United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
Leather was much used, especially in the form of tanned buckskin
breeches and the deerskin hunters' jackets, which have always and
deservedly been a favorite wear, since they are one of the most
appropriate, useful, comfortable, and picturesque garments ever worn by
men in any active outdoor life.
Soon in the larger cities and among wealthy folk a much more elaborate
and varied style of dress became fashionable. The dress of little girls
in families of wealth was certainly almost as formal and elegant as the
dress of their mammas, and it was a very hampering and stiff dress. They
wore vast hoop-petticoats, heavy stays, and high-heeled shoes. Their
complexions were objects of special care; they wore masks of cloth or
velvet to protect them from the tanning rays of the sun, and long-armed
gloves. Little Dolly Payne, who afterwards became the wife of President
Madison, went to school wearing "a white linen mask to keep every ray of
sunshine from the complexion, a sunbonnet sewed on her head every
morning by her careful mother, and long gloves covering the hands and
arms." Our present love of outdoor life, of athletic sports, and our
indifference to being sunburned, makes such painstaking vanity seem most
unbearably tiresome.
In 1737 Colonel John Lewis sent from Virginia to England for a wardrobe
for a young miss, a school-girl, who was his ward. The list reads
thus:--
"A cap ruffle and tucker, the lace 5 shillings per Yard,
1 pair White Stays,
8 pair White Kid gloves,
2 pair coloured kid gloves,
2 pair worsted hose,
3 pair thread hose,
1 pair silk shoes laced,
1 pair morocco shoes,
1 Hoop Coat,
1 Hat,
4 pair plain Spanish shoes,
2 pair calf shoes,
1 mask,
1 fan,
1 necklace,
1 Girdle and buckle,
1 piece fashionable Calico,
4 yards ribbon for knots,
11/2 yard Cambric,
A mantua and coat of lute-string."
In the middle of the century George Washington also sent to England for
an outfit for his stepdaughter, Miss Custis. She was four years old, and
he ordered for her, pack-thread stays, stiff coats of silk, masks, caps,
bonnets, bibs, ruffles, necklaces, fans, silk and calamanco shoes, and
leather pumps. There were also eight pairs of kid mitts and four pairs
of gloves; these with the masks show that this little girl's complexion
was also to be well guarded.
A little New England Miss Huntington, when twelve years old, was sent
from Norwich, Connecticut, to be "finished" in a Boston boarding-school.
She had twelve silk gowns, but her teacher wrote home that she must have
another gown of "a recently imported rich fabric," which was at once
bought for her because it was "suitable for her rank and station."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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