Dress Diary 1855-1917
A few days ago, when I was looking at the Hollywood costume sketches at the Brooklyn Museum, I noticed this wonderful dress diary in their archives.
The diary’s owner, Ida Jackson, was born in Cazenovia, New York, in 1855, and at some point moved to Boston. Twenty-five pages are available for viewing online. The earlier pages of this scrapbook have pictures of Ida– not all of them are dated, but they capture her at about ages 7 to 20. The later pages have dress drawings cut out from fashion magazines, with samples of the fabrics and trims that were used to make them up.
Ida Jackson’s Dress Diary, page 6, 1868-1870.
For anyone interested in determining dates of old photos, a resource like this in invaluable. And it is also a great resource for design ideas. Look at that black and white trim on the top right of the page above – that design was woven in, not just printed on to the fabric. I have, of course, printed up everything available (not all the pages are online) so I can study it in detail.
Accompanying this diary is a 7-page commentary that was written in 1946 by someone named Lawrence Romaine of Middleboro, Massachusetts. It reads like a presentation that he might have given to a historic society, but it has plenty of informal comments in it, such as “My guess is that you may be a bit tired of it too. It is time to close.” It seems like if these were notes for a presentation, he wouldn’t need to put in little off-the-cuff remarks like that.
It’s ironic that he spends a lot of time decrying the lack of information in the dress diary –“It is too bad that Miss Jackson didn’t write a bit more in detail… Whether mourning was worn for Mother or Father…we shall never know,” and so on — because he never says who he is, nor for what purpose he is writing. But through the wonder of the internet, I found out that Laurence Romaine was a book antiquarian, and an expert on American trade catalogs, which he used as a source to study American manufacturing history. He collected 41,000 trade catalogs which are now in Special Collections at UC Santa Barbara Library. He also collected all sorts of popular culture items, and that must be how he came across this dress diary.
There are 11 boxes of textile information in that UCSB library, 5 boxes of sewing and needlework information, and 30 boxes of clothing information, but sadly, none of it is online. All those treasures going unseen! I feel very lucky to have found this delightful dress diary online at the Brooklyn Museum.
What an amazing thing to find! I’ve never seen anything like this dress diary – but thinking it over, I’m surprised at that. I worked for over 10 years for one library in the UK putting some of their historic collections online, but jobs like that went with the recession – sad, because it was a very rewarding job. People love finding things online – as we’ve both found with our own recent searches!
In the post, I was just going to make a remark about how Lawrence Romaine didn’t record who he was or why he was interested in this dress diary, but I heard you telling me, “I found my Mr. Goodall, just go and have a look to see what turns up.” So I did and there he was! A big expert! So I have you to thank for that part of the information!
What a cool find! Do you know if this was a diary of things she own and wore herself or was she a dressmaker, documenting her ideas and creations?
I would LOVE to find a dressmaker’s diary (probably in those boxes at UC Santa Barbara), but this one was the garments worn by one person. According to the 1946 documentation, it seems like her mother started it for her, and then she took over when she was a teen-ager. She wrote comments about re-making certain garments, and about other things she wore but didn’t like so she didn’t put them in the scrap book.
I especially love the notes about when and where she wore the outfits made with the fabrics. And that skirt with the ruffles down the back and the little gores at the hem – I’d love to try that on. Again, thank you for taking the time to unearth this treasure. It’s a reminder to me that I should be doing something like this for my quilts. I did start a binder for quilt patterns I’ve used, but gave it up once I started designing my own.
I am a cataloging maniac, but I work on so many (antique photos, birds & bugs here on the farm, etc.) that I don’t always complete them, and I also need to save them to the cloud so I can retrieve them no matter what happens to my computer or house. I do have pictures of all of my quilts, but not the fabric scraps.
I love looking at the fabrics but that ‘top hat’ of hair on the woman on the second page really interested me. Looks like it was hair made up into that design and then secured to the top of the head.
Yes, I’m pretty sure it was fake! If you look at her as a child you see she did not exactly have a ton of hair. I think that was the style but I have to look into it more.
Wonderful! My Great-aunt Sadie was a seamstress in Scranton in the 1890s. I wonder if she kept a record of the dresses she made. Jane
Yes, you do such lovely stories about your ancestors and the vestiges of their lives that are in your possession. I went and looked up the post about Sadie for anyone else who is reading here. Wouldn’t you love to know for sure that she made the dresses she is wearing in her pictures?
Hi. I certainly would. I know quite a bit about her life. I know that she supported herself for thirty years with her seamstress work, not an easy task when she was single. Jane
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