and thick cottons are usually very sturdy; they retain their strength and functionality even in the face of bug-eaten holes. They rarely become stiff or immovable - we can save that for leather - and usually will not rip without concentrated effort. Sturdy velvets with short pile also fall under this category, as well as thickly woven silks. Many of these fabrics were made to withstand use and wear, so they hold up well even after a century or two of disuse. Wool is my favorite textile to work with. Yes, it is often bug-eaten, but the fabric is sturdy and

This late 19th century black wool vest with butterfly sleeves
in still in amazing condition. If it wasn't part of a museum
collection, you'd hardly believe it wasn't new. Photo
courtesy of Rachel Dice.

colour-fast. It’s resistant to all kinds of use and is even self-extinguishing! Aside from bug-eaten holes or discolouration, wool garments are most likely to suffer from the thread giving away in the stitching rather than the fabric itself tearing apart.

Oftentimes, it’s silk and sheer cottons that suffer the most. Both are made from plant fibre and are much more sensitive to changes in their environment. Additionally, unlike wool, silk or cotton are not self-extinguishing. In fact, they are likely to go up in smoke in very short amounts of time. Silk also tends to dry out faster than any other fabric; it can become so dry and brittle that it begins to flake or tear apart under its own weight or even the most negligible amount of stress. Sometimes it feels like even looking at a brittle piece of old silk too intensely will tear it. It makes conservation work tricky, and, for some reason, it is often some of the most beautiful pieces that are far too delicate to ever be displayed. Such is the burden of textile collections.

This beautiful jacket is lined with cream silk. The silk is extremely fragile and brittle, and has began
ripping apart as if it was attacked by a particularly enthusiastic cat. Now, the garment needs special
supports and a backer board - it can't support its own weight, even lying down. Photo by Rachel Dice.

What makes these collections even more interesting, however, is considering how fashions today will fit into them. Will future generations centuries from now curse me for not saving an old sweater, or for recycling old shoes? At what point do we decide what kinds of fashions are representative of an era? Will schoolchildren one day cluster around a faded pair of mom jeans like we cluster around Victorian gowns and World War uniforms today?

Here we have the classic museum student, wearing mom jeans
and a colour-blocked sweatshirt. Are these the kinds of textiles we can
expect to store in the museums of our future?
Photo courtesy of Rong Zou. 

Nobody can tell the future, but we certainly try our best to create stories of the past. If it ever comes down to it, which of your outfits would you put in a museum?

HAIR RAISING FASHION

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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Have you ever wondered how certain fashions took off?

Hair broach from the Aurora Museum and Archives
collection. It is intricately woven with more hair as a
backing, and has small hair-wrapped wire letters in the
shape of a J and an S. Accession #2001.5.2. Photo
courtesy of Rachel Dice. 

The clothes we wear and the accessories we choose have always been about self-expression. When we dress with flair or with somber blacks and dark colours, the average person gets a hint about how we’re feeling and what we want to present to the world. Funeral blacks have become the universally acknowledged Western indication of a loss through death. These colours represent the deepest mourning and respect for the dead. In our modern times, we usually only wear black to the funeral and after that colours are free to enter our wardrobes once more. This wasn’t always so.

In the Victorian era, mourning culture dictated that a recently widowed woman should wear full black for an entire year. After this period, she could then switch to half-mourning for another year, which meant she was allowed to wear grey, greyish-purples, and dark brown along with black. Ultimately, it was a dreary colour set and every person who set eyes on her would instantly know that she was in mourning. Mourning etiquette was so strict that it not only dictated the colours of your clothes, but it dictated what kind of jewelry you could wear as well. The standard gold and silver were allowed, but anything with bright bursts of colour like rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, or their shiny glass equivalents were strictly forbidden. Diamonds were permissible, since they are technically colourless, and pearls were favoured since they were often used to represent tears. The best embellishments for mourning jewelry, however, were made from the hair of the deceased.

Hair broach from the Aurora Museum &
Archives. This broach showcases a beautifully
woven oval of dark brown hair.
Accession# 82.7.3. Photo courtesy of Rachel
Dice.

Recently, it has become popular to have a necklace made with a silver ornament that is actually a canister in which people can keep a bit of the ashes of their recently lost loved ones. It’s a modern way to keep them close to your heart even after they’ve passed on. While this trend is meant to preserve memories of the dead and comfort the living, it’s a little bit different from the Victorian concept of mourning jewelry because there’s no etiquette book or similar set of social rules that demands you wear it. The concept of death itself has actually changed vastly over the last century; instead of it being a public event, death has become private and almost taboo to speak about in polite company. In the Victorian era, death and funerals happened at home. “Not only were people used to being around bodies that were dying and had recently died, but the kind of associations that we have today of the dead body being a gruesome thing or a frightening thing was a little different.” (source). 

