 Hi, everybody. My name is Angie Grove, and I am the executive director here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. Today, I am honored to introduce Skye Makris, writer, seamstress, and fashion historian. Skye is a historian and seamstress who recreates historical garments with methods used in those time periods. She is also head of historical dress here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. She is often seen around the homestead, dressed in her own hand sewn 1780s outfits, giving tours to the public, dressing up all of our other volunteers, demonstrating period accurate garment construction to our visitors, and educating people about everyday life on a frontier farmstead. Outside of historic fashion, she is also seen here at the homestead feeding the fellow volunteers and museum staff with historic baking items. As a writer, seamstress, and fashion historian, Skye has dedicated herself to exploring and preserving the past. Since 2012, she has documented both authentic historical garments and her own modern recreations on her blog, My Kingdom for a Hat, which has been featured in Vermont's Seven Days. Her research on historical dress has appeared in Racked, Bustle, The Prog Review, Caboodle Magazine, and more. As a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, she drafts and sews medieval clothing to period specifications. Skye is also a diss staff member of Warner's Regiment in 18th century reenactment group, all of this proving that her historical interests stretch far beyond just the 18th century though. However, today Skye will be focusing on the late 18th century, giving us an intimate and interactive look at women's wear during the time that Fanny Allen lived here at the homestead. Through this, we hope to better understand how 18th century dress tied inextricably to the social and material context of the era and broaden our perspective of this richly fascinating time. Please help me and welcome Skye. Good afternoon. I'm so happy to welcome you to Dressing the 18th Century Working Woman. My name is Skye McCarras. As Angie mentioned, I'm a seamstress and dress historian, as well as the head of costume here at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. Broadly speaking, that means I research historical garments, mostly 18th century, and recreate them with methods used in the period. I use historically accurate materials and tools, as well as pattern structure and cut of the garments. 18th century clothes were cut and tailored very differently from modern ones, as you'll soon hear more about. Everything I'm wearing today, except the shoes, socks, and printed kerchiefs, was handmade by me using these period accurate methods. Discussing these methods and materials in detail would take a whole other lecture. But briefly, I'll note that I use wool and linen, the staple textiles for working and middle class people in the 18th century. Linen has been processed from the flax plant for thousands of years, including right here on the Ethan Allen Homestead. Next month, we're actually holding our annual Flax Travaganza, where we'll instruct the public in turning our homegrown flax into linen. Pencil in October 15th, if that interests you, and you can talk more about it to Tom at the end of the presentation. Also after today's presentation, please let Angie or me know if you're interested in learning more about specific garments since we may try running a basic pattern making class this winter if there's enough interest. A few notes of terminology before we begin. Just testing this. When I say 18th century dress, I'm referring to all clothing in the 18th century, the way people in the given society dress themselves. When I say gown, I'm referring to what we in the 21st century think of as a dress, that is, a long-skirted garment. When I say 18th century working women, I'm focusing specifically on Anglo women in and around New England during the second half of the 18th century. Women in other colonies or of other ethnic backgrounds, particularly black and native women, shared some similarities in dress with these women. But the differences are numerous enough that I can't adequately cover them today. For further study on other cultures and their modes of dress in the 18th century, I recommend various sources I'll talk more about at the end of my presentation. When I say working women, I'm really referring to almost all women. By working, I don't just mean earning money, but actively involved in the labor of one's survival. In the 18th century, only the very top of the social ladder could really avoid work completely. Even comfortable merchants' wives would cook and perform household chores alongside their own servants. The wife of a tradesman was expected to be what historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich called a deputy husband, well versed in her husband's trade and able to stand in for him if necessary. Therefore, working dress in this context refers to a wide variety of different garments and styles. I'm using the term specifically to include court dress and other specialized garments like riding habits. What I'll be showing you today are three variations on what a woman might wear while performing various types of labor. I'd also like to touch on the differences between today's clothing economy and that of the 18th century. In 1791, Secretary-Treasurer Alexander Hamilton presented to Congress a report on the