Notecards

Colonial Clothing: Undergarments

Source:

Walker, Niki, and Bobbie Bedell. The Milliner . Crabtree Publishing, 2001.

Quote:

“Being fashionable involved more than just wearing the latest clothing. Women had to be dressed properly underneath their gowns, too! Colonial women wore several undergarments including a shift, stays, stockings, petticoats, pockets, and hoops. Undergarments were made of cotton, linen, or silk. The undergarments of wealthy women were made of finer materials than those of working women, they owned more of them.” (pg. 20) 

Paraphrase:

• There was more to just wearing the latest clothing. 
• Women had to be dressed underneath their clothes too.
• The English women had to wear many undergarments.
• They had to wear a shift, stays, stockings, petticoats, pockets, and hoops.
• There were three types of materials that were used to make undergarments, silk, cotton, or linen. 
• Wealthy women wore undergarments with finer materials. 
• The working women didn’t wear as many fine materials. 

My Ideas:

English women had a lot of undergarments to wear underneath their clothes. It was a long process to put on all the clothes, and some undergarments needed help by another person to put on. For example on the back of stays there was a lace that had to be tied and looked like you needed help tying the lace. I wonder if in the summer the women got hot from so many undergarments. There were seven undergarments that the women had to wear including a shift, a stay, stockings, petticoats, pockets, and hoops! Were the hoops heavy since some were made out of metal? Was it hard to breathe with the stays tightly pulled around the back? What if you slouched with the stay on, would it hurt because of the hard material inside? What about when a women had to lean over if they dropped a sewing needle, would the stay snap? The main idea of the stay is to improve posture and support the back. Children also had to wear stays to develop a good posture. Women even had a garter above the knee to keep the stockings from falling down. One of the first undergarments that you put on is the shift, the main job of the shift is to soak up the sweat. I can infer that it was very uncomfortable to have wet sweat on you for the whole day. It must have been hard to put on all of these undergarments. All the other cultures, Indian and African didn’t wear any undergarments. Most of the Indians didn’t even have clothing on half their body. These cultures were very different in clothing style. 

History:

Created: 10/13/2016 01:09 PM