In the Victorian era, mourning was part of the woman’s sphere. It was her wardrobe that changed, her social life that changed, and her pastimes that changed. Usually, a woman who had lost a loved one would take it upon herself to make mourning ornaments out of their hair and then have it set in gold or silver. Other common ways to use hair were the making of ornamental wreaths that were often framed and hung in the family home. These wreathes were usually added to following the loss of a loved one but could also be added to with living family members’ hair as well. Wreathes made of both living and deceased family members’ hair were often more of a sentimental family tree.

So why hair?

Hair wreath made by
Jean Malloy (b.1796, d. 1857) of Aurora,
from the Aurora Museum & Archives collection.
This wreath is made from several different family
member's hair. Accession# 988.30.
Photo courtesy of Rachel Dice. 

Well, hair is remarkably decay-resistant. Hair jewelry over 150 years old—while slightly tarnished on its metal bits—still holds the lustre and shine it had when it was first created. Most people believe that hair keeps growing even after you die, and while this is false—the skin around your hair contracts, making it look longer—the idea has persisted. Even Queen Victoria, who famously wore mourning for 40 years following the death of her husband Prince Albert, wore a choker necklace made with a lock of Albert’s hair.

The art and sentiments behind this jewelry is beautiful. At the end of the day, it’s a desire to remember a loved one and to honour family relationships—all while being fashionable. It might seem a little hair-raising to our delicate modern sensibilities, but fashion changes alongside society. My real question is, how would these look if Victorians dyed their hair all sorts of unnatural colours like we do today?

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Extra Reading for the curious: A Victorian Guide for making your own hair jewelry published in 1867. Have you got the skills to bring back this trend?


If historic fashions and traditions are your style, the Aurora Museum & Archives is opening a new exhibition - The Wardrobes of Aurora: Dressing for Birth, Death, and Everything in Between. Curated by Rachel Dice, Carolyn Ben, Jessica Ho, and Rong Zou, the exhibition will feature these hair-art pieces and much more.

Intricately woven, braided, and twisted hair art
in the shapes of tubes. From the collections at
the Aurora Museum & Archives, this piece is
incomplete, and made of three different people's
hair. The box this was donated in says Grandma
Lana's hair, aunt Rosie's, and Louise. Photos courtesy
of Rachel Dice.

 

WASSAILING WE GO: CAROLLING FASHION FROM AGES LONG PAST

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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So what’s your holiday style: trendy, traditional, or drunken viking?

Victorian winter wear for women and children, circa 1850. Source. 

If you’re planning on being ultra-traditional and going out carolling this holiday season, the most important thing to think about is your aesthetic. The popular thing these days is to wear a horrible Christmas sweater—some of which light up or play music. Or maybe, you might want to stick with good old red and green, which isn’t as old as you’d think. Our red and green Christmas colours

This plush blue velvet coat with white fur collar and cuffs
from the Aurora Museum & Archives looks more like 
what Santa would have originally worn. Photo courtesy
of Rachel Dice.

come from depictions of Santa Claus working amongst his merrily-clad elves, but originally, Santa would have worn white and blue during the holiday season. A 1920s era blue velvet coat with its white fur collar and cuffs in the textile collection at the Aurora Museum & Archives is more in line with what he would have worn back in his early days. So how did Santa’s outfits become such a big part of the holidays? And what about carolling?

Well, it’s a pretty well-known fact that the Santa we know and love today got his outfit from Coca-Cola ads introduced during the 1920s. Due to the popularity of the drink, it’s understandable that his cool red outfit would become a popular Christmas icon, leading festive revellers to don a red and white hat in honour of the festive figure. The classic look became part of an old holiday tradition—carolling.

In our modern day and age, carolling has pretty much become something confined to a stage at a

Michael Goodchild in his performing blacks at
the Exultante Winter Concert, the modern
carolling event. Photo courtesy of Annelise
Danielle. 

Christmas market or at special winter concerts. Depending on the venue and the choir, the styles we see either lean towards performing blacks or holiday gear. If you’re lucky, you might even see some Victorian-inspired carollers in top-hats, bonnets, and hoop skirts. Despite our modern influences in colour choices—most Victorian-inspired carollers perform decked out in red and green—actual Victorian carollers would have just worn their winter clothing accessorized with some holly or other seasonal flowers to mark the festive occasion.

