07/25/2025
This photograph, showing the inside of a bodice, demonstrates why ladies would employ a professional dressmaker to fit and construct such a puzzle of complexity, while they were content to plug away at the endless seams and hems of voluminous skirts, frills and ruffles.
We often read in novels of women buying "a dress", or of fathers bringing one home for a daughter. This wasn't the finished garment, but sufficient fabric (many many yards) with which to make one. Until the end of the century, when blouses in particular became fashionable, all women's clothing was made to measure, either at home or by a professional.
