The cost of making a historically correct dress today, in my opinion, is still just as high. It’s definitely a labor of love as budgeting for fabric is an on going thing for me.
If you go to Nordstrom or Saks for a high end modern suit, what upper middle class women wear, you’d pay two or three grand easily. And wear it for many years. So if you exclude cheap garbage clothes we have today, not much has really changed except for massive exploitation of foreign garment workers instead if Triangle Shirtwaist fires. Your historic dress is likely the highest quality thing you own, so compare it to a classic Chanel suit not some H&M stuff. Money buys quality.
I have a 1860's picture of my great grandma, a Cherokee Indian who ran away from a reservation. It's a picture of her in a FABULOUS dress in front of a tiny log cabin in Kentucky with her German husband and 7 sons. She learned to sew on the rez and was the only dressmaker in town. Strange how I look very much like her, I've just moved to a log cabin in the woods with my German husband, and have an overwhelming desire to sew pretty things.
We have similar great-grandmothers! Mine was a Miq‘Mak chief’s daughter who escaped her arranged marriage and married a white potato farmer and had 18 children!
@@catttzzz7264 Yep! 18! Which means I have approx. 102 first cousins once removed(because they are my father’s first cousins)and who knows how many children they have.
I found a passage in a 1874 English book about cost of a dress. it goes: "The charges for MAKING a dress vary from 5s 6d to 15s, or even more in some of the fashionable houses[...] but the desideratum, independently of extras for linings &c., will not cost more than 6s or 7s a dress, taking care to have as little trimming as need be, for it those smaller items that the bill is made to mount up to some dreadfull sum, to the horror of the unfortunate lady who fancies she made such a bargain in a lovely muslin for 7s 6d, till she opens her bill in which "making dress&c, £1 5s" meets her astonished gaze" (the book is "a manual of domestic economy suited to families spending from £150 to £1500 a year" by j. h. Walsh. It's out there in public domain and it actually tells approximate prices of stuff, for a change)
That's great! That income range matches the British information I saw briefly (I focused on USA sources for this because I was mostly using Harper's Bazaar). I find books are much more direct about costs than magazines too.
Cathy Hay has a terrific video about this, from the top-down: she says gilded-age ladies might wear a Worth gown once or twice, and that was IT. Then they would donate it and it was on to the next dress. :o
@@jacquelinewinter7312 yeah you would think the cost of fabric would go down seeing as you need less people to make it, but even making a poor persons tudor outfit nowadays would cost me over £50 for the wool kirtle! and I watched a contryfile episode saying that huge storerooms are full of rotting bales of wool because no-one buys wool anymore! well if they got rid of polyester and other plastic fabrics and replaced it with a lot more natural fabrics then they would be able to lower the prices and more people would actually be able to afford wooll and all that wasted wool won't be wasted anymore!
@@jemimapeach483 it bugs me immensely that we've bred sheep that produce grotesque amounts of wool, only to throw it away in the end because there's no market for it any-more.
In the novel Little Women, Meg buy 25 yards of silk for "the bargain price" of $50 that she didn't have. I just thought I'd say that since this novel was written in the same time period and I love finding info about victorian fashion in Alcott's novels
@@TheArtemis1994 $30 a yard for silk sounds like a pretty good price to me. Which is why I don’t buy silk. Linen is expensive enough, so it’s mostly cotton for me. Thankfully, I live in the subtropics, so cotton does done for the majority of my clothes. I’d use linen for everything if I could afford it.
and we get more fabric for that price most of the time. Fabrics back than was not as wide as its now, it's totally possible that for something we need one yard they would have needed 3 only because of the width!
@@katherinemorelle7115 yes thirty dollars isn't horrible but it's far more than I would ever be able to consider making silk dress. I be far to nervous to cut it!
I read a fabulous book on fast fashion and the author mentions an account book her mother had in the 40s where a winter coat she bought was the equivalent of £1800 today and that she would expect it to last a decade. And they were of the middling sort! Fast fashion has skewed our perception badly.
This is such a well-researched article Cat. I suppose too, though, that women were paying for quality, as the quality of middle to high price clothing during Victorian times was impressive, which we can see when looking through extant examples. Also without all the synthetic fabrics we have today, cloth just couldn't be made cheaper and was labour intensive even with advancements in machinery. It would be interesting to compare the price of a contemporary well-crafted custom fit gown today made from similar materials, to the prices of Victorian gowns.
For sure! It's really interesting because there's some 19th century accounts of fashionable women refusing to buy ready made clothes because the craftmanship, rather than the materials, were seen as inferior, and even though they were way cheaper, the craftmanship was prioritised.
@@CatsCostumery so interesting! And now typically the most "in-style" look is favoured over both quality AND craftsmanship most of the time, and it's the opposite. People typically will opt for something ready-made as custom-fit or bespoke has a stigma of being expensive (though arguably well-made clothes are cheaper in the long run because they last so long and can be altered!)
I think if you were looking to make the comparison with a custom fit gown made of similar materials, then it might be worth looking at the cost of current wedding dresses. I know that the 'wedding premium' is a thing, but there are a good many small wedding dress companies out there that essentially do made to measure dresses in fabrics that are more likely to be natural and high quality (I've seen a fair amount of silk dyed wedding dresses on my instagram ads at the moment - though no idea why). I would say that for the majority today, a wedding dress is most likely the only custom fit garment that they would go and purchase. For an example that is a huge sidestep into a different part of youtube, Hannah Witton did a video on her wedding dress, which was made be a small company in the the midlands (Birmingham, I think), it was bespoke to her, but in a similar style to what that company usually produces, and was around £1400. I'm sure there would be more accurate comparisons out there, but that was the first option that popped into my head.
@@HowToDecideOnNothing yeah a bespoke wedding dress is a great comparison! I sew historical fashion personally and it's all natural materials and hand sewn. Of course I don't pay for labour, but even high qulity silk tafettas are typically around 40GBP a metre, that's sort of an average as you can certainly find more expensive and less. So I suppose if that were made by someone now instead of me, I'm guessing it'd be somewhere in the 2-3,000 GBP range, as that's what a lot of these custom historical gowns on etsy are going for.
I will stop complaining about the price of silk I will stop complaining about the price of wool I will stop complaining about the price of liberty prints....
