Thursday, December 1, 2011

"Womens" Underwear 1870

My ongoing side study of women's clothing in the 19th Century sometimes turns up data that can be of interest to both reenactors and miniature makers. Occasionally period documentation shows up that is unexpected like this image below....................

The illustration appears to show a woman wearing her chemise over the top of her drawers, the opposite way that I have proposed from other period sources. Now here is the source of the incident...





So that if the illustrator of the first image was an eye witness to the exposure of Boulton or Park, one of the men wore his chemise over the top of his open drawers. If this is accurate, perhaps a man in women's clothing found that method of dress more convenient for reliving himself. If the artist was not there, then he drew from an account or drew from his own experience of how women dressed.

The first image is certainly a statistical outlier and should be used with caution to prove that women wore their clothing one way or another. Fun stuff though!



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