At certain points in Western history, aristocratic women didn't dress themselves. They had their maids help them. Based on what I've absorbed from the ether, they weren't necessarily able to dress themselves either, because of the design and complexity of the clothes.
For example, there's a scene in Downton where Lady Mary is going away for a weekend tryst, and she and Anna are looking through her wardrobe making sure that everything she packs is something she can put on all by herself (implying that she can't dress herself in all her clothes independently). And this is in the 1920s when clothes were easier - in the Edwardian and Victorian eras, with corsets and crinolines and everything, it would be even more difficult to dress oneself.
I also recently read a book that mentioned that Edwardian upper-class ladies would wear tea gowns in the afternoons because that's when they met with their lovers, and tea gowns were something that a lady could put back on herself (implying that she's not able to put on her other styles of dresses herself).
This makes me wonder about the situation for working-class women. Even if their dresses are more practical, the maids on Downton still have corsets and petticoats before the 1920s. (In fact, there was a brief period where the aristocrats were wearing the newer, more comfortable uncorseted dresses, but the maids - who had to do actual physical labour - were still in the old corseted dresses!) Could they dress themselves, or did they have to help each other dress? What about Daisy, who woke up before anyone else in the house? What about Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Patmore? Did one of their subordinates see them in their underthings every morning? What if a working-class woman lived alone? If a household consisted of just husband and wife, did he have to learn how to do up a corset?
7 comments:
Working class didn't wear corsets, and that their dresses were put on over their heads. The dresses were more like "shifts" - I think that's the word for it.
That's one reason in early photographs of factory workers, maids, cooks, and poor women in general, they appear bulky and "shapeless" (that is, without the hour-glass shape) compared to upper class women.
The only poor women who had button-up dresses and corsets were sex workers who worked in bordellos. I'm assuming they dressed each other, but they might have employed a woman who helped all the sex workers get dressed.
So Downton Abbey actually shows or refers to the maids wearing corsets? From my understanding of working class dress in Victorian and Edwardian times, working class women's undergarments were simple and shapeless, with no loops or stays.
Corsets were made by hand and hugely expensive. No working class person could have afforded a corset and no employer would have bought them one.
Mrs. Patmore explicitly mentions that she wears a corset and that she would rather not. (Google "I wouldn't mind getting rid of my corset.") This is in season 4, which is 1922. I suspect the fact that she wears it and dislikes it means that it's considered non-optional.
The actress who plays Mrs. Hughes mentions in interview wearing a corset, and since the character is far less glamorous-looking than the actress, I seriously doubt they'd put the actress in a corset if the character wasn't wearing one.
One of the companion books mentions Daisy wearing a corset. (Search for "daisy" and "corset" in this Google Books link.)
I can't find any specific mention of the maids wearing corsets, but their uniforms are far more hourglass-shaped than Mrs. Patmore's, Mrs. Hughes's or Daisy's, and they're actually seen by the family and guests unlike Mrs. Patmore or Daisy.
Also, the employers didn't buy female servants' clothes. They did provide male servants with livery, but female servants had to buy their own. One of the books I read (might have been Margaret Powell) said that girls who wanted to be housemaids in big rich houses first had to work for a period of time in lesser houses that didn't have uniforms to save up money to buy the dresses they'd need to be housemaids. (Didn't mention anything about undergarments, but if it was Margaret Powell where I read that, she may not have wanted to discuss her own undergarments in a book, or may have assumed everyone already knows how underwear works. I haven't seen any mention of coats, hats, shoes, etc., but they must have gotten those somehow too even though they were an expense.)
Oh, actually the Daisy link in the above comment has the answer! If you click on the search results that seems to be talking about Mary rather than the one that seems to be talking about Daisy, it mentions that you need a second person to lace up the corset, but once you've got it laced up you can fasten and unfasten it using hooks in the front.
I'm still wondering about the specific design features that led to some (but not all) of Mary's 1920s clothes being things she couldn't dress herself in, and whether these things were present in working class clothes, or, if not, what aesthetic advantage they provided.
Very interesting, thank you! This definitely contradicts what I've learned in other contexts.
I just started watching Boardwalk Empire, which is set in the 1920s. It shows working class women wearing shapeless cotton undergarments. It's set in the US, though. Maybe the Irish immigrants left their corsets behind.
I wonder if maybe Irish people were ahead on trends in that era. I remember on Downton, after Sybil moved to Ireland, she cut her hair short in 1921, but Mary didn't cut hers short until 1924 (and I don't think any other characters have cut their hair short, or verbalized that they have made a deliberate choice not to do so.)
Of course, people who choose to live or work in an English country house are going to be more attached to tradition than Irish immigrants to the US, and servants in a country house are going to have far less access to new fashion than residents of a US city.
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