In little Women (Good Wives) by L.M Alcott, Meg buys silk for a new dress and blows the budget her family has to live on so badly that her husband couldn't afford a coat. so it was VERY expensive for fabric. Labor was less than the fabric.
in Louisa May Alcott's book good wives( the sequel to little women) Meg March is in a similar position to the girl who had $40 a month for clothes, and there is a chapter where she buys $40 s worth of unmade lengths of violet silk when tempted by her rich friend, but then her husband (who works as a clerk) doesn't have enough money to buy a replacement for his worn-out winter overcoat, he tries to be gallant about it but he is upset that all the savings have been spent for uncut fabric so meg persuades her rich friend to buy the fabric and instead buys her husband the replacement overcoat he needed. I think this is such a sweet story and really highlights the struggles of a young woman with a tight budget who wants to be fashionable and pretty but also loves her husband and her home even if it means giving up some of those things!
A month's salary for an overcoat. There's a lot of bad things about modern fashion but it won't drain your whole monthly salary
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This really puts into perspective how INCREDIBLY little we pay for our clothing now, and also how much less respect is paid to the clothing we do own since it is so cheap. I'm not saying I want to pay $1,000 per outfit, but I do think that if we paid more for better quality clothing perhaps we would take better care of it. It's interesting to think about. Thanks for your research, this was really interesting!
I deeply appreciate the work that must've gone into this video: especially the extensive research and the painstaking process of referencing, not to mention the editing and just the sheer amount of time spent filming ❤❤❤
...imagine being back in a time where you were expected to wear $2000k worth of clothes (plus undergarments, accessories, and shoes) every single day, almost regardless of profession. That's a lot of pressure. At the same time, many of us long for the days where we get dressed up again (actually putting effort into our appearance), as we stay cozy in sweats, leggings, and pjs because covid. Interesting perspective to be sure.
Great point!!! This reminds me in a kind of tertiary way of a fashion...article? Interview? I encountered several years ago from the perspective of a person who wore a bespoke tailored suit to work every day, and owned several. They talked about it matter-of-factly as an investment that was simply expected in their profession (I think they were a high-end metropolitan lawyer or some such...memory fails me). These suits costs a few thousand apiece, which at the time sounded _wild_ to me -- but now that I know more about tailoring it sounds absolutely reasonable. Meanwhile, I'm wearing leggings I got at a thrift store and a t-shirt dress I made myself out of clearance fabric, and if I had to get on a Zoom meeting today I wouldn't bother changing. All that to say -- it's fascinating how circumstances and norms shape our worldview about clothing and which aspects of it have the most value (style, price, material, maker, etc.). Thanks for bringing that up.
In a way, I want the high quality clothing that might outlive you to come back, but keep some of our modern siloutes (except cropped and ripped clothing, those can die) and pants (I find skirts super uncomfortable). Also I want cloaks to come back.
I wrote my senior thesis on the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine specifically looking at the advice given to middle class women and how they could afford to dress “above their station” I loved this! It’s (obviously) right up my alley!
As someone who is on the spectrum and needed to know what the cost of dresses then vs now, I needed this. This little rabbit hole was a fun little adventure. I have a 1900s farm sears house. So, I naturally want to bring it back to its formal glory. With wallpapered ceilings, and medallions and picture railing and all. I need all of the Info I can get. Now I can buy a bunch of fabric and walk around my Victorian/Edwardian home in dated dress. I will be statuesque, dammit.
I think some of the pictures in those magazines were aspirational rather than dresses people actually wore, much like fashion magazines of today. Working class women certainly didn't dress, nor could afford to dress that way. I have a photo of my great great grandmother taken in a photographers studio, where she would have been wearing some of her best clothes, and all she is wearing is a simple black blouse and skirt. It's good that costubers and other historical fashion re-creationists, such as yourself, are re-creating these dresses so we can see what they should actually look like.
Very well done! Louisa May Alcott wrote a while scene in the book "a rose in Bloom" about taking a "upper class" lady's wardrobe and recycling it for the "season" when the upper-class woman had a change in economic status, bringing her into a place where she could not just go out and purchase a new wardrobe. It is a nice contemporary author's glimpse into the era of Alcott and the era in your video.
There are also some neat scenes in the first chapter of ”The Making of a Marchioness” (alternative title ”Emily Fox-Seton”) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, where the main character considers the new fashions and how to adjust her dress at minimal cost. The same chapter is also interesting as it brings up, almost lists, a number of occupations and tasks open to a poor, single woman of middle to upper class who needs to earn a living.
L.M. Montgomery wrote (in either "The Story Girl" or "Golden Road") that a low/middle class woman might get one silk dress in her life and it would be expected to be her "good" dress for years. She also wrote a few short stories where poor girls had to get clever in making themselves new clothes: making a blouse from the silk backing of an antique quilt or taking an ugly silk dress and partially hiding the garish pattern with black net.
Harpers then, like Harpers now -- totally unrealistic as to what the common person wears and can afford. In a thousand years, they're going to look at Vogue and Harpers and think we wore some pretty posh cloths at some massive costs. Excellent video, Cat. Stay well.
Thank you for this! There are times now when $40/mo is a stretch for me to spend on clothes! I am at the beginning stages of investing in quality materials to make a new me-made wardrobe. But I’m focusing on using ok-quality stash fabrics first so they don’t go to waste. I’ve found they’re a good way to practice new techniques yet still have a wearable end product.
This is what I tell people all the time. When my friends go "I wished I lived in ___ it was so this and that and the clothes so beautiful." I told them, of course, no one dressed like that. Only those who could afford it. Its like comparing yourself to the president of a large company or a celebrity.
I often wonder if years ahead people will look at our contemporary magazines and use those to determine what “everyone” was wearing - they will probably have some bizarre ideas based on some of the most extreme designs that gain a lot of media hype. Personally I don’t have either a meat dress or strawberry dress, so perhaps I’m letting the future down... Really interesting information though, so thanks for pulling it all together!
Thank you for sharing the research you've done on this topic! It's so interesting to hear some of the primary sources in particular which helped women strategize how to make the most of their budget/etc.
This is brilliant. You did such a wonderful job in finding and organizing this information. Thank you. (I always think of my grands and great-grands also clothing all their children and the help! Of course, my family was not very high class and often were the help! I saw a diary entry from a great-grand whose sister changed jobs primarily because in the new household, diary maids got two 'decent' dresses every year.)
