Women's Fashion During The American Revolution And Antebellum Period

Throughout the history of the United States, women have struggled to gain independence, fighting first for gender equality and later for equal rights. Their efforts and changing roles are reflected in changes in fashion over time.

Women’s fashion during the American Revolution and Antebellum period consisted of a gown and petticoat worn over a second hooped petticoat which kept one's skirt out, and stays, which were whale-boned undergarments similar to corsets. The fabrics, dyes, and number of layers of garments depended on the wealth of the lady in question. Many ladies dressed very simply during the war in order to send more money to the American troops. Women participated in the revolutionary efforts by making most of the clothing during this time, both to honor boycotts of British goods and also to help supply the revolutionary

forces.

Commentators in the first half of the nineteenth century tended to see women as intellectually inferior and insisted that their proper role was maintaining the house and caring for children. The restrictive clothing during this period reflected this “cult of domesticity,” which insisted that women keep a proper Christian home, separate from the male sphere of politics, business, and competition. When women married, any property they owned became the property of their husbands, and under the legal doctrine of femme covert, wives had no independence legal or political standing. The many cumbersome petticoats and skirts that women wore indicated their affordable idleness due to their husband’s wealth.

The Progressive Era brought about the “New Woman.” Women began to challenge prevailing notions of gender embodied in the cult

of domesticity in the 1880s and 1890s by forming voluntary organizations, working in settlement houses to aid immigrants, attending college, and promoting social and political reform. These women, and their male allies, pushed for a greater degree of equality in the United States. As the economic dislocations wrought by industrialization touched more and more families, many women became more politically engaged. Women’s clubs investigated and advocated around issues of poverty, working conditions, and pollution. Their new active lives required more practical clothing than the many layered, draped outfits of the Victorian lady, and resulted in simpler, more streamlined clothing, most modeled after male attire. Dresses were looser fitting, whereas before they were fitted to create a certain silhouette with the “s-bend” corset. Most notably, by 1905 tailored suits became a staple for women beginning to work in white collar jobs. The outfit of the turn-of-the-century college girl was a skirt, sensibly shorter than current fashion dictated, and a shirtwaist, which the female version of a male dress shirt. This outfit was essentially the equivalent of jeans and a t-shirt today. Suffragettes generally chose to wear classically feminine styles to combat negative media portrayals of suffragettes as unattractive spinsters. They adopted the colors white, purple, and green. All of this meant that the suffragettes created an incredibly strong visual presence, and chose to conform conventional fashion rather than challenge it to further their cause.
The Roaring Twenties marked a significant turning point for women as they sought less to change the other sex and concentrated on changing themselves. Prohibition had come about in part because of the insistent demand of women, but the new woman of the post-war decade changed her attitude toward the consumption of alcohol, as well as stance on courtship, marriage, the rearing of children, the knee length dress, and beauty contests, all the phenomena of the decade. This decade of decadence and fun was exemplified by rising skirt and dress hemlines and waistlines lowered to the hip. However, once the stock market crashed and the Great Depression set in, hemlines returned to their conservative length. Women suffered a double burden during the Depression: on the one hand, they were responsible for putting food on the table during difficult times, while on the other hand, they were frequently scorned if they “took a job away from a man” by working outside the home. Further, New Deal programs tended to slight women by excluding them from jobs on federal lands and setting lower wage levels for women than for men. Nonetheless, individual women such as Frances Perkins, the first female cabinet member, and Eleanor Roosevelt, on of the most active and public first ladies in American history, opened doors for women.
When World War II broke out, women were eager to do their part for the war effort, and once again entered the workforce. Some served in the military, others took over jobs left by men sent overseas, and hundreds of thousands volunteered their help with various organizations, one of the largest and most widespread being the American Red Cross. Some volunteer units permitted use of breeches, bloomers, or overall trousers. The luxurious materials used during the 1930s at the height of Hollywood Glamour were now highly regulated and replaced with cheaper, more durable fabric.