subject of manufacturers, a comprehensive look at industry in the nascent United States. Hamilton wrote that it is computed in a number of districts that two thirds, three quarters, and even four fifths of all of the clothing of the inhabitants are made by themselves. Clothes that were purchased were usually more complicated garments like gowns and tailored jackets, whose construction methods were trade secrets kept within guilds. Even these items, though, were not off the rack as they would be today, but made to measure for each specific person. A tailor or a dressmaker would keep each customer's measurements on file, updating them as the person might fluctuate. Getting a new gown wasn't the whim that it is today, but rather a production of a few weeks, getting measured, choosing fabric, perhaps allowing time for that fabric to ship if it wasn't in stock at the time, and finally waiting for the seamstress to complete your order. Even Martha Jefferson herself, wife of Thomas Jefferson, inventoried her wardrobe in 1777 as containing 16 gowns, 18 counting the two to be made up, nine petticoats, 18 aprons, and 20 shifts, a respectable number, but nowhere near what a politician's wife would own today. All this indicates that clothing was valued considerably more than we value it nowadays. Garments were worn until they wore out or no longer fit, at which point they were handed down to another person or the fabric was repurposed. This repurposing is actually the main reason, other than simply age, why we have so few extant 18th century garments. A woman's 1770s dress might be cut into petticoats for her daughters in the 1780s or altered to fit the new fashionable silhouette in the 90s or 1800s. For example, this gown currently held in the Victoria and Albert Museum was made in the 1770s as indicated by the wide pleats at the upper back that were popular in this decade. In the late 1790s, when higher waist lines and longer sleeves became popular, the gown was altered to be fashionable once again. This is also why finding resources specifically on working people's clothing in the 18th century can be so challenging. Most extant garments in museums today are on the luxurious side, since a fancier item was less likely to be worn until it fell apart. Piecing together working class dress requires many primary sources like paintings, bills of goods, and even runaway servant advertisements describing in detail what the individual was wearing. For example, from this 1757 advertisement placed in the Pennsylvania Gazette, we can learn that Irish immigrant Catherine Preaden owned a striped calico gown, a striped linen gown, two petticoats, one of them striped, white yarn socks, and old shoes without buckles. Piecing together working class outfits is more of a puzzle than the upper class counterpart, but I personally find it all the more rewarding for it. With that in mind, I want you to pay attention throughout this talk to how adjustable my clothes are. They're fastened with laces, ties, or pins, all of which can be moved much more easily than buttons. My clothes fit me well now, but they're designed to continue fitting me plus or minus 20, even 30 pounds, very necessary for women who likely spent much of their adult lives pregnant. This is very much in line with a culture that sees clothing as a valuable resource to invest in, not a frivolity to throw away. Not that there weren't plenty of frivolities in 18th century dress, but they usually came in the form of accessories rather than whole garments. All right, with all of that said, are you ready to dress me up? Let's get started. The shift was the base layer for all 18th century women. Made of linen, it served as the most basic foundational layer and could also double as a night dress. The shift is the only part of my clothing that actually touches my body directly. This is crucial in an era when neither laundry nor bathing was as frequent as it is today. Changing and washing your shift at least a few times a week would keep both your body and your outer clothes relatively fresh. Being made of linen also helps with this, since linen has unique moisture wicking properties that keep it from absorbing too much sweat. Even in the 21st century, it's a much better choice for a hot day than something like cotton, which is notorious for retaining moisture. I've attended reenactment events in 102 degree heat, and I'm pretty sure I was more comfortable than some of the tourists in the crowd wearing modern clothes. My hair is pinned up and tucked beneath a cap, made of the same linen as my shift. This will help manage sweat and keep my hair relatively clean and dry. Putting up and covering one's hair was a sign of respectable womanhood in the 18th century. The loose flowing hair you see in period dramas definitely isn't historically accurate. Sorry to any Outlander fans out there. Next up is the first of many petticoats, or what we call skirts today. This petticoat, called a dicky petticoat, is shorter and less full than the rest. Acting as a smoothing underlayer. It also forms a barrier between my waist area and my stays, so I don't chafe while moving and bending. This one ties at one side, unlike the others, which tie at the front and the back. Now, a quick interlude to talk about my shoes and socks, also called stockings. These were both more or less unisex items in the 18th century. Both sexes wore knitted stockings, typically of wool or silk, that