Wow! Thank you so much for this informative video. It is very hard to wrap my mind around exactly how expensive clothes were back then even though I do make my own clothes and I haven't bought from fast fashion for like 6 years.
Thank you so much for also putting the actual numbers you’re talking about on the screen so I actually understand what number you’re saying!!! THANK YOU!!!
I couldn't help it but Carol Burnett's spoof of the curtain gown scene in Gone With the Wind popped into my mind. "I saw it in the window and I couldn't resist." 😆 Honestly though I do wonder if sewists of the past repurposed things other than old clothing. Maybe Margaret Mitchell's grandmother told her about making clothes out of curtains and inspired that part of the book.
I always ask myself when I want to continue my Worth or any Historical dress: is it gonna cost me thousands to try and recreate? Yep. Is it going to be so worth it in the end when I finish it? Yep. Will I probably cry over all the material costs? Definitely.
My grandmother grew up in a most comfortable, but not wealthy rural home. She was raised by her very Victorian grandmother. Her grandmother took the train to St. Louis twice a year to shop. She would buy each family member a new outfit, spring and fall at Stix, Baer and Fuller or Famous Barr (2 big department stores) They were considered the envy of the community because they got 2 new outfits a year! Fashionistas of the day. When my great grandmother got married in 1908, she went to St. Louis and had her wedding wardrobe custom made, her wedding dress, a going away dress and a traveling suit. They were amazing! I wonder how much they cost her parents?
We made much the same pilgrimage in the 1950s ... buying a couple of new dresses for school. Mom made a lot of our clothes, with an eye to altering as we grew. The hand-me-downs and swaps with neighbors were another source of clothing. Some of the better made pieces travelled a regular route in and out of families as children grew into them.
Sears & Roebuck catalog, Montgomery wards catalogs, JC Penneys catalogs all published for at least 100 years before they either stopped the catalog or went out of business.
"Nellie has 40 dollars per month to spend on clothes" Same..! Well, no not really but my budget is definitely closer to that than the amount that would be in todays money.
Thanks for the video, it was very interesting! I think as people interested in historical fashion we usually have some vague idea that clothes were extremely expensive in the past, but we lack detailed information, so I really appreciate you for sharing your research with us. It's hard to imagine such an expense, and that for one dress! And regarding Harper's Bazaar focus on the beautiful, not attainable - it seems to be holding on pretty well in today's world too. All fashion sections of women's magazines I've ever seen - which is not many, but I used to come across these in my childhood/teens - featured designer clothing (and high end cosmetics), waaaay above the budget of the average reader. The only difference is that today they actually give you the prices, lol. Okay, found another difference - these days the clothes are not necessarily beautiful 😛
Wow I always had this very same question but had no idea where to look for answers!! Such a grate video with so many sources and such dedication in your investigation, thank you very much for all your work!!! 👏👏👏👏
I loved this video so much!!! You explain both your arguments and your evidence very clearly and compellingly and it's clear that you've put a lot of work into the research. I'd love to see more of this type of video! Truly excellent work!
This was an extremely interesting video, with a lot of wonderfully researched information. The only issue I have is that at 11:00, when part of a Harper’s article is being shown, and Cat mentions 13-17 yards of fabric is needed for a dress (depending on what type of dress is being made), if you carefully look at the very beginning of the article, it clearly states that the amounts are for TWO girls…which would mean the yardage would be enough for TWO dresses, not just one-which would definitely change the amount of money needed per dress when calculations are done. Other than that, great video!
To an average person, 13 or 17 yards yards of fabric for a dress might seem like a LOT, but back then fabrics tended to be much narrower than today so more yardage was needed.
The only issue I have with this statement is that at 11:00 she shows article mentioning 13-17 yards of fabric (depending on type of clothing being made), however if you look at that very beginning of the article, it clearly states that the amounts are for TWO girls…which would mean the yardage would be enough for TWO dresses, not just one.
Laura Ashley designs also required major yardage to make up a dress. Hence were something to aspire to own. Still collectables today. In Japan shops are still selling new originals. A contemporary tale.
And it's still called "The rag Trade" I believe no scrap of fabric ever went wasted. Dresses were cut down and often made into quilts. I'm sure pioneering women never had huge access to resources such as stores living rurally. One quilt book I had had a picture from N.E.England a bed quilt made from papers...it was cheap and paper like straw back then for very poor folks, was a great insulator for warmth in cold Winters. All so interesting whatever part of fashion you are interested in. My mum nursed in 1940s UK and had 1 Winter coat 1 pair of stockings for best. 1 dress 1 skirt with couple of blouses. That was her wardrobe and it had to last!
Modern fashion magazines and runway shows tend to treat fashion as art, rather than a representation of what people actually wear. I wonder how much of the clothing shown in Harper's Bazar was representative of what women wore, and how much of if was just a pretty fantasy sold to the middle class.
Yep absolutely! One of the things I did in my actual assignment (I had to cut out a lot of this video) was use other columns in the magazine, rather than just the fashion plates because the fashion plates I don't think are 'real' in a sense, while the columns often described clothes worn by actual famous/named people. The Answers to Correspondents section I think is the best, because it's actual questions from people :)
dressmakers were not paid a lot, so I would maybe add 10 or at most 20% to the price of the fabric on the gut feeling basis, since fabric was usually reworked by the first owner a couple of times, and then passed down to the help, who may have passed it down once it was really shabby and only good for lining or such. lace trimmings are probably another kettle of fish.
How many dresses did mid 19th century middle class women typically have in their wardrobe? How many walking dresses and evening dresses? Did most of these women make their own dresses? Did they make their children’s clothing? How long would they keep a dress and alter it to new styles before finally giving up on it? So many questions!
I'd LOVE to see a British version of this.. especially as you mentioned the fact Americans imported dresses from Europe and if the dress fashion more started in Europe to trickle out to America is pricing and fashion trend dates different or not..
Well done! You did a lot of research. I can't imagine spending that much money, just on a dress, even know I would/could alter it down the line and I'm all about "slow", quality fashion.
well, when i had money (sigh) i would read the fashion magazines... and flinch at the 300 dollar dresses where i was buying a dress for 30- 50, so i expect it must have been similar.
I always wondered because you know that was tremendous yards of silk! Silk velvet alone is about $50+ usd per yard. It may have changed. The last time I priced it was 3 years ago.
