American clothes, 1690 to 1830

Magazine Antiques, May, 2003 by Alfred Mayor

As befits Colonial Williamsburg, which has everything, the present large book about its costume collection covers all bases and many baselines. It is not a tramp through clothes I have known and loved, which you might suspect from the first-rate large-scale photographs. On the contrary, Linda Baumgarten, the author, has used the collection to demonstrate what clothes reveal about their American wearers and, partly dissected, about the way the clothes themselves are made.

To begin at the end, there is a most useful time line showing how fashions changed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which is well worth a thorough browse right away. It sets the stage in an orderly fashion for the topical organization of the book. There are chapters on connoisseurship, the social and symbolic meanings of clothes, homespun and silk in American clothes, clothing for daily life, from cradle to grave in costume, and the degree to which clothes were repeatedly altered in thriftier times.

A recurring theme is Americans' ambivalence to fine clothes made of imported cloth, which hardly fitted the leveling image of the democratic man. Just as George W. Bush clomps around his Crawford, Texas, ranch in western riding boots, so Davy Crockett campaigned for the Tennessee legislature in a buckskin hunting shirt with pockets large enough to hold a bottle of booze and chewing tobacco to hand out to voters. In fact, when not in his politician's disguise Crockett was described by one observer as "a respectable looking personage, dressed decently and wearing his locks much after the fashion of our plain German farmers [not a] wild man of the woods, clothed in a hunting shirt and covered with hair" Benjamin Franklin was another with an antenna tuned to dress. To defend himself before the British Privy Council in 1774 he wore a three-piece costume of spotted Manchester cotton velvet. The author comments that "the message was one of respect for the group, appreciation of British textiles, yet with an overlay of financial conservatism." On the other hand, in Paris he was known for his carefully chosen disguise: a brown suit, long hair not done up in a ponytail as fashion dictated, and a marten fur hat bought in Canada. Thomas Jefferson followed suit when appearing before Louis XVI, where he was "the plainest man in the room, and the most destitute of ribbands crosses and other insignia of rank," according to one witness. Nonetheless, while in France Jefferson loaded up on silk, gold lace, buttons "as big as half a dollar," as attested by his slave Isaac, and other fine clothes for himself. As president, Jefferson dressed down, but he did fit out the servants in snappy livery of blue and red cloth with silver trimmings. And earlier, even after the Revolution, George Washington continued to keep liveried servants.

An astonishing number of different types of cloth were available to Americans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries thanks to a thriving trade with Europe and native ingenuity in weaving different types of homespun cloth. The bases of all these fabrics were the four fibers: cotton, linen, wool, and silk, which under the microscope make a wonderful series of illustrations. Cotton strands resemble twisted ribbons, linen is jointed like bamboo, wool is scaly, and silk is translucent. Unfortunately the names given to the many blends of fibers and finishes make one yearn for a glossary, and there is none. Did you know, for example, that there was a woolen cloth called cotton? Did you know that the word diaper is the name of the type of linen used to make what was then called a napkin or clout for a baby? The word stuff was also applied to fabric, albeit an entire category that included a number of kinds of worsted woolens, sometimes glazed. Then there are osnaburg, crocus, roll, everlasting, fearnothing , and plains--names for various kinds of woolens and cottons.

The Rolls Royce of them all was surely broadcloth, which in the eighteenth century was a superfine grade of woolen cloth that was fulled, or shrunk, napped, and shorn so that it was the consistency of felt but with a smooth surface. The result of these tender attentions was a cloth that was selvage everywhere. It never raveled when cut, and therefore none of the edges of a broadcloth garment had to be further finished. It was so tough that to lengthen a sleeve, for example, you simply butted the new section to the old and sewed them together. No French seams necessary Finally it was the perfect fabric with which to make a turncoat, which, in its original meaning was a coat serving a second life after being dismantled and the cloth turned so that the inside faced out.

There being no sewing machines to speed the assembly of clothes, tailors and seamstresses were economical with their stitches. Baby clothes and adult shifts and shirts, all of which were subject to much boiling and scrubbing to keep them clean, were sewn with tiny tight stitches, while outer garments like dresses were more loosely assembled. This was particularly the case with silk costumes, since silk was too expensive not to refashion, usually at least twice, until it fell apart. Clothes were also dismantled for cleaning and, if necessary replacement of individual parts.