If the Victorian era isn’t quite your style, then perhaps the real roots of carolling are for you. Carolling is an extremely old tradition that actually pre-dates Christmas itself. Originally called wassailing, this pagan Yuletide tradition was much more than just singing songs. Wassailers would perform ritual chants, sing, act out small skits, and make a merry havoc in winter months. These activities were usually accompanied by a traditional drink—called wassail. This drink would have been somewhere between a mead, beer, and apple cider. Wassailing would usually happen in an apple orchard on the twelfth night of Yule to awaken the trees, chase away demons, and convince the trees to thrive over the next year. After finishing up in the orchard, wassailers generally pointed themselves in the direction of the nearest village and continued on their drunken way.

Traditional clothing for wassailers was the ever-present tunic worn by most medieval men, or a bliaut and kirtle worn by women. Since it was also winter, wassailers wrapped furs around their leggings and arms to keep themselves warm, and also added in a mid-length cloak that usually went to their

Typical medieval garb for men, rich and poor. Wassailers
would have the addition of furs and capes to keep themselves
warm as they launched into the night to wreak festive havoc.
Source.

elbows. The type of fur was important as well. Most wassailers were peasants, which means that they used weasel or mink fur instead of the softer furs favoured by the rich. If a fur-clad wassailer made their way over to you demanding figgy pudding or the like (since that song didn’t exist yet), then you had better give it to them! People who refused to comply to a wassailer’s requests were pulled into rowdy or racy skits and chants while other wassailers caused havoc around them. Now THAT sounds like a holiday tradition that we all need.

So how about we forget about the traditional and tame group carolling, and go all out this holiday season? A bowl of cider, some furry leggings, and a bit of mischief are all you need to get into the wassailing mood.

The modern version of "traditional" carollers. Source.

Whatever your style, enjoy the holidays and have an excellent new year!

MORE THAN CLOTHES

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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Guislaine Lemay and Jordan Fee standing at the entrance to
Wearing Our Identity, photo courtesy of Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

A view of the exhibition, including a man's caribou coat
made, unusually, with winter fur. Photo courtesy of
Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

At the beginning of November, MUSSA organized a student trip to Montreal, which was written about by Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif this past Friday in her post ALLONS À MONTRÉAL: MUSEUM STUDIES FIELD TRIP. On this trip we were able to visit an alarming number of museums in pretty much three days (five museum visits for most of us, and six for a determined few). A specific exhibition stood out among the rest and has become a source of inspiration for my own work with textiles. 

The exhibit, titled Wearing Our Identity—The First Peoples Collection, is currently on display at the McCord Museum in Montreal. It is a permanent exhibition with a little twist—the objects on display switch out every two years in a pre-planned pattern. The main focus of the exhibition is to encourage the public to “explore the complex heritage of the First Peoples of Canada and learn more about how their dress has helped define their rich cultures and identities” (source). In a nutshell, Wearing Our Identity aims to show how Indigenous culture is  intrinsically linked with clothing and aesthetic representation.

Guislaine Lemay leads a group through her exhibit, including
Dr. Cara Krmpotich, Director of the Museum Studies program.
Photo courtesy of Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

The exhibition was co-curated by Guislaine Lemay, McCord’s resident curator for the Indigenous Cultures collection, and a dedicated team of Indigenous peoples who worked closely with Lemay to ensure accuracy in content as well as design. It was Guislaine Lemay herself who took our group on a guided tour of the exhibition.

Going into this exhibition, I was fascinated by the layout and the different styles of garments on display. One of my favourite pieces was a little girl’s parka, made of caribou fur and sinew from the early twentieth century. We were told that the parka showed it belonged to a little girl who had not yet reached the age of puberty. We were also told that the furs were sewn in a special way so that every layer did not have stitching holes inside, therefore making it warmer and more waterproof. The style of the parka and the stitching technique were specific to the Inuit Inuinnaq, and all of this contributed to the parka’s role in the identity of the wearer.

Clothing itself plays an extremely important role in our lives. The way we dress and choose to represent ourselves is a deliberate action we take, from buying the clothes, making them, or just grabbing them out of the closet. Some people even come to be known for their taste in clothes, whether they usually dress in blue polo shirts or vintage aesthetics with a modern twist. These clothing choices become part of their identity, influencing the way they see themselves and the way we see each other.

A display of moccasins made with different
styles depending on the cultural and regional
group. Photo courtesy of Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif.