I've read that silk fabric in the 1850s was only 22 inches wide. That could explain the huge amounts suggested in the magazines. Did you find out how wide other fabrics might have been? Today most fabrics are 45 inches wide or more.
Where I used to look at these dresses and fall in love, now I look at these dresses and look at all the people that worked at a very low or no to make these dresses. It takes the love of these dresses right out, then you look at how these dresses would pass down threw the line of family eldest to youngest. Lastly the farther you go back in history the more ugly the story the story gets. With my daughters trying to learn to embrace both sides of their ancestry. I’m proud to say many people are now shedding light even in past fashion the truth. Appreciate the dress in truth
Brilliant video! Now I really do not feel bad that my first day ensemble is costing me SO MUCH and it takes SO LONG to finish it because I'm saving for fabrics all the time :D
Well to do women today spend that much on clothes. They buy Prada or Chanel,not fast fashion junk. But it lasts, so not much has changed. A Worth dress was for the very wealthy, so this gets apples and oranges. Even a judges wife was on a budget, they wouldn’t be buying much designer today either. It’s a government job.
Clothing in the earlier centuries really set the standard for quantity over quality because at that price point of materials and labor. It should be able to withstand the test of time.
That was a wonderful breakdown of cost and practicalities - definitely puts things into perspective for today! Also, I was kind of wondering about Harper's Bazar and Der Bazar before, which was "the Original" or if they're not related to each other at all. Probably will fall even deeper into the rabbit hole of reading Der Bazar now... damn... 😂
I was wondering about standard widths of fabrics in the years you researched. It would take more yardage than we are accustomed to today for the same dress if the normal width was 28", 23", 18", etc. rather than the 44" or 60" we are used to today. Did that factor into your research? Loved the video!
Yep this is true! During the 18th century, silk averaged between 18'' to 21''. I think it got a little wider by the 19th century, but they were still much narrower than today's fabrics!
You're Amazing !! Loved your video!!! Information-Packed!!!!! Thank you so much!! Wow! impressed with your passion!!! I love cotton but have a problem I need to make myself some shirts but don't want to use quilting cotton because they are tightly woven. I need cotton that more cool to wear. Do you know what kind of cotton for shirts and dresses is best to use and how to find it. Answer only if you can and if you have the time (no hurries or worries) I live in Texas and the heat out here just too hot. I wish I knew off the cotton that the pioneer women used. Your video was pure excellence
I wonder if a Victorian woman with a discretionary income might have had less to spend it on. A Victorian woman would have no car to keep up, no cable or phone bill, she would rarely eat out...
I am not sure about this, would definitely love to do more research - I would love to know all the things the typical Victorian woman considered when shopping!
good modern folk costume makers today always include generous seams for letting out the piece as needed- I would think that would have been standard practice when creating a new gown.
@@jacquelinewinter7312 True ! But large seam allowance were not sufficient to make drastic change when the fashionnable silhouette went from slim to extra wide.
@@CatsCostumery It is not easy to find information on this topic. French realist writer Emile Zola wrote a whole novel about women shopping for fabric : "Au bonheur des dames" depicts the fever of parisian women when they discovered the new Grands Magasins (department stores). I should read it a second time to see if Zola talks about yardage.
@@CatsCostumery oh wow! That is an extraordinary amount of money then. $50 USD in today’s dollars would be about $900. And that’s just for fabric, doesn’t include cost of labor!
@@theardentarcher My understanding is that labour was very cheap then (rightly or wrongly) so they would buy expensive fabric once and get it refashioned multiple times for relatively little
Also, do you have materials on women factory,, store. farm, domestic etc fashions (or at least clothes),? Altogether, they made up the majority of women in any country..
The cost of making a historically correct dress today, in my opinion, is still just as high. It’s definitely a labor of love as budgeting for fabric is an on going thing for me.
Amen!
If you go to Nordstrom or Saks for a high end modern suit, what upper middle class women wear, you’d pay two or three grand easily. And wear it for many years. So if you exclude cheap garbage clothes we have today, not much has really changed except for massive exploitation of foreign garment workers instead if Triangle Shirtwaist fires.
Your historic dress is likely the highest quality thing you own, so compare it to a classic Chanel suit not some H&M stuff. Money buys quality.
I've only delved into walking skirts so far and I wait till end of seasons sales. Cause the fabric is so much cheaper
I have a 1860's picture of my great grandma, a Cherokee Indian who ran away from a reservation. It's a picture of her in a FABULOUS dress in front of a tiny log cabin in Kentucky with her German husband and 7 sons. She learned to sew on the rez and was the only dressmaker in town. Strange how I look very much like her, I've just moved to a log cabin in the woods with my German husband, and have an overwhelming desire to sew pretty things.
History is doomed to repeat itself, but this repetition is really beautiful.
We have similar great-grandmothers! Mine was a Miq‘Mak chief’s daughter who escaped her arranged marriage and married a white potato farmer and had 18 children!
well you know what they say! faces repeat every few generations :) maybe you inherited even more from her than her looks
@@makaelaischillin damn 18 children?! I couldn't imagine having one kid
@@catttzzz7264 Yep! 18! Which means I have approx. 102 first cousins once removed(because they are my father’s first cousins)and who knows how many children they have.
I found a passage in a 1874 English book about cost of a dress. it goes: "The charges for MAKING a dress vary from 5s 6d to 15s, or even more in some of the fashionable houses[...] but the desideratum, independently of extras for linings &c., will not cost more than 6s or 7s a dress, taking care to have as little trimming as need be, for it those smaller items that the bill is made to mount up to some dreadfull sum, to the horror of the unfortunate lady who fancies she made such a bargain in a lovely muslin for 7s 6d, till she opens her bill in which "making dress&c, £1 5s" meets her astonished gaze"
(the book is "a manual of domestic economy suited to families spending from £150 to £1500 a year" by j. h. Walsh. It's out there in public domain and it actually tells approximate prices of stuff, for a change)
That's great! That income range matches the British information I saw briefly (I focused on USA sources for this because I was mostly using Harper's Bazaar). I find books are much more direct about costs than magazines too.
Nobody:
Fashion magazines: setting unrealistic trends for the average woman for nearly 200 years *finger guns*
Cathy Hay has a terrific video about this, from the top-down: she says gilded-age ladies might wear a Worth gown once or twice, and that was IT. Then they would donate it and it was on to the next dress. :o
That's not shocking. Upper class and even more "new money" does the same today with designer clothes.
