Getting dressed in the 1860s and 1870s was a complicated
process. Women’s fashion included many layers and separate articles that
combined to form the perfectly assembled outfit, or “costume,” as we refer to
it in museums. The Gibson family women had access to designer clothing and custom-tailored
dresses and gowns, which they wore to showcase their social status and fit into
society. Each piece of clothing had a specific purpose or occasion to be worn.
Opera gowns, morning gowns, day dresses, and tea gowns were all popular styles
in the 1860s and 1870s. Much of the clothing in the Gibson House Museum’s
collection dates from the 1870s and 1880s, when the matriarch, Catherine
Hammond Gibson, and her daughter-in-law, Rosamond Warren Gibson, lived in the
house together.
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| Turquoise bodice, c.1870s Gibson House Museum (2019.3) |
When I first began cataloging the clothing from the Gibson
House Museum’s collection, I was overwhelmed with how to begin. I soon found
that it was not as complicated as I’d thought; cataloging artifacts is as
simple as assigning an accession number and recording details about the object.
One of the first articles of clothing I cataloged was a
beautifully detailed turquoise dress that has aged rather poorly. There are
some tears and discolorations in the fabric, which make it more difficult to
picture how it would have been worn in the 1870s or 1880s. Like many of the
dresses from the Gibson House Museum’s collection, it was taken apart, either
to be washed or because alterations needed to be made. Although some of the
fabric is in poor condition, as a whole, the dress is exquisite; its delicate
silk fringe and vivid color caught my eye.