came in a variety of colors and tied below the knee with garters, as you can see here. Sometimes designs called clocks, no relation to the timepiece, were knitted into them. Shoes were made of leather or wool with a low heel and a buckle closure. I bought my stockings from Penny River Costumes and my shoes from Samson Historical, and I highly recommend both shops. At the end of my presentation, I will discuss a few other high quality historical reproduction shops as well. Circling back to my upper body, now I'll tie on my pocket. Women's pockets in the 18th century were not part of their garments, but rather separate pouches tied on about the waist. You may have heard of Lucy Lockett, who lost her pocket. Well, in those days, a pocket was actually something a person could lose. Mine are plain, but there are many examples of richly embroidered or even patchworked pockets. These were common gifts between friends or relatively simple projects for a young girl. My first petticoat. This type of closure is called an apron front. Essentially, two pleated aprons sewn together, whose ties overlap about the waist. This creates about a 10 inch slit on each side where I can access my pockets. And in case you can't see me too closely, this is a larger image of a woman undergoing the same process. I usually wear two full length petticoats on top of my shorter under petticoat, but I might wear three or even four on a particularly cold day. It's still pretty warm outside, so I'm wearing a nice breathable linen. But in a few weeks, I'll make the switch to heavier linen or wool. Winterweight petticoats can even be quilted, but thankfully it's not quite time for that yet. Remember that my thighs are technically bare. My shift and under petticoat do reach my knees, but I don't have anything fitted on my thighs like I do on my calves. As such, it's important to really bottle in that heat in the winter. Layering petticoats is just the thing. Now, a printed cotton kerchief. I buy my kerchiefs from a few different shops, which again, I'll list at the end of the presentation. Burnley and Trowbridge in particular is an excellent resource, since their kerchiefs are actually reproductions of specific extant ones. So this one, for example, which I'm going to wear with my next outfit, was inspired and based on an original handkerchief left with a child at the Foundling Hospital. These designs were usually created with a block printing technique, which originated in India in the 12th century. Kerchiefs add a bit of extra sun protection and sweat absorption, as well as a pop of color to what might be an otherwise plain outfit. And make no mistake, the 18th century loved color. The more vivid the hue, the higher the status of the person wearing it, since a deeper color required more coats of dye. Anyone following fashion in the 18th century was piling on the colors, as illustrated by 18th century caricaturist Robert Dytton. Now comes the rather amusingly named bedgown. As you might suspect, the bedgown is probably the most casual item in the 18th century woman's wardrobe. It's an untailored, loosely fitted jacket that wraps around the waist and is fastened with pins. Now keep a close eye on these pins. They're a crucial component of 18th century dress that I'll talk more about in a bit. Since bedgowns are so loosely fitted, they can be worn without stays, the stiffened corset-like undergarments that provide structure to other 18th century clothes. You can see in the two portraits on this slide that the women depicted are not wearing stays as their bedgowns sag and curve in a way consistent with a natural breast shape. Bedgowns are perfect for working around the house or spending a cozy evening in with the family. Women accompanying military campaigns also wore them since they're so easy to throw on and move around in. Essentially an 18th century sweatshirt and just as comfortable. Finally, I add my apron. Blue and white checked aprons were very common in the 18th century. I've chosen these two images to illustrate both their ubiquity and the practice of tucking up the apron on one or both sides. This was done variously to provide easier pocket access, to carry bulky loads, or simply for aesthetic purposes, even working women like to follow the trends. This would be a perfectly acceptable 18th century outfit for chores around the house or minding the children. However, our working woman's average day includes much more than that. Suppose she has to go into town, perhaps to sell her wares if she's a merchant, or to visit the market or perform assorted errands. Let's change into something a bit more on the go. I'll be wearing most of the same layers as before with one notable exception, my stays. This is the part you've probably all been waiting for since stays are by far the most foreign element of 18th century dress from a modern perspective. Stays were the 18th century equivalent of a corset, which is actually a 19th century term, worn beneath the gown to smooth out the body and ensure the outer garments hang correctly, the shape wear of the 18th century. They were also, however, much more than that. Stays provided support to the bust and back and helped manage the weight of many layers of clothing. Dress historian Lauren Stowell writes, the most uncomfortable I have ever been in costume was when I thought I'd just not wear my stays that day. The waist seam of the dress cut into me badly and the weight of the