Maine Memory Network

Margaret A. McGuire’s grandmother, Jean A. Maiorano, preserved this ecru silk tussah dress. Margaret wore the dress on the occasion of her marriage to Portland patrolman Thomas J. Smith at St. Dominic's Church Portland on July 5, 1909.

An example of the one piece dress, newly in vogue at the time, it has a standing collar, square yolk with lavish silk cord embellishment, tucked sleeves and fine pin tucks shaping the skirt. Bold gold letters on the inner waistband label spell out "The Misses Macdonough Portland" the name of the dressmaking establishment that produced this exquisite gown.

Tussah or wild silk is naturally a pale ecru or coffee color. The color comes from the tannin in oak leaves eaten by wild tussah silk worms. Cultivated silk worms are fed on mulberry leaves and produce fine white silk filament. Tussah filaments are coarse and irregular and make up into an attractive fabric with small bumps or slubs. Sturdy, with a matte surface, various weights of tussah fabric were favored for travel and city wear because they stood up to the stresses and strains of travel.

A Maine woman, yet to be identified, probably purchased this splendid black velveteen gown during a Boston vacation or shopping trip. The dressmaker was M.M. Conlan of Boston Massachusetts.

A mature lady's dinner gown, it features the 1911-1913 raised waistline and columnar skirt that hints of the less restrictive styles favored by the dress reform movement. Nevertheless it was probably worn with the long stiffly boned corset of the period. Floral silk cord motifs ornament the hemline and side panels. The front and back necklines are richly embellished with shiny metallic and lustrous silk floss embroidery with similar treatment on the under sleeves.

Reflective metallic and glossy materials took on new life as feature of evening dress when electric lighting was introduced. By this time department stores often provided a special room with electric light so that customers could check how yardage, garment colors and trimmings appeared.

The very highly skilled seamstress who made this dress is believed to be Martha Willey Riley. Martha lived in Cherryfield Maine where her husband John Riley, was a logger and blueberry farmer.

The woman who wore this gown cut a very elegant figure. Made of purple wool challis it is very similar to a 1912 Lucille designer style worn by socialites in London, England.

In the manner of the period small wires keep the standing collar stiff and upright. Cream silk fills the V neckline, which is bordered with floral gold metallic and silk floss braid. Set above the natural waistline the waist seam is edged with narrow crisp purple taffeta frilling. The same frilling is found on the sleeve cuffs and the skirt’s decorative looped trimming.

At the back of the dress an arrangement of deep skirt pleating and waist to shoulder tucks cleverly conceal the long, back of knee to neckline, opening required to facilitate getting into and out of this style of garment. Dressing and undressing required a family member or lady’s maid to close or undo the opening’s multitude of hook and eye fasteners. Given the complicated structure of dresses and prior to the advent of zips dressmakers were adept at devising concealed openings.

Judith Sturtevant Harris remembers her mother Bhima Sturtevant MacDonald wearing this black evening or dinner dress.

It is believed that family member, Mrs. Justina W. Thomas, made the dress, which features a long slim lace skirt, a standing collar and neckline framed by shoulder swags of heavily fringed satin.

The raised waist fashion seen here signify the combined influences of the dress reform movement and French designer Paul Poirot. His name was likely familiar to style conscious Maine women who closely followed fashion. News of designers and the latest modes crossed the Atlantic rapidly to be quickly disseminated through local newspaper fashion features and fashion magazines.

At this time Americans looked to Paris or London as the fountain of fashion. It was only in the 1920s that American designers became a force in their own right.

Marion Phinney’s heavy white linen ensemble consists of a cardigan style jacket with a false blouse front and full skirt.

Perhaps she dressed in this outfit for summer outings with Clinton Rines, the young man she married in 1922. Clinton’s father was Joseph Henry Rines, prominent Portland businessman and owner of Rines Department Store in Portland.

Dense white hand embroidery embellishes the ensemble jacket, collar, cuffs, belt, and skirt. This was an expensive outfit to purchase and to maintain. Such a garment required a maid to do expert washing and pressing each time it was worn.

Dating from the war years, 1914-1918, the full skirt contrasts with the slim styles of year or two earlier. During World War I fashion reflected the practical shorter, fuller, unrestrictive skirts worn by women engaged in active war work. By the 1919-1921 skirts straightened and slimmed down again. The hip length cardigan style jacket went on to become a firmly established garment popular in both tailored and knitted versions.

Worn by Ruth Trappan, or a member of her Yarmouth family, this dramatic black silk velvet theater coat was part of the extensive and fashionable Trappan wardrobe.

It is silk lined and embellished with a black all-over machine embroidered serpentine design. With its kimono-type sleeves it is an example of the new fashions that emerged after Sergei Diagilev’s Asiatically costumed Ballets Russes burst on the Paris scene in 1909, bringing exotic influences, including the kimono and caftan.

These unstructured types of garments assailed established European sensibilities—hitherto accustomed to carefully fitted garments.

