With “values-based shopping” and “sustainability in product choice” on the climb, now is an apt moment to have a look at how these practices resonate with those of the past. How do current efforts by designers and buyers measure up to their fashion ancestors, like the maison Félix and the House of Worth, and their savvy, international clients? What can we learn from the 19th-century commitment to reusability and upcycling, quality over quantity?
In the late 19th century, French couture was the ultimate in luxury shopping for wealthy U.S. women. The women who spent thousands of dollars on French gowns maximized their investment by repurposing them — wearing them on multiple occasions over the course of several seasons or years, not unlike what they did with their most valuable pieces of jewelry. They either wore a gown in its original form, reaccessorized it, or hired the original maker or a local dressmaker to rework it. The practices reflect the value placed on sumptuous textiles and were well ensconced in European royal culture. As historian and curator Kate Strasdin describes in Inside the Royal Wardrobe: A Dress History of Queen Alexandra, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, had her British-made wedding gown converted by her dressmaker, Madame Elise and Co., into an evening dress only a few days after her wedding with Edward VII in March 1863. Strasdin tells us that for the Marlborough House ball in 1874, the Elise firm appears to have remodeled a costume that Alexandra wore to the 1871 Waverley ball in London. The gown bears the Elise label and is kept today in the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at Kensington Palace.
When attending two separate court functions in London in March and July 1893, Mary Endicott Chamberlain wore the same House of Worth pale blue silk dress with lace, beading, and velvet. The first event was a reception in Queen Victoria’s drawing room at Buckingham Palace, and the second was the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George V and Queen Mary). She also made a practice of sending her Worth gowns back to the maison for remodeling, as she did when she wanted a Van Dyke lace collar attached to a red satin dress.
Upper-class U.S. women adopted the royal precedent for repurposing garments early in the century. When Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore married Jérôme Bonaparte in 1803, she wore an embroidered white muslin dress that she subsequently wore on multiple occasions. Nancy Fowler McCormick’s French dresses, now in the Chicago Historical Society, show signs of alterations for rewearing. With her husband, millionaire Cyrus Hall McCormick, she attended numerous social events, and in 1904, she wore a gown by Worth to her son’s wedding.