Pink Patterned Dress

circa 1903
VC2001074

This is a three-piece garment: skirt, bodice and collar. It has been identified as an afternoon ensemble circa 1903. Ensembles such as this would have been worn in the afternoon to receive visitors, or go out visiting. This ensemble is made of a printed silk with cotton Cluny lace trim. The outfit is hand-made, and most likely was owned/worn by a woman from a middle-class family. The privileged classes at this time would most likely have clothing made for them by a dressmaker, or would buy factory-made wear, while a less fortunate family would not have had such an expensive a fabric with which to work, since the import of silk during this time was still expensive.

This piece had a few large areas of loss that needed to be stabilized. We began by using a seam ripper to remove seams along the skirt placket to obtain pieces of the original fabric for patching. The fabric from the placket looked almost new where it wasn’t damaged by light or other sources, the actual colors were very bright. Using a piece of plain pink fabric for the stabilization patch, and then a piece from the original placket fabric we carefully sewed the original fabric onto the patch fabric, and then the patch onto the back of the neck on the inside of the bodice. We then moved onto the other loss areas, and continued along in the same pattern with the bodice, and then the skirt.

Researched by Candace Schuster
Stabilized by Candace Schuster and Margaret Thompson ‘10