Clothing of the 1800s.

The fashion in the late 1800s was a lot more complicated than they are now. For instance the girls would have to wear corsets, under the many layers of clothing.  Which would sometimes break the ribs and make them pass out.  I would never put clothing this tight on. This bone-crushing corset was built to shape everyone the same. It was wide at the top and shrunk in the middle so it could squeeze the mid section of the body. It was made that way so the body would appear smaller than usual.
    

Now back to the men’s clothing. When talking about clothing it is much like today because the more money people have the more they tend to dress up in fancy clothes. Now there were three types of people back then, farmers were at the lowest rank, middle class would be a paper editor. Now for the top rank you would probably be a railroad owner. Now the farmers would dress in very lighter clothing than a businessman because they would keep him cooler. They wore smocks which were thin white shirts usually worn over pantaloons which were high wasted pants held up by suspenders that later became overalls which are still worn today by farmers. The reason you see farmers in movies wearing straw hats is because they protected them from the sun.  Now under all of these clothes they would wear a union suit that was a one peace under garment. These are the kinds of clothes Joseph T Brown would wear.

    
Now the paper editors would dress fancy when they go out somewhere. The rich people would dress fancy wherever they go. Now when Joseph Brown and his family went to church they would have worn their best looking clothes. The children would wear their school uniforms to school. People would also get all dressed up for fancy parties. Usually the young boys would wear dresses until the ages of 6-8. People just thought they looked good.

 The colors were much like they are today. There haven’t bean much of a color changeover the time period. There weren’t any name brands of clothing back then like there are today like Enyce, Sean John, Southpole, and Roca Wear are the top brands of clothes today. I think I would rather keep the clothing style during today’s time. Because it would be easier to get dressed in the morning to just put on my shirt and pants and not my dress. For the shoes they wore leather shoes that had a metal flap on the bottom of them to keep them higher than the mud. Both shoes fit on the same feet. The brand of shoe was called Kalman. Today’s name brand shoes are named, Timberland, DC, and Phat Farm.

 Now your probably wondering how these people bought their clothes, there were people that made clothes in their homes and went around selling clothing out of their wagons. I think that would be kind of fun and easy. Instead of having someone drive all the way to the mall you could just have someone else do it for you.

 Now back to the woman’s clothes they would wear gloves that extended to their elbows. The women always wore their gloves even in the extreme heat on a summer day. So this is what Mary Brown would wear to look pretty for Joseph. If I were Mary Brown I would not have worn the gloves in the middle of the summer even if they made me look pretty.

 People in the 1800s did not own a lot of clothes usually only like 5 outfits. Most days’ farmers would not even change their clothes they would wear them for days and days. It was gross, but not to them because they had to they did not have a choice. There was only one day a week that the mother would wash the clothes. Now I think the women were more manlier then the men because just getting dressed was a hassle. And they would wash them all at once. I think it would be bad to wash the clothes at once because they would be tired after all the other work they had to do and to top it off they would wash the clothes much like today.

Bibliography

19^th Century Clothing, Bobbie Kalman, 1993,Ney York N Y

websites

http\\yonderdays. Bravepages.com.feb 18^th 2005