dress hung on my shoulders, my how I wished I had worn the corset. This is a great example of how fashion trends do not develop out of nowhere, but rather arise in response to specific material concerns. The less often you bathe yourself or wash your outer clothes, the more layers of undergarments you might want to keep those outer garments clean. The more layers you're wearing, the more you might want some support for all those heavy waist bands cutting into your middle, especially in the cold. Of course, aesthetics do play a large role, but throughout history, form tends to follow function. Note as well the linen caps I mentioned earlier. What is practically a way to manage the hair and keep it clean becomes aesthetically an expression of human creativity. So as my lovely husband is helping me lace these up, let's get a few things straight. I will also hand around my spare pair so you can examine them in further detail. Would you mind grabbing the spare pair? Thank you very much. So stays were stiffened undergarments, worn for hundreds of years and known by different names, such as bodice in the 17th century and corset in the 19th. In the 18th century, they were stiffened with reeds or whalebone. Now whalebone sounds scary, but it's more like keratin, what our fingernails are made of. It's easily molded by body heat and conforms to the body after a few wearings. I made these with imitation whalebone, which is a type of plastic with the same properties as whalebone. Other costumers also use plastic cable ties, which are almost identical and a lot cheaper. And the ones I'm passing around were actually made with those cable ties as well. Stays were worn by women of all social classes. Though the specific materials used could obviously be more or less elaborate, the basic support layer was worn by rich and poor alike. They did indeed create a fashionable silhouette, but the support they provided to the upper back was valuable to a working woman bending over a hearth or working in the fields. They could also be worn as outerwear by a woman doing sweaty labor on a hot day, as shown in this Francis Wheatley painting. Stays were also worn even during pregnancy. There are indeed extant maternity stays from the 18th century and reenactors of today wear them on the job while expecting. Here, dress historian Amber Mendenhall Welch is modeling a pair of recreated maternity stays. Note the extra lacing on the sides so the garment can expand along with her belly. There's no pressure on the abdomen itself, only on the bust and lower back. Not too different from maternity support garments of today. What stays were not was torture devices. We've all heard the horror stories, but I'll tell you a little secret. I actually find these much more comfortable than a modern bra. They distribute the weight of my bust throughout my upper body, rather than heaping it all on my shoulders. It's a much more even sort of pressure, which is why a woman could continue wearing stays throughout pregnancy and was indeed probably grateful for the support in the later months. Stays were not designed to shrink the waist. Mine actually add an inch to my waist when they're fully laced, just from the size of the garment itself. The waist shrinking corsets you might be thinking of were actually from the late 19th century. 100 years after the time period we're discussing. I actually ask some of my reenactor friends, what's the funniest or most unusual thing you've comfortably done in a pair of stays? Here's some of what they told me. So, first, it fixes my posture. Very relatable. It is difficult to slouch in a pair of stays. In fact, when I give tours of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, I find it much easier to actually orate and properly describe the house since I'm not fighting my natural incentive to slouch. Bringing opera, sleeping through the night. Yeah. Evading hordes of fifth graders. Rowing a boat. Doing flips on a trampoline. And finally pole dancing. And there you have it. These are all women I know personally. I can vouch for this. Also, remember that like almost everything else in the 18th century, a woman's stays would have been custom made for her. Whenever you hear actresses in period dramas complain about how uncomfortable it was to wear stays on set, remember that those stays were probably just pulled out of a costume room and don't fit them properly. It would be like spending all day in the wrong size bra or pair of shoes. Probably very unpleasant, but not a statement on the garment itself. Now that my stays are on, I'm continuing to dress just as before. I've tied on my pocket and my petticoats. But this time I'll add a funny little accessory you might have noticed earlier. My pinball. I spoke briefly about adjustability in 18th century clothing and pins are an important part of that. I'm going to use pins rather than buttons or hooks to fasten the front of my gown. In addition to being more flexible if I gain or lose weight, this also saves metal. I reuse the same set of pins for every gown rather than sewing in permanent hook and eye closures. Since you never know when you might have a missing pin emergency in the middle of the market square, women carried spares in small pin cushions tied about their waists. These were considered a fashion accessory and designed to be visible, often cut into novelty shapes and usually embroidered. Also, note yet another blue and white checked