It's just different worlds people live in...
They would donate it? More like reuse the fabric. If they were donating it they were giving it to their sister or daughter
LOVE this breakdown. But it also brings to mind: we say fabric is expensive now.... uhm....... HOW much are we paying the weavers.... 🤔
since almost everything today is woven by machines, you know the answer to that one. pre-industrial weavers were overworked and poor...
All hand done then
@@jacquelinewinter7312 yeah you would think the cost of fabric would go down seeing as you need less people to make it, but even making a poor persons tudor outfit nowadays would cost me over £50 for the wool kirtle! and I watched a contryfile episode saying that huge storerooms are full of rotting bales of wool because no-one buys wool anymore! well if they got rid of polyester and other plastic fabrics and replaced it with a lot more natural fabrics then they would be able to lower the prices and more people would actually be able to afford wooll and all that wasted wool won't be wasted anymore!
@@jemimapeach483 it bugs me immensely that we've bred sheep that produce grotesque amounts of wool, only to throw it away in the end because there's no market for it any-more.
Industrialization was a thing in Victorian times. By that time, fabric was industrialized.
In the novel Little Women, Meg buy 25 yards of silk for "the bargain price" of $50 that she didn't have. I just thought I'd say that since this novel was written in the same time period and I love finding info about victorian fashion in Alcott's novels
Wow. That would be about $800 in today's money (around $30 per yard)!
@@TheArtemis1994 $30 a yard for silk sounds like a pretty good price to me.
Which is why I don’t buy silk. Linen is expensive enough, so it’s mostly cotton for me. Thankfully, I live in the subtropics, so cotton does done for the majority of my clothes. I’d use linen for everything if I could afford it.
and we get more fabric for that price most of the time. Fabrics back than was not as wide as its now, it's totally possible that for something we need one yard they would have needed 3 only because of the width!
@@WindspielArt I never even considered that!
@@katherinemorelle7115 yes thirty dollars isn't horrible but it's far more than I would ever be able to consider making silk dress. I be far to nervous to cut it!
I read a fabulous book on fast fashion and the author mentions an account book her mother had in the 40s where a winter coat she bought was the equivalent of £1800 today and that she would expect it to last a decade. And they were of the middling sort! Fast fashion has skewed our perception badly.
This is such a well-researched article Cat. I suppose too, though, that women were paying for quality, as the quality of middle to high price clothing during Victorian times was impressive, which we can see when looking through extant examples. Also without all the synthetic fabrics we have today, cloth just couldn't be made cheaper and was labour intensive even with advancements in machinery. It would be interesting to compare the price of a contemporary well-crafted custom fit gown today made from similar materials, to the prices of Victorian gowns.
For sure! It's really interesting because there's some 19th century accounts of fashionable women refusing to buy ready made clothes because the craftmanship, rather than the materials, were seen as inferior, and even though they were way cheaper, the craftmanship was prioritised.
@@CatsCostumery so interesting! And now typically the most "in-style" look is favoured over both quality AND craftsmanship most of the time, and it's the opposite. People typically will opt for something ready-made as custom-fit or bespoke has a stigma of being expensive (though arguably well-made clothes are cheaper in the long run because they last so long and can be altered!)
I think if you were looking to make the comparison with a custom fit gown made of similar materials, then it might be worth looking at the cost of current wedding dresses. I know that the 'wedding premium' is a thing, but there are a good many small wedding dress companies out there that essentially do made to measure dresses in fabrics that are more likely to be natural and high quality (I've seen a fair amount of silk dyed wedding dresses on my instagram ads at the moment - though no idea why). I would say that for the majority today, a wedding dress is most likely the only custom fit garment that they would go and purchase. For an example that is a huge sidestep into a different part of youtube, Hannah Witton did a video on her wedding dress, which was made be a small company in the the midlands (Birmingham, I think), it was bespoke to her, but in a similar style to what that company usually produces, and was around £1400. I'm sure there would be more accurate comparisons out there, but that was the first option that popped into my head.
@@HowToDecideOnNothing yeah a bespoke wedding dress is a great comparison! I sew historical fashion personally and it's all natural materials and hand sewn. Of course I don't pay for labour, but even high qulity silk tafettas are typically around 40GBP a metre, that's sort of an average as you can certainly find more expensive and less. So I suppose if that were made by someone now instead of me, I'm guessing it'd be somewhere in the 2-3,000 GBP range, as that's what a lot of these custom historical gowns on etsy are going for.
I will stop complaining about the price of silk
I will stop complaining about the price of wool
I will stop complaining about the price of liberty prints....
Liberty prints though 👌
@@CatsCostumery Have been drooling over the last Tana Lawn collection. I should really stop going on the stragier website
In little Women (Good Wives) by L.M Alcott, Meg buys silk for a new dress and blows the budget her family has to live on so badly that her husband couldn't afford a coat. so it was VERY expensive for fabric. Labor was less than the fabric.
I commented the exact same thing just a minute ago😂 Meg bought 25 yards of silk for "the bargain" of $50 that she did not have.
It's interesting to consider how the cost of middle class clothes in 1865 is possibly equivalent to the cost of couture outfits today.
in Louisa May Alcott's book good wives( the sequel to little women) Meg March is in a similar position to the girl who had $40 a month for clothes, and there is a chapter where she buys $40 s worth of unmade lengths of violet silk when tempted by her rich friend, but then her husband (who works as a clerk) doesn't have enough money to buy a replacement for his worn-out winter overcoat, he tries to be gallant about it but he is upset that all the savings have been spent for uncut fabric so meg persuades her rich friend to buy the fabric and instead buys her husband the replacement overcoat he needed. I think this is such a sweet story and really highlights the struggles of a young woman with a tight budget who wants to be fashionable and pretty but also loves her husband and her home even if it means giving up some of those things!
A month's salary for an overcoat. There's a lot of bad things about modern fashion but it won't drain your whole monthly salary
This really puts into perspective how INCREDIBLY little we pay for our clothing now, and also how much less respect is paid to the clothing we do own since it is so cheap. I'm not saying I want to pay $1,000 per outfit, but I do think that if we paid more for better quality clothing perhaps we would take better care of it. It's interesting to think about. Thanks for your research, this was really interesting!
