Brown Plaid Day Dress

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Brown Plaid Day Dress
#VC2001149

circa 1865
silk, polished cotton, metal, wool

Silk was one of the major fashion fibers of the nineteenth century. Colors, however, were often subdued and practical for college day dresses, when a student’s focus would be on her studies. Harper's Magazine described “the uninteresting tints of black, brown, and gray” observed as Vassar classes “sit expectant of the professor.” Plaids first became fashionable patterns in the mid-nineteenth century. Previously the relative ease with which the pattern could be woven kept it associated with the lower classes of society. Vassar’s earliest students wore hoop skirts, corsets and sausage curls. Their letters home even included discussions of the size of the hoops of their classmates.

shown over bustle hoopskirt, #VC2001211, and other petticoats (not original)