apron. Once you see them, you can't unsee them. Now for the gown. I'm wearing what's called an English gown. This style was common among women of all classes and was distinguished by its unique back pleat structure. The fabric is pleated in toward the center back, creating a long column around which the side skirts are built. To better illustrate this concept, here's a photo of an unfinished one. Notice how the back is pleated carefully down from a large rectangle of fabric, leaving a narrow pleated trail in the center that will form the center back of the skirts. The side seams are fitted on the wearer's body and the excess fabric trimmed away. The side skirts are then pleated and attached separately on the left and right, anchored to the center pleated column. Some variations lacked a front panel and were filled in by an accessory called a stomacher, which could be mixed and matched with different gowns. The gown I'm wearing doesn't have one, but I'll pass around one I made for another outfit. And you see, this would be pinned on by these little tabs and the front piece folded away to accommodate them. Now, compare here the interior of my gown on the left with one and with an original from the 1780s on the right. Though the overall structure is similar, many of the original seams have curiously been left unfinished, both on the inner sleeve here and on the pleats on the next slide. This, despite the original gown, being rather sumptuous and commissioned for a fairly wealthy woman. This is extremely common in original historical garments of all eras. To me, this speaks to the different material incentives at play when these gowns, mine and the original, were created. The dressmaker who created the 1780s original was doing it to put food on the table and as such needed to work at a fairly brisk clip. In the 21st century, working as a historian rather than a tradeswoman, I have the luxury of being able to take all the time I need to really dot the I's and cross the T's. It's strange to think that neat finishings are less historically accurate than messier ones. But fashion is always shaped by material conditions and often those conditions favor quickness. Other gown styles fashionable in the late 18th century include the sack whose wide shoulder pleats resolve into a billowing back. And bonus points if anyone remembers the gown that was altered in the 1790s that I showed earlier in the Victoria and Albert Museum. That gown was originally what's called a sack gown where the pleats start at the very top of the back. There's also the Italian gown whose bodice is cut entirely separately and attached to the skirts in a more modern manner. For a clearer example, here's the inside of a striped Italian gown I made recently. And this gown I also have here if anyone would like to examine it in person after the lecture. See how the bodice ends at the bottom center back rather than continuing into pleats and the skirt is an entirely separate piece that is sewn on. By the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of Ethan Allen's life on this homestead, the Italian gown was replacing the English gown as the most fashionable option. But backwaters like Vermont are always a little behind the times. After pinning the gown closed, I'll tuck in my kerchief. And you might remember from the slide explaining Burnley and Trowbridge, this is indeed the kerchief modeled after the extant from the Foundling Hospital. This might take a bit of finagling to get right, especially without a mirror. I then put on my mitts, lightweight fingerless gloves that protect my forearms from the sun. And in the winter, of course, I would use a much heavier fabric and no longer fingerless gloves. My apron is tucked up on one side to show off the contrasting petticoat and the pinball hanging from its strings. I can also tuck up the rest to carry anything that won't fit in my pocket. Finally, to provide some shade on my walk to town, I'll top my linen cap with a black silk bonnet. This outfit is perfectly serviceable for 18th century daily wear. I've worn it, or variations on it, for all sorts of historical reenactment activities. Processing flax, cutting out petticoats, or resting with the militia on a hot afternoon. However, there is one other form of 18th century labor and particular garments associated with it that I'd also like to touch on. Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, whom I mentioned earlier, wrote in her book, Good Wives, Image and Reality and the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650 to 1750, of the Pretty Gentle Woman, a woman who prided herself not just on maintaining a household, but on beautifying it. She was not just a housewife, but a housemistress, presiding, or at least wanting to look like she presided, over a grand home equipped with servants and creature comforts. She usually had some means even in a small town, perhaps as the wife of a merchant or a wealthy tradesman. However, as I mentioned earlier, such women were by no means exempt from physical labor, even working alongside their own servants. Ulrich demonstrates this vividly with the narrative of Ursula Cutt of New Hampshire. Quoting from her book, such a woman was distinguished from the common sort by wealth, possessing silver, gold and pearls, by specialized skills, as she possessed embroidery silk and fine wrought cushions, and especially by an attitude and enlarged sense of her own person, as