The styles and fashions of the 1800s has long been an area of interest for me. I grew up with 7 older sisters, so I was exposed to fashion at an early age. The fact that I was a boy made no difference to my sisters. They loved girls dresses and so did I. I spent countless hours playing with their collection of old-fashioned dolls, which exposed me particularly to the area of fashion in the 1800s. Later, this knowledge served me well as a lineman for the the New England Patriots, where I played for 7 seasons. One season for each of my sisters. LOL!
Birthday Girls Dresses of the 19th century includes the Federal Area, Jacksonian Era, Dickens, Manifest Destiny, Victorian, Antebelum, American Civil Warn, Gilded Age, Gay 90's (whoo-hoo!) and the Old West.
My love of this area of dresses for girls birthdays extends to hoop skirts, blouses, camisoles, chemises (obviously), drawers, hoop-slips,over and under hoop-slips, and hats. Hat of course include straw hats, amp, felt, et al.
As the 19th century progressed, woman's form lines were more and more revealed. The waistline deepened, returning to it's natural polace. The bodice got tighter, and the skirt became fuller and more shaped like a bell. Hello girls birthday dresses! Petticoats, often made of horsehair (can you say nay?) were quite in the mode. The word crinoline comes from the french word crin, which means horsehair. Yikes!
Girls wore bonnets outside and they wore linen caps inside. That was how they could tell outside from inside, back on their birthdays. Petticoats were often made from steel frames, or hoops that held it away from the legs. Can you believe it? Yikey McMikey! By the end of the 19th century, girls dress styles changed. The silhouette deepened. Magazines started publishing paper patterns for dresses, and a whole exiting new era for fashion was born. By the 20th century, the fashion industry was in full swing. Girls dresses were being pumped out by the thousands. Working in factories that made birthday dresses wasn't much fun for girls. They locked you in and treated you miserably. The girls worked round the clock, even on their birthdays, and I can't imagine they were allowed to model their dresses in front of the mirrors very often. Maybe for just a few hours a day. Barbarian!
In the Victorian Era, the rich really got to have some fun. Ain't that always the case, though? The poor had to rely on second hand clothing, altering the clothes themselves to fit. And they often had to hem patches on them. Patches! I don't like patches on girls dresses for their birthday. It's bad enough when school teachers sew them on the elbows of their blazers.
In the late 1890s, under the reign of Queen Victoria.. God save the Queen clothes got plainer and the bustle got smaller. Girls had a lot less fun in their dresses, if you ask me. Honestly, Queens like that give other queens a bad name. Bodices often had bones in them. So that was the first time a birthday girl got boned in her dress. LOL. I don't get it. Do you want to see some real girls birthday dresses? If you do, go to this website. If you don't, go anyway! LOL.
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