Secrets of an Edwardian closet Check out a complete bridal trousseau from 1901-1908

Have you ever wondered what you might find in a woman's closet at the turn of the century? Well, now is your chance to find out. In April of 1912, Harper's Bazaar published an article detailing everything that a new bride would need for her wardrobe as a married woman, which gives us a little bit of insight into what kinds of garments a woman would have owned and how many. We're going to start at the beginning of the day and work our way towards evening. So we start with a wrapper, which are also sometimes just called morning dresses. These garments are usually loose-fitting around the waist and could be worn without a corset. They were considered a strictly at-home garment and would not have been worn out of the house for really any reason at all, nor could you wear it to receive guests, except in very extenuating circumstances. This simple and comfortable garment was worn in the mornings to get the daily chores done. They could be worn to the breakfast table in your own home, but they would not have been suitable to wear to breakfast when visiting. Because these garments are so simple, it was considered inappropriate to wear jewelry with them. They're typically worn with an apron or belted at the waist. Harper's Bazaar recommended having three of these garments in your bridal trousseau. When actually leaving the house to go visiting, promenading, or to the market, a walking suit was the order of the day. These were also often called tailor-maids, as in a suit made by a tailor or a dressmaker. Often a woman would take a fashion plate to their dressmaker and then have them duplicate that look. As the role of women was changing at the turn of the century, women needed more practical clothing that could be mixed and matched. Charles Dana Gibson was famous for popularizing this image of the new woman, or the Gibson girl. Harper's recommended two or three of these tailor-made suits, at least one in wool for the cold season and one in linen for the warm season. A reception gown was worn for semi-formal events, things like lunch parties, afternoon card parties, or informal at-home dinners. This gown is quite a bit fancier than the one that an average woman would wear, as it's based on one made by M&A Chaugrin, two of the finest dressmakers on the West Coast at the turn of the century. It is made of a sheer silk organza with a striped slip underneath. This is perhaps my personal favorite garment in the entire trousseau, I just love how beautiful and delicate it is, but I also found a lot of personal connection in duplicating this garment. M&A Chaugrin had their headquarters in Portland, Oregon, and probably lived just a few miles from where I do, and they went to work every day to do a lot of the same things that I do every day. I don't really know a lot about my own ancestors, so making this dress was a way for me to feel connected to the past. Harper's Bazaar recommended just one of these dresses for your bridal trousseau at a cost of $13.87 for the materials, with additional money to be spent on the dressmaker. The original Chaugrin dress probably cost well over $100 when it was first made, which is equivalent to the cost of the entire bridal trousseau. The trousseau also calls for three afternoon dresses, which to me seem to be the most difficult to clearly define. Some museum examples are incredibly fancy and appear to be quite formal, while some magazines of the day describe fairly comfortable low-key garments that seem as if they're mostly meant to be worn at home. The term afternoon gown seems to be a bit of a catch-all term for all of these dresses that fall somewhere in the middle. They are definitely more formal than a wrapper, but less formal than a dinner dress or a ball gown. They were not meant for evening wear and would have been totally inappropriate at a fancy nighttime event, but they were not strictly meant for home wear either, and it was perfectly fine to be seen in your afternoon dresses, unlike your morning wrapper. They would never have a low neckline as you would see on a ball gown, but it seems like they could have short or long sleeves, depending on the season and the preference of the wearer. Some sources seem to say that an afternoon gown would have been totally fine for a garden party or visiting a friend. I get the impression that afternoon gown is kind of an umbrella term for a few different kinds of dress. And finally, the most important gown in any bridal trousseau is of course the wedding dress. By the early 20th century, white was pretty standard for middle and upper class brides. Soft, clingy, drapey materials like silk charmeuse or mousseline were considered the most fashionable. Even the wealthiest brides could not afford a dress that they would only wear once, so Harper's Bazaar recommends making the train a completely separate piece so that it can be removed after the wedding and the dress can be worn again for formal evening events in the first year of marriage. With the introduction of reliable synthetic dyes just a few decades earlier, some women opted to dye their wedding dress a different and more practical color after the wedding. Even that was still out of reach for many brides who would have simply gotten married in a sensible traveling outfit that they could continue to wear after the wedding. Tulle was the typical material for veils at the time, and wax orange blossoms were a popular motif for brides as well. There were many other things that were not mentioned, including all of the undergarments like combinations, petticoats, chemises, stockings, and so on. The article presumed that a woman would certainly already own all of those things. A few other things like shoes, hat pins, gloves, jewelry, belts, and so on were also not mentioned, but of course would have been essential as well. All of the garments that were featured in this video were listed as recommended for a bridal trousseau in an article by Harper's Bazaar in April of 1912. Because this is an article that was published in a magazine, it's obviously going to be at least a little bit idealized. It's not a perfect representation of what the average person in the early 20th century would have owned. This article was very much aimed at the middle classes, and a working class girl would not have owned even probably a fraction of the items that were listed in this trousseau. The recommended cost for the entire bridal trousseau was $150, which also did not include labor to actually have the garments made. Adjusted for inflation, that's around $3,000, which is a ton of money. But there are a couple of things that you should probably keep in mind. Number one, people expected to spend a much larger proportion of their income on clothing than we expect to spend today. Around the same time that this article ran, Harper's Bazaar was also doing a monthly column about family budgets and how people were allocating their money. And when I did the math for all of the people that wrote into the column, it seemed like most families were spending around 10% of their yearly income on clothing. Something else that you should probably keep in mind when you're looking at this is that that bridal trousseau also included a wedding dress, which accounted for a huge proportion of the cost of the trousseau. So like anything from history, there are a ton of different variables at play here. This was just to give you a little bit of insight into what a middle class wardrobe might have looked like at the turn of the century. I hope that you enjoyed looking at all of my pretty dresses. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next time.