Now, imagine that you couldn’t wear your favourite sweater. Imagine that those earrings your grandmother gave you were banned, even though you tried to wear them as often as possible. Imagine being forced to wear clothes that were selected for you by strangers, clothes that were strange, outlandish, and even just dreadfully boring. You would hardly feel like yourself, and perhaps if it went on long enough, you’d forget who you were to begin with. This is another important part of Wearing Our Identity. The exhibition addresses the cultural importance of clothing for Indigenous peoples, while also looking at points in Canadian history where their clothing was banned, appropriated, and even turned into marketing gimmicks.

So the next time you reach into your closet for that outfit that boosts your confidence or makes you feel invincible, remember that our country hasn’t always let others have that same choice. No identity deserves to be repressed through clothing. Remember, it’s more than just clothes.

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For the curious ones, here's some further reading:

The Press Release for the Exhibition Opening

The Press Release for the Exhibition Catalogue

The Texts Used in Wearing Our Identity

CINDERELLA'S GLASS SLIPPER: IS GLASS FASHION MORE THAN JUST A FAIRY TALE?

Sew What | Rachel Dice

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What do an Actress, a Princess, a Singer, and a Glass Artist all have in common?

Despite the fact that they were all ladies, their most interesting shared trait is that they were all owners of glass dresses. The combination of glass and fashion is something that most people leave in their childhood. Cinderella and her glass slippers are probably the last we’ve ever thought of it, and we all knew it was just magic anyways. But in four museums around the world are four very special, very rare glass dresses—the only four in existence, as a matter of fact.

Who wore it first?

Actress Georgia Cayvan in her glass
dress,1893. Source.

The original glass dress was created by the Libbey Glass Company in 1893 at the request of an actress named Georgia Cayvan. Georgia was inspired to commission the dress at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago—generally called the Chicago World Fair of 1893—where the Libbey Glass Company had their Crystal Pavilion. In the pavilion, visitors had the unique experience of entering a crystal room. The room was filled with furniture and decorations made from glass. Even the window curtains, lampshades, and cushions on the furniture were made from spun glass. As the story goes, Georgia fell in love. Enchanted by the room, she ordered 12 yards of spun glass fabric at a cost of $25 a yard and had her own glass dress tailored. Georgia Cayvan wore the first glass dress ever made, but soon found that it was too brittle to wear regularly. After dazzling the crowds at some of her shows, she allowed her dress to go on display in Libbey’s pavilion. 

Eulalia, Infanta of Spain posing in the
crystal room in Libbey's pavilion, 1893.
Source.

The next dress was commissioned by none other than Eulalia, the Infanta of Spain. Like Georgia, she was enchanted by the crystal room and the shimmering glass gown displayed within it. She commissioned her own dress for a grand total of $2,500—approximately $70,121 now. Not only was the dress fabulously expensive, but it also weighed over 14 pounds. The dress took a team of workers 67 hours to create, but Mr. Libbey—the owner of Libbey’s Glass—thought that it was well worth the effort. Eulalia was a popular royal and everything she did found its way into newspapers, articles, and gossip. Libbey and other glass manufacturers thought that glass clothing would soon be the next big trend in the fashion world. Unfortunately, this prediction never came true. Eulalia’s dress was donated to the Deutsches Museum in 1924 by her sister, Princess Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria.

Singer Ellene Jaqua in her glass dress
from Paris, 1902. Source. 

The third of four dresses was created for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris, and is described being made of ‘moonlight cloth’. The material of the dress is the very same as Georgia and Eulalia’s spun glass creations. The dress was purchased by an America singer named Ellene Jaqua, who was photographed wearing it in 1902. The glass ‘moonlight cloth’ would have shimmered and shifted colour under spotlights, which would have made Ellene’s performances a captivating display.  The dress was donated to the New Brunswick Museum in 1930.

Helen Munro's blue woven
glass wedding ensemble,
1943. Source.

The fourth and final dress was worn by Helen Munro in 1943. The dress was made as her wedding dress for her marriage to Professor WES Turner of the University of Sheffield. The dress was made by Fibre Glass Limited of Glasgow and is the only one to be made from industrial glass. The entire wedding ensemble included a blue dress, hat, handbag, and shoes that were all made of woven glass. According to Helen, the advantage of a glass dress in wartime Britain was that it didn’t require clothing coupons. The downside was that the shoes cut her feet. Maybe Cinderella left her glass slipper behind on purpose. Helen’s glass wedding dress is on display at the Turner Museum of Glass at the University of Sheffield and is the only glass dress on display at all, as the others are much too fragile.

Cinderella’s dress and glass slippers disappeared at midnight, but research is currently underway to stabilize and conserve these glass dresses for decades to come. When all is said and done, would you wear a glass dress?