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?