Thereafter, throughout the nineteen-teens and twenties exoticism inspired a host of novel unstructured cloaks and wraps, from designer-made to ready-made versions.

An elegant black kimono evening coat would have been the perfect wrap to wear to a Ballets Russes performance, had the company visited Maine during one of its American tours.

Ida Lane Plimpton's mother, Mrs. Ida May Lane, wore this dolman-sleeved evening or theater jacket made of fabric with a woven red and gold metallic Art Deco design.

The jacket is fur trimmed and lined with yellow velvet. Loose and unstructured, the garment closely resembles a Fortuny red velvet lined jacket made of a gold embossed silk velvet--one of the Renaissance inspired fabrics he famously contrived in his studio. Mario Fortuny was a highly individual designer who worked outside accepted fashion conventions finding patrons among artistic and literary individuals.

Along with all the various styles of capes and loose wraps, large hand embroidered Chinese silk shawls with long hand knotted fringes became a very popular fashion accessory in the 1920s.

Where this example is made of cream silk crepe with brightly colored silk floss embroidery, others were of darker colors or even black crepe with either self colored or multicolored embroidery.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries silk shawls were embroidered in Canton (Guangdong), South China and Indonesia for the export trade to the Americas and Europe.

This ankle length brown silk satin day dress belonged to Lois Anne Wentworth of Bangor.

It features gold lame lace trim along the neckline, and back and front, two long hanging bands weighted with tassels to help emphasize the new emerging straight silhouette. Elements such as tassels and gold lace filtered into mainstream fashion after Diaghilev’s exotic Asian inspired Ballets Russe costumes appeared in Paris in 1909.

In the late teens and first years of the 1920s hemlines moved slightly above ankle length. Post World War I fashions were simple, loose at the waist, and easy to wear--vastly different from the high-necked, body encasing garments worn just ten years earlier. No longer restrictive and cumbersome fashion reflected changing times particularly women’s shifting roles and increasingly active lifestyle.

The silk is in excellent condition. Possibly it was manufactured by the Haskell Silk Company of Westbrook, a company nationally renowned for high quality, long lasting silk fabrics.

Caroline Cobb's mother, Marguerite, owned this taupe colored silk dress.

After her marriage in 1921 Marguerite Waterman, now Mrs. Cobb, lived in Portland until 1926. Thereafter she spent many years living in other parts of the country before she returned to her home city of Portland in 1951.

The dress style dates to the mid-1920s suggesting that perhaps it was made for a going away party in 1926. Forming a beautiful juxtaposition of textures, the taupe peau de soei of the bodice and skirt gleam through an over-layer of cream silk net. A contrasting panel of matte silk chiffon separates the two glossy areas. Providing detail and a touch of color, here and there small shapes on the net are filled with hand embroidered blue and purple silk floss. In part due to the dress reform movement’s use of hand embroidered detailing and Russian Ballet costuming many kinds of hand embroidered details, large and small, became a fashion feature in the early twentieth century.

Elegant but simple and easy to put on over the head this dress features waist to hem side gussets, one of the many 1920s dressmaker ploys that gave straight dresses a little give and room to move.

Preserved by Cecile P. Carver of Scarborough, this green silk and sequined dress was originally acquired and worn in Paris by Mrs. Howard Burr, Cecile's maternal grandmother whose name in her native Poland was Cécile de Wasiloske.

The heavily sequined scallop shaped tabs along the lower skirt weight the dress, contributing to its very fashionable vertical silhouette. With its pale green color—the recently introduced Nile green, so named after the River Nile--and sequined tabs in palmette or lotus leaf patterns the dress are examples of the Egyptian influence that swept the fashion world after Howard Carter’s opening of King Tutenkamun's tomb in 1922. Over the following years details and pictures of his discoveries in the Valley of Kings and of all things related to Ancient Egypt received wide publicity stimulating a craze for Egyptian design themes. They inspired dress design, jewelry, architecture, and perhaps not surprising, movie theater interiors and exteriors.

This nightdress probably belonged to Mrs. Marguerite Waterman Cobb. Perhaps it is preserved in its new, unworn state because it was a gift or the wrong size.

The fabric appears to be silk, and features machine lace trimming, small tucks at center front and a small ribbon rose. However, the fabric is not silk. It is artificial silk. Made from wood pulp, artificial silk, also known as rayon, was the first man-made or chemically-made fiber. It was developed to imitate expensive silk.

Early rayon was not pleasant against the skin, but by the late 1920s it had been improved to the point that it was ideal for lingerie. It brought attractive affordable silk-like underwear within range of everyone’s pocket book.

Historically only the wealthy could afford silk. Silk underwear was one of the great luxuries. But now, thanks to inexpensive rayon, most women could enjoy the pleasure of wearing silk-like lingerie and nightdresses while rayon knit fabric gave men lightweight summer underwear.

In the late 1920s Sear's catalogues and others carried pages of colorful very inexpensive rayon underwear deep into Maine’s most rural areas The development of different kinds of low priced rayon fabrics suitable for dresses and other garments contributed to the collapse of the American silk industry.