Give us Bread But Give us Roses
In the history hoyden imagination, it's often the clothes that propel us back in time and suggest alternative earlier selves. How many of you read (and/or write) Regency historicals because you can't resist the exquisite neo-Grecian draped simplicity of the early 1800s (not to speak of what the guys were wearing)? Or are you the sort who'd rather imagine yourself moving to the swish of heavy Georgian silk? Or ... if you picture yourself as the smart, independent-minded woman you (or I) surely would have been 100 yea rs ago, you might well see yourself in a shirtwaist and simple, straight dark skirt. "Waist" was the word for blouse then, and though some of them were frilly, Gibson Girl concoctions like the ones to the left, others were simpler affairs, like the one below... ...which perhaps, if you were a recent immigrant to this country like my grandmothers in, say 1910, you might have worn to work at one of the 450 factories in New York City that made shirtwaist...