Bustle Textiles

Haven't seen the Flapper Fashion exhibit at the LCVA yet? Feb 7 is the perfect day for that! I'll be speaking that night at 6pm on 1920s fashion at the LCVA! Be sure to come check it out!

LCVA welcomes bustle textiles founder Ashley Webb as host of its first Art After Dark of the new year. The exclusive gallery talk will take place on Wednesday, February 7 at 6:00 pm.

This program is an opportunity for participants to tour the LCVA’s popular current exhibition, Flapper Fashion of the 1920s, with Webb, the exhibition’s curator.

Flapper Fashion of the 1920s showcases over 30 period dresses worn by the everyday American woman between 1920 and 1929, placing them in the social and cultural contexts of the day. Webb, a Longwood University alumna, is the owner of bustle textiles maintains several ongoing collections and research-related projects for museums, artists, and private collectors in and around the Roanoke area in addition to working full-time as the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions with the Roanoke History & O. Winston Link Museums, and acting as Registrar for the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, and as an art handler with the Taubman Museum of Art.

Art after Dark replaces the formal lecture format normally associated with museums with interdisciplinary activities. These evening gatherings have a relaxed atmosphere that
encourages engaging conversation.

This program is completely free of charge and open to the public. Doors will open at 5:45 pm for refreshments, and the program will begin at 6:00 pm.

LCVA exhibitions and programs are made possible through the generous support of the Wells Fargo Foundation, the Walter J. Payne Foundation, Anne Carter & Walter R. Robins, Jr. Foundation, Walmart, Navona & David Hart, Century 21 @ Home, Helton House, Haley Auto Mall, Candice Jamison Dowdy ’69 & Charles H. Dowdy III + Northwestern Mutual, Hotel Weyanoke, Lisa & Tim Tharpe, Rock Foundation, Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond, Harriet Butterworth Miller ’51, Joni Beachly + Ironworks Financial, YakAttack, Peachtree House Foundation, Wilma Register Sharp ’66 & Marc B. Sharp, and Mindy & Nash Osborn + North Street Press Club.

Images/Credit lines:

Chevron Evening Dress, c.1924, cotton net and metal sequins 41x34x38 inches.
Collection of Ashley Webb, bustle textiles.

One word that usually describes 1830s fashion is romantic for the 'Romantic Era.' And with the heavily printed, lightweight cottons, the bell shaped skirts, the low cut bustlines, and the large gigot sleeves, the silhouette does give off a more romantic vibe than earlier decades. Ringlets, heavy updos, and hats completed the look. But what did they wear under the dresses for them to get the large sleeves and bell shaped skirts?

Directly from the Met:

The large gigot sleeves were popular from the early 1830s through 1836 when they began to diminish to the tightly fitted sleeves of the following period. This type of sleeve was generally supported by whalebone or down filling.

The female silhouette of the middle of the 19th century consisted of a fitted corseted bodice and wide full skirts. The conical skirts developed between the 1830s, when the high waist of the Empire silhouette was lowered and the skirts became more bell shaped, to the late 1860s, when the fullness of the skirts were pulled to the back and the bustle developed. The flared skirts of the period gradually increased in size throughout and were supported by a number of methods. Originally support came from multiple layers of petticoats which, due to weight and discomfort, were supplanted by underskirts comprised of graduated hoops made from materials such as baleen, cane and metal.

The inflated sleeves of the 1830s and the 1890s were augmented by a variety of supports, either worn as underpinnings or incorporated into the structure of the sleeves themselves. Sleeve supports were frequently down-filled pillows, but chintz with ribs of wire or cane was also used to make somewhat airier, lantern-like forms.

When not sewn into the dresses, the sleeve supports were attached to the corset's shoulder straps by ties. In the 1830s, these straps were oriented at a forty-five-degree angle from the body, and sometimes even more obliquely. Although impressive in mass, the earlier sleeve puffs did not disrupt the line of the shoulder. Instead, because they were poised so precariously on the upper arm, the sleeve's outline simply continued in a descending line from the shoulder. It was only in the 1890s that the giant puffed sleeves obtruded above the line of the newly squared shoulder.

It's always fun to look through old fashion magazines and find similar examples in extant garments, or dresses that still exist today. Here, we've got pages from the January 1884 Delineator paired with extant garments from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Collection.

When using primary sources to date, you look at all sorts of characteristics - silhouette, bodice style, sleeve shape, cuff decoration, skirt decoration an style, bustle shape, among many others. Can you spot the similarities between the fashion plates and the actual dresses?

As part of the Flapper Fashion exhibition at the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts, the exhibition not only consists of period garments, but hats, photographs, and shoes!

The shoes pictured here are absolutely exquisite - c. 1929 pink T-straps, a popular dancing shoe style for the 1920s. Accentuated by the glass rhinestones, the pink satin would have stood out on the dancefloor, being the envy of every girl!

Collection of Ashley Webb, bustle textiles

Happy New Years!

Evening Dress, Jeanne Hallee, 1910-1914, Collection of the Met Costume Institute

French afternoon dress, Maison Leroux, Rue de Berlin, Paris, c. 1914

Collection of Ashley Webb, bustle textiles