she wore fine sleeves, laced petticoats and a tufted cloak. The obvious luxury implied by this assemblage of fabrics and trinkets should not mislead us, however. Mistress Cutt was killed by Indians while haying on her Dover farm. So, what might a woman who enjoyed the finer, more artistic aspects of homemaking, but was still solidly middle or working class, have worn? The basic silhouette of women's clothing remained the same regardless of social position. Wealth was distinguished not by type of garment, but by the quality of the materials used. For my pretty gentle woman impression, I'll replace my linen petticoat with a faux silk one. The vivid blue color requires more coats of dye and is therefore more expensive. You bear with me a moment as I undo the many pins. I reinsert them into the pinball and now rather than trading out one of my petticoats and replacing it with the blue silk, I will simply add it as a third petticoat since fuller skirts was another indicator of higher social class. On top, I'll wear a fitted jacket in a colorful block printed cotton. It seems strange to us today to consider cotton a luxury fabric, but as historian Abby Cox reminds us, the textile economy of the 18th century was very different from today's. She writes, today we are so used to cotton being a cheap utilitarian fabric that it's difficult to understand just how expensive an 18th century printed cotton could be. The more color is in a printed cotton, the more expensive it would have been. Each dye or color required a different mordant, meaning a means of affixing it to the fabric, and a special application that ended with the customer shelling out serious cash for enough yardage for a gown. Keep in mind that it was not uncommon for a multicolored printed cotton to cost more than a medium grade silk taffeta. For indeed printed cottons available to all classes, the more intricate and multicolored patterns, as Cox writes, were reserved for those who could pay. For this jacket, I've chosen a brightly but not outrageously floral patterned cotton. This jacket fits much more snugly than my bed gown does, indicating that it has been tailored to my precise measurements and is not handed down from someone else. Does take a bit more precision to pin, however. There are a crisp white kerchief, which I will not in the front with a length of silk ribbon, and I'll trade my plain cap for a slightly ruffled one, also adorned with silk ribbon. A pair of small drop earrings and a ribbon, yet another ribbon, around my neck. I'll add a wide-brimmed straw hat called a berger, though it takes its name from the French word for shepherdess. This hat was often highly adorned and became a hallmark of genteel society by the late 18th century. And there you have it, the pretty gentle woman. It's hard to imagine a woman like Ursula Kutt processing her own hay in such an elaborate outfit. If one thing has rung true throughout history, though, it's that the urge to decorate oneself is as close to a human universal as we can get. Now, for the last couple of minutes, I want to touch on a few things I mentioned earlier in the presentation. I'd like to share some useful resources for further historical research, as well as some of my favorite historical material and accessory shops. So I've organized these into resources on 18th century dress, resources on 18th century general history, and resources into other cultures in the 18th century. And I have some of these books available for perusal after the talk as well. First is The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Dressmaking by Lauren Stowell and Abby Cox, both of whom I have quoted a few times during the presentation. This is an excellent in-depth resource on drafting your own patterns to your own measurements as was done in the period. Since there were no pre-cut patterns available, a gown would be drafted directly onto a woman's body, and this book will show you exactly how. We have How to Read a Dress by Lydia Edwards. This book goes up to the 20th century, about a 500 year period, discusses specific dresses that reside in museums and analyzes them down to each seam. We have Patterns of Fashion by Janet Arnold. Arnold essentially invented dress history as a discipline. She spent her career actually examining existing historical garments in museums from the 16th to the 20th century, and taking detailed notes on their construction. Her Patterns of Fashion series, which debuted in 1964, was really the first look the public got at the interiors of some of these garments. So without her, the groundwork for any of these other researchers would not have been laid. We have Larsdottor.com, our Larsdottor's 18th century notebook, which is a really comprehensive web directory of 18th century garments, both in museums and depicted in art. You can search by garment, so for example, I can search apron and find hundreds of links to both extant aprons on museum websites, and paintings of women wearing aprons. A really helpful resource in showing how clothes were actually worn and made into outfits, not just seeing them on a mannequin in a vacuum. For 18th century general resources, we have Albion Seed by David Hackett Fischer. A really comprehensive study of different cultures throughout the 13 colonies and into the beginning of the United States as a nation, divided into sections for different aspects, including marriage, family, food, religion, et cetera. And