I deeply appreciate the work that must've gone into this video: especially the extensive research and the painstaking process of referencing, not to mention the editing and just the sheer amount of time spent filming ❤❤❤
...imagine being back in a time where you were expected to wear $2000k worth of clothes (plus undergarments, accessories, and shoes) every single day, almost regardless of profession. That's a lot of pressure.
At the same time, many of us long for the days where we get dressed up again (actually putting effort into our appearance), as we stay cozy in sweats, leggings, and pjs because covid.
Interesting perspective to be sure.
Great point!!!
This reminds me in a kind of tertiary way of a fashion...article? Interview? I encountered several years ago from the perspective of a person who wore a bespoke tailored suit to work every day, and owned several. They talked about it matter-of-factly as an investment that was simply expected in their profession (I think they were a high-end metropolitan lawyer or some such...memory fails me). These suits costs a few thousand apiece, which at the time sounded _wild_ to me -- but now that I know more about tailoring it sounds absolutely reasonable.
Meanwhile, I'm wearing leggings I got at a thrift store and a t-shirt dress I made myself out of clearance fabric, and if I had to get on a Zoom meeting today I wouldn't bother changing.
All that to say -- it's fascinating how circumstances and norms shape our worldview about clothing and which aspects of it have the most value (style, price, material, maker, etc.). Thanks for bringing that up.
2 thousand k? So 2 million?
@@AgentPedestrian 😂😂😂 #truth rip my wallet 😂😂😂😭😭😭
In a way, I want the high quality clothing that might outlive you to come back, but keep some of our modern siloutes (except cropped and ripped clothing, those can die) and pants (I find skirts super uncomfortable). Also I want cloaks to come back.
These days, many people wear more than that on their left ring fingers.
I wrote my senior thesis on the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine specifically looking at the advice given to middle class women and how they could afford to dress “above their station” I loved this! It’s (obviously) right up my alley!
As someone who is on the spectrum and needed to know what the cost of dresses then vs now, I needed this. This little rabbit hole was a fun little adventure. I have a 1900s farm sears house. So, I naturally want to bring it back to its formal glory. With wallpapered ceilings, and medallions and picture railing and all. I need all of the Info I can get. Now I can buy a bunch of fabric and walk around my Victorian/Edwardian home in dated dress. I will be statuesque, dammit.
I think some of the pictures in those magazines were aspirational rather than dresses people actually wore, much like fashion magazines of today. Working class women certainly didn't dress, nor could afford to dress that way. I have a photo of my great great grandmother taken in a photographers studio, where she would have been wearing some of her best clothes, and all she is wearing is a simple black blouse and skirt. It's good that costubers and other historical fashion re-creationists, such as yourself, are re-creating these dresses so we can see what they should actually look like.
Very well done! Louisa May Alcott wrote a while scene in the book "a rose in Bloom" about taking a "upper class" lady's wardrobe and recycling it for the "season" when the upper-class woman had a change in economic status, bringing her into a place where she could not just go out and purchase a new wardrobe. It is a nice contemporary author's glimpse into the era of Alcott and the era in your video.
There are also some neat scenes in the first chapter of ”The Making of a Marchioness” (alternative title ”Emily Fox-Seton”) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, where the main character considers the new fashions and how to adjust her dress at minimal cost. The same chapter is also interesting as it brings up, almost lists, a number of occupations and tasks open to a poor, single woman of middle to upper class who needs to earn a living.
@@kimzachris5340 OH I totally forgot about that book! Yes!
L.M. Montgomery wrote (in either "The Story Girl" or "Golden Road") that a low/middle class woman might get one silk dress in her life and it would be expected to be her "good" dress for years. She also wrote a few short stories where poor girls had to get clever in making themselves new clothes: making a blouse from the silk backing of an antique quilt or taking an ugly silk dress and partially hiding the garish pattern with black net.
Harpers then, like Harpers now -- totally unrealistic as to what the common person wears and can afford. In a thousand years, they're going to look at Vogue and Harpers and think we wore some pretty posh cloths at some massive costs. Excellent video, Cat. Stay well.
Thank you for this! There are times now when $40/mo is a stretch for me to spend on clothes! I am at the beginning stages of investing in quality materials to make a new me-made wardrobe. But I’m focusing on using ok-quality stash fabrics first so they don’t go to waste. I’ve found they’re a good way to practice new techniques yet still have a wearable end product.
This is what I tell people all the time. When my friends go "I wished I lived in ___ it was so this and that and the clothes so beautiful." I told them, of course, no one dressed like that. Only those who could afford it. Its like comparing yourself to the president of a large company or a celebrity.
I often wonder if years ahead people will look at our contemporary magazines and use those to determine what “everyone” was wearing - they will probably have some bizarre ideas based on some of the most extreme designs that gain a lot of media hype. Personally I don’t have either a meat dress or strawberry dress, so perhaps I’m letting the future down...
Really interesting information though, so thanks for pulling it all together!
I really really want the 2120s lady to sport the Gaga kermit coat...
You're so right, people will think we were crazy xD
Thank you for sharing the research you've done on this topic! It's so interesting to hear some of the primary sources in particular which helped women strategize how to make the most of their budget/etc.
This is brilliant. You did such a wonderful job in finding and organizing this information. Thank you. (I always think of my grands and great-grands also clothing all their children and the help! Of course, my family was not very high class and often were the help! I saw a diary entry from a great-grand whose sister changed jobs primarily because in the new household, diary maids got two 'decent' dresses every year.)
Wow! Thank you so much for this informative video. It is very hard to wrap my mind around exactly how expensive clothes were back then even though I do make my own clothes and I haven't bought from fast fashion for like 6 years.
I'm so exited about this video i literally was thinking about this the other day^^'
Thank you so much for also putting the actual numbers you’re talking about on the screen so I actually understand what number you’re saying!!! THANK YOU!!!
I couldn't help it but Carol Burnett's spoof of the curtain gown scene in Gone With the Wind popped into my mind. "I saw it in the window and I couldn't resist." 😆 Honestly though I do wonder if sewists of the past repurposed things other than old clothing. Maybe Margaret Mitchell's grandmother told her about making clothes out of curtains and inspired that part of the book.
I always ask myself when I want to continue my Worth or any Historical dress: is it gonna cost me thousands to try and recreate? Yep. Is it going to be so worth it in the end when I finish it? Yep. Will I probably cry over all the material costs? Definitely.