there is some interesting information on clothing as well. Good Wives by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who is one of the preeminent micro historians, as she calls it, of colonial America, meaning that she studies the minutiae of daily life that might otherwise be forgotten in the wake of big events. This is a really great look at the daily lives of ordinary women through the material resources they left behind, such as the inventories of their homes and letters and diaries they wrote. We have James Townsend and Son on YouTube, which is an 18th century cooking channel, taught me a lot about historical cooking for reenactment events, as well as a lot of other cultural elements that naturally come in when discussing food, such as farming and economics. Finally, for other cultures, we have Not Your Mama's History on YouTube by Cheney McKnight. She studies and interprets the lives of black women in the 18th and 19th centuries, both free and enslaved. Her primary source research is really fantastic, and she does an eye-opening job making a neglected part of history feel very real and immediate. Crow's Eye Productions also on YouTube. You may have seen them. The videos occasionally go viral. They are getting dressed in whatever era videos, going all the way back to ancient Rome, and including several on the 18th century. Very useful for including different social classes and very accessible to watch. Also beautifully produced, so even if fashion history isn't your thing, they're just enjoyable watching. Have the James Town Yorktown Foundation on YouTube, which is about a century and a half earlier than our time period. We're talking the 17th century here, but very interesting videos on dress in a different region of the 13 colonies, so this would be in what is now Virginia, as well as some content on Native American dress of the time. And finally, What People War When by Melissa Leventon, which I also have here available. Great jumping off point for a lot of different cultures includes every continent and every time period from the ancient world to the 19th century. Really more of a jumping off point since it doesn't go naturally very into depth on every single culture, but it's great to just to see the starting point. And finally, some 18th century material and accessory shops that I particularly recommend. Since they all sell more or less the same things, I won't go into detail on each specific one, but I do have some printouts available if you'd like to look deeper into any of them. And I see those have all been taken, but you can feel free if you'd like to leave your email address, I can email you another one as well. It's been my pleasure to bring you dressing the 18th century working woman. This is something I'm very passionate about and I love introducing the subject to a new audience. If you're interested in seeing these 18th century work clothes in actual motion, I once again remind you of our upcoming flaxstrafaganza on October 15th. When costumed reenactors, including myself, will give the public a taste of 18th century textile production. I hope to see some of you there and until then, have a wonderful afternoon and a great fall season. And we do have time for some, any questions as well if anyone has a few. The questions and then I'll say a little bit. Yes. So for the typical woman, who would have done that? Oh, the stays, that's a very good question. So there are both front and back lacing stays in the 18th century. So front lacing, that would have been able, for a woman would have been able to do that by herself. For back lacing, some people have figured out the trick of doing back lacing yourself. I haven't figured this out yet. It's similar to clasping a bra in the front. You will do it in the front and then sort of twist it around. But I can't figure that out. Fortunately, in the 18th century, almost nobody lived alone. So anyone who's available in your household would be roped into this responsibility. Yes. What is a pin? It's just straight pins. Just straight pins, yes. So this one is a little bent just from use, but I can hand that. The stays are a very good armor layer in that respect I'll say for sure. Yes. People did actually pierce their ears. People have, going back thousands of years actually, there are earrings excavated from I believe ancient Egypt and Rome. There are also clip-on or pin-on earrings. I actually don't have pierced ears myself, so these are just screw backs, which have existed for as long as pierced earrings have. Any other questions? Oh, yes. I'm getting the impression that in the 18th century, women were encouraged to be using their bodies and being active, even using the stays. And then in the 19th century, with the adoption of corset, it seemed as though the ideal, at least in parts of society, was to discourage women from being as active. And I'm just wondering if you have any sense of why you get that shift in society that it is about women's rest? So that's a great question. And that's something, another subject I could do a whole lecture on. So I'll just speak just briefly to that corset stays distinction. The distinction is not so much in the restrictiveness of the garment, but rather the materials and the fashionable silhouette that it creates. So for example, as you can see, the bust silhouette is considered very straight front, up and down in the 18th century. That is the fashionable silhouette. Whereas in the 