As much as I enjoy videos of a garment being made I thoroughly enjoy videos that go into the history of dress as well.
Wow amazing research! This was so incredibly interesting and makes me appreciate those old dresses even more
I'm feeling much better about the number of dress patterns I have that call for 6-8 yards of fabric now haha! Great video!
My grandmother grew up in a most comfortable, but not wealthy rural home. She was raised by her very Victorian grandmother. Her grandmother took the train to St. Louis twice a year to shop. She would buy each family member a new outfit, spring and fall at Stix, Baer and Fuller or Famous Barr (2 big department stores) They were considered the envy of the community because they got 2 new outfits a year! Fashionistas of the day. When my great grandmother got married in 1908, she went to St. Louis and had her wedding wardrobe custom made, her wedding dress, a going away dress and a traveling suit. They were amazing! I wonder how much they cost her parents?
We made much the same pilgrimage in the 1950s ... buying a couple of new dresses for school.
Mom made a lot of our clothes, with an eye to altering as we grew. The hand-me-downs and swaps with neighbors were another source of clothing. Some of the better made pieces travelled a regular route in and out of families as children grew into them.
Sears & Roebuck catalog, Montgomery wards catalogs, JC Penneys catalogs all published for at least 100 years before they either stopped the catalog or went out of business.
"Nellie has 40 dollars per month to spend on clothes" Same..! Well, no not really but my budget is definitely closer to that than the amount that would be in todays money.
Thanks for the video, it was very interesting! I think as people interested in historical fashion we usually have some vague idea that clothes were extremely expensive in the past, but we lack detailed information, so I really appreciate you for sharing your research with us. It's hard to imagine such an expense, and that for one dress! And regarding Harper's Bazaar focus on the beautiful, not attainable - it seems to be holding on pretty well in today's world too. All fashion sections of women's magazines I've ever seen - which is not many, but I used to come across these in my childhood/teens - featured designer clothing (and high end cosmetics), waaaay above the budget of the average reader. The only difference is that today they actually give you the prices, lol. Okay, found another difference - these days the clothes are not necessarily beautiful 😛
Wow I always had this very same question but had no idea where to look for answers!! Such a grate video with so many sources and such dedication in your investigation, thank you very much for all your work!!! 👏👏👏👏
I loved this video so much!!! You explain both your arguments and your evidence very clearly and compellingly and it's clear that you've put a lot of work into the research. I'd love to see more of this type of video! Truly excellent work!
This was an extremely interesting video, with a lot of wonderfully researched information.
The only issue I have is that at 11:00, when part of a Harper’s article is being shown, and Cat mentions 13-17 yards of fabric is needed for a dress (depending on what type of dress is being made), if you carefully look at the very beginning of the article, it clearly states that the amounts are for TWO girls…which would mean the yardage would be enough for TWO dresses, not just one-which would definitely change the amount of money needed per dress when calculations are done.
Other than that, great video!
To an average person, 13 or 17 yards yards of fabric for a dress might seem like a LOT, but back then fabrics tended to be much narrower than today so more yardage was needed.
But in any case 12 to 17 yards at 2.5 dollars ( bargain price ) for a basic dress is an enormous amount for a middle class woman to afford.
The only issue I have with this statement is that at 11:00 she shows article mentioning 13-17 yards of fabric (depending on type of clothing being made), however if you look at that very beginning of the article, it clearly states that the amounts are for TWO girls…which would mean the yardage would be enough for TWO dresses, not just one.
Laura Ashley designs also required major yardage to make up a dress. Hence were something to aspire to own. Still collectables today. In Japan shops are still selling new originals. A contemporary tale.
I like the website victorian choice. For the most part it is pretty accurate and I love it
And it's still called "The rag Trade"
I believe no scrap of fabric ever went wasted. Dresses were cut down and often made into quilts. I'm sure pioneering women never had huge access to resources such as stores living rurally.
One quilt book I had had a picture from N.E.England a bed quilt made from papers...it was cheap and paper like straw back then for very poor folks, was a great insulator for warmth in cold Winters.
All so interesting whatever part of fashion you are interested in.
My mum nursed in 1940s UK and had 1 Winter coat 1 pair of stockings for best. 1 dress 1 skirt with couple of blouses. That was her wardrobe and it had to last!
Loved the information. I love the part of homemaker books that itemize the expected wardrobe and cost, so this video was perfect!
Yes! That's such a good shout, I'll keep them in mind for future research :)
Modern fashion magazines and runway shows tend to treat fashion as art, rather than a representation of what people actually wear. I wonder how much of the clothing shown in Harper's Bazar was representative of what women wore, and how much of if was just a pretty fantasy sold to the middle class.
Yep absolutely! One of the things I did in my actual assignment (I had to cut out a lot of this video) was use other columns in the magazine, rather than just the fashion plates because the fashion plates I don't think are 'real' in a sense, while the columns often described clothes worn by actual famous/named people. The Answers to Correspondents section I think is the best, because it's actual questions from people :)
Cat this was a sensational video!! I'm so impressed with your research. Thank you for sharing.
dressmakers were not paid a lot, so I would maybe add 10 or at most 20% to the price of the fabric on the gut feeling basis, since fabric was usually reworked by the first owner a couple of times, and then passed down to the help, who may have passed it down once it was really shabby and only good for lining or such. lace trimmings are probably another kettle of fish.
Great video. I can't imagine trying to keep up with those silouette changes. Thanks for the large amount of time and research put in.
How many dresses did mid 19th century middle class women typically have in their wardrobe? How many walking dresses and evening dresses? Did most of these women make their own dresses? Did they make their children’s clothing? How long would they keep a dress and alter it to new styles before finally giving up on it? So many questions!
I'd LOVE to see a British version of this.. especially as you mentioned the fact Americans imported dresses from Europe and if the dress fashion more started in Europe to trickle out to America is pricing and fashion trend dates different or not..
Great video! I've really wondered about things like this for quite a while, so thank you!
Well done! You did a lot of research. I can't imagine spending that much money, just on a dress, even know I would/could alter it down the line and I'm all about "slow", quality fashion.
well, when i had money (sigh) i would read the fashion magazines... and flinch at the 300 dollar dresses where i was buying a dress for 30- 50, so i expect it must have been similar.
I always wondered because you know that was tremendous yards of silk! Silk velvet alone is about $50+ usd per yard. It may have changed. The last time I priced it was 3 years ago.