19th, it was a bit more of a curvy shape. And this was done not by cinching the waist, but rather padding the bust and the hips to create the illusion of a smaller waist. So the garment itself was not really more restrictive than the stays. However, the clothing that was worn on top of it absolutely was in some ways. So you see a lot of very dramatic, tight fitting silhouettes in the 19th century that certainly would have impeded a woman's movement. You see a lot of these very, if you look at the 1870s, you see these very tight fitted, lower half skirts that really show off all of the curves. So that I would say just speaks to the growing middle class and really the growing accessibility of a housewife or a woman who simply sat in the home. What the Victorians actually called the angel in the house as something that a woman could increasingly aspire to with increasing industrialization and less involvement in the daily labor of your own survival. Yes, thank you. Let's see, so going back, we'll see 28 years. So I've always been interested in costumes in particular. Used to be theater costumes and from there just fell in love with the idea of being able to tell as much as you can about a specific time period or a specific person from their clothing. And working backwards, you can learn so much about people's lives just by examining what they wore and how they wore it. So I would say I went backwards with theater, you get the character brief first and brief first and then design the costume and I started wanting to do it the other way to see the clothing and figure out the lives based on that. Yes. I'm curious about flammability. Good question. Somewhere, and they talked about cooking with the other players and they actually had to wear woolen dresses even in the pipe of summer to prevent burning. Yes. How does that work with these vets? So that's a very good point. Just for daily safety, wool is an excellent protective coating. It doesn't burn, it burns very slowly, it will just smolder rather than catch. And there are actually wools that are very thin. There's what's called a wool gauze, which is pretty hard to get nowadays as we have found other synthetic lighter fabrics, there's less of a need for it, but there are reenactor shops that sell it and the wool gauze is made of wool but can be as thin as a linen. So you'll see that actually in a lot of medieval dresses as well, these full length, full coverage dresses that are very light to wear because of the relatively soft and light wool. I think, oh yes. How scratchy would a light wool be on skin? So fairly scratchy but it's not touching your skin directly so you don't have to worry about that. All right and I think I'll turn that over to Angie here. Thank you. So I have a couple of things I wanna say before we give Sky one more round of applause so be ready for that. But first off I just wanna say this was a presentation as part of a monthly series at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. It's our Sunday lecture series. It happens every month except for the month of December and we have historians and community members of all walks of life and on all different topics that we invite to the homestead. If there's a specific topic that you would like us to present in the future, please let me know or Sky or any of the other museum staff and we can reach out to see if we can get more variety of speakers here. We are, we do have three corporate sponsors of the event this month. I would like to thank AARP Vermont, the Vermont Humanities and Homelight for their sponsorship of this program this month. And I also want to put out there a couple of dates in your minds. Sky has mentioned numerous times, our Flaks Stravaganza, so I'm gonna plug it one more time. For Saturday, October 15th, it's kind of like our harvest festival and we will have reenactors and living historians here. The next day on Sunday, October 16th at 2 p.m. is our October 3rd Sunday lecture and it's gonna be by the former director of the homestead, Dan O'Neill, who's gonna present on some of the work he's been working on for his PhD. The presentation is called What About the Overlooked Injustices in Public History? So focusing on people who museums have historically ignored or not spent enough time looking at. And then the following day, right after that, on Monday, October 17th, is our fall homestead book club meeting and we're reading a book called A Few Lawless Vagabonds by David Bennett and you can order that book online or you can buy it in our gift shop shortly. It's on its way. We had a slight delay in ordering but they're on their way but it's a great book about kind of a different perspective of the Green Mountain Boys and the revolutionaries here in Vermont calling them lawless vagabonds. Just a hint. Okay, so October 15th, Flagstaff, Aganza, 16th is our next lecture and the 17th is our book club on Monday at 7 p.m. But today we had an amazing presentation by Skye. Please thank her with me one more time. Thanks Skye. And in case some of you may not have noticed, Skye and I have a favorite historian in common. I'm wearing a Laurel Thatcher Ulrich T-shirt who has the famous quote, well-behaved women rarely make history. Those lawless vagabonds. Yeah, anyways. Okay, come up and see what Skye's brought. Ask her more questions. There's some free history magazines on the table on your way out and there's a gift shop as well. Thank you. Thank you.