Thank you for this and the loads of research you put into this, this was truly interesting.
This is very informative and interesting.
Great information, presented in refreshing way. Keep the good work up!
I've read that silk fabric in the 1850s was only 22 inches wide. That could explain the huge amounts suggested in the magazines. Did you find out how wide other fabrics might have been? Today most fabrics are 45 inches wide or more.
Where I used to look at these dresses and fall in love, now I look at these dresses and look at all the people that worked at a very low or no to make these dresses.
It takes the love of these dresses right out, then you look at how these dresses would pass down threw the line of family eldest to youngest.
Lastly the farther you go back in history the more ugly the story the story gets.
With my daughters trying to learn to embrace both sides of their ancestry.
I’m proud to say many people are now shedding light even in past fashion the truth.
Appreciate the dress in truth
You did a fantastic job on this video and the research. Thank you, for sharing it with us.
Brilliant video! Now I really do not feel bad that my first day ensemble is costing me SO MUCH and it takes SO LONG to finish it because I'm saving for fabrics all the time :D
We love thorough research!!! 👏
Super interesting, thank you for a lovely and informative video!
This essay was so good. Thank you!!!!
Well to do women today spend that much on clothes. They buy Prada or Chanel,not fast fashion junk. But it lasts, so not much has changed.
A Worth dress was for the very wealthy, so this gets apples and oranges. Even a judges wife was on a budget, they wouldn’t be buying much designer today either. It’s a government job.
Amazing research! Thank you
I always wondered about that. Cause honestly most of us would not have been able to afford them in olden times lol
Clothing in the earlier centuries really set the standard for quantity over quality because at that price point of materials and labor. It should be able to withstand the test of time.
Uh... I think you meant quality over quantity.
I love how your videos progressed so far!♥️♥️♥️♥️
This was a great and interesting video. I have often wondered about this topic
One of the many reasons why I do half size historical clothing. I can easily make a dress with one yard of good quality silk.
Completely unrelated to your topic (which was excellent as always) but I love your blouse. Is it an 1860's shirtwaist by any chance?
That was a wonderful breakdown of cost and practicalities - definitely puts things into perspective for today! Also, I was kind of wondering about Harper's Bazar and Der Bazar before, which was "the Original" or if they're not related to each other at all. Probably will fall even deeper into the rabbit hole of reading Der Bazar now... damn... 😂
I really enjoy your scholarly videos.
Most interesting!
But who determined the changing fashions?.Men?.Women ? Were they trained/apprenticed? Self taught?
Very interesting, Cat! 👏👏 I really like your video essays!
This was such a great video!
Absolutely fascinating! I can't imagine spending such a high proportion of my income on my wardrobe. It's high enough as it is...
Imagine spending 1000 current day dollars and sewing a dress for 4 months only for the fashion to change right as you finish.
I was wondering about standard widths of fabrics in the years you researched. It would take more yardage than we are accustomed to today for the same dress if the normal width was 28", 23", 18", etc. rather than the 44" or 60" we are used to today. Did that factor into your research? Loved the video!
Silk was very much less in width. When I was a kid, the standard for cotton in the stores was about 34-36 inches.
Yep this is true! During the 18th century, silk averaged between 18'' to 21''. I think it got a little wider by the 19th century, but they were still much narrower than today's fabrics!
(América as in only the us excluding the other 34 American countries)
You're Amazing !! Loved your video!!! Information-Packed!!!!! Thank you so much!! Wow! impressed with your passion!!! I love cotton but have a problem I need to make myself some shirts but don't want to use quilting cotton because they are tightly woven. I need cotton that more cool to wear. Do you know what kind of cotton for shirts and dresses is best to use and how to find it. Answer only if you can and if you have the time (no hurries or worries) I live in Texas and the heat out here just too hot. I wish I knew off the cotton that the pioneer women used. Your video was pure excellence
Look for cotton lawn or gauze
Nice video! Good info.
I wonder if a Victorian woman with a discretionary income might have had less to spend it on. A Victorian woman would have no car to keep up, no cable or phone bill, she would rarely eat out...
Food was a lot more expensive than today, though, as were books...
Cat, as a lover of accents and languages, can I ask where you're from? Or better said, where is your accent from? Loving your videos and skills!
I like your blouse. Did you make it? Perhaps you could show us how to make it?
there's a video on this channel about it, it's called the Garibaldi blouse :)
When did patterns come out?
It makes us stop and think as we stare at our stuffed wardrobes of fast fashion, is it really worth it to have quantity over quality.
Speak for yourself, some of us appreciate what we have and certainly don't choose quantity over quality
Was it a common practice to buy extra fabric in prevision of future alterations, so everything matched perfectly ?
I am not sure about this, would definitely love to do more research - I would love to know all the things the typical Victorian woman considered when shopping!
good modern folk costume makers today always include generous seams for letting out the piece as needed- I would think that would have been standard practice when creating a new gown.
@@jacquelinewinter7312 True ! But large seam allowance were not sufficient to make drastic change when the fashionnable silhouette went from slim to extra wide.
@@CatsCostumery It is not easy to find information on this topic. French realist writer Emile Zola wrote a whole novel about women shopping for fabric : "Au bonheur des dames" depicts the fever of parisian women when they discovered the new Grands Magasins (department stores). I should read it a second time to see if Zola talks about yardage.
MARAVILHOSA.......ESPETACULAR.........INCRÍVEL.........
Fascinating!
Irresponsible fabric purchases excluded! Hahaha!😂
It's why people wore aprons back then.
We HOARD luscious silks and velvets
Are the prices for yardage in 2021 dollars?
No, they are the direct values from the 1868 magazine, so they are 1868 values :)
@@CatsCostumery oh wow! That is an extraordinary amount of money then. $50 USD in today’s dollars would be about $900. And that’s just for fabric, doesn’t include cost of labor!
@@theardentarcher My understanding is that labour was very cheap then (rightly or wrongly) so they would buy expensive fabric once and get it refashioned multiple times for relatively little
@@theardentarcher the Labour may have been done by the women themselves. And yes "women's work" was often poorly paid
Also, do you have materials on women
factory,, store. farm, domestic etc fashions (or at least clothes),? Altogether, they made up the majority of women in any country..
for the everyday folk, serge, calico and flannel, I suspect. muslin for linens.