Recorded November 30, 2023
Textile and dress historian Rebecca J. Kelly and Keren Ben-Horin, curatorial scholar in women’s history, highlight Gilded Age Newport as a resort fashion capital and explore the enterprising women behind the famed clothing and millinery shops along Bellevue Avenue that propelled New York’s sportswear industry.
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Hello and welcome I’m Anna daniger Halen associate director for the Center for Women’s history here at the New York Historical Society before we begin tonight’s program I would like to thank Louise Mir our president and CEO Agnes shuang chair of the Board of Trustees and Pam schaffler our chair amera as
Well as all of our trustees Joyce B Cowen Diane Max and the lake Adam Max Jee Margo Reed and the melon Foundation along with our Chairman’s Council our members and our many other generous Stoners none of the work of New York Historical would be possible without your continued and committed
Support as the associate director of our Center for Women’s history I’m proud of the growth we’ve achieved here at the center our scholarship education programs collecting and not least of all exhibitions all foreground women’s critical role in American history tonight’s program is titled Newport Gilded Age fashion Capital all of us at
The center have been so excited to follow HBO’s show Gilded Age as it explores many of the same questions that we do in our own work about gender race and Power in New York at the turn of the century our blog women at the center has been diving into the history behind the
Show and we’re thrilled to continue that conversation tonight um around Newport Fashion a few Logistics the program will run for approximately 45 minutes followed by a Q&A at any time during our program tonight please submit your questions through the Q&A feature located on your screen and we’ll answer
As many questions as we can and now I’m delighted to introduce our panel for the evening Rebecca J Kelly is a te textile and dress historian studying America’s guilded age she’s particularly interested in considering what is American style and revealing the work of underrecognized women fashion and textile designers her current research
Explores the economies of New England Resort cities and establishes Legacies for women who made and retailed sports wear Rebecca is the deputy director and curator of the South County Museum in nanet Rhode Island she’s also an assistant teaching professor at the University of Rhode Island in the department of textiles fashion
Merchandising and design she holds a ba in art history and an MS in textile conservation from the University of Rhode Island as well Rebecca guest curated the summer 2021 exhibitions the world in motion fashion and modernity 1885 to 1945 at the Newport historical society and women take the wheel fashion
Modernity and the automobile 1905 to 1945 at the audin automobile museum our moderator this evening is my colleague Karen Ben horin she’s a fashion historian and curatorial Scholar at the Center for Women’s history at the new New York Historical Society and a PhD candidate in history at New York
University she’s the co-curator of the documentary film Mrs G which won first prize at the Phoenix Art Museum fashion film festival and has curated several fashion exhibitions in New York and Israel Karen co-authored the fashion history survey she’s got legs a history of hemlines and fashion and the book
Edited the book The Sweater a history both from schiffler press we’re thrilled to have Rebecca and Karen with us tonight I’ll now turn the conversation over to Karen to get things started thank you Anna welcome Rebecca um I’m very excited to have you here and I think before we start I think full
Disc closure uh is required because you were my professor at grad school um so almost everything I know about this time period really comes from what you taught me uh which is even more exciting uh to have you here and so we are kind of
Using HBO’s guilded age as a a sort of a springboard right to talk more broadly about why and how Newport um newport’s unique way of life really shapes American fashion um in a special way and and Newport is not only really kind of central to central location in the show but it’s also
Depicted as kind of this like important site for um wealthy women like Bera Russell to kind of really wield their social power so I I thought maybe we’ll just kind of go back to the beginning and and to ask like why why Newport like how does Newport become um attractive
For kind of New York um one you know New York’s 1% sure um yeah and thanks so much for having me Karen I do remember well our trip many years ago when I was teing the Fashion Institute of Technology I think we barreled up on a bus from New York to
Newport um so let me uh see if I can share my screen here and pull up um some images uh let’s see all right does that look okay looks great okay here we go so um we barreled up here on a bus but you couldn’t do that
Back um and I thought we’d take a bird’s eye view and just look at a couple of maps here just to give everyone a real sense of things and I’ll just put a little blue circle around here you know there’s um Long Island down here the Connecticut Coast tiny little red Island
Tucked in here um between Massachusetts and Connecticut and I think that’s one of the magical things for it is a developing Resort in the Gilded Age it was situated between the Metropolis of New York and Boston just right here um in the middle that was a very advantageous uh spot for this little
City by the Sea uh and here we sort of have another map we can sort of zoom in here’s the state of Rhode Island um and I’ll put a circle around aqu quidnick Island here because Newport is on an island um that is separate from Mainland Rhode Island a
Quidnick island and it’s really the totality of the island Newport at the southern tip and Middletown and Portsmith two other towns on the island that created this beautiful microcosm for people you had the bustling Town of Newport and then these more bucolic outlying areas in Portsmith and middl
Town that just have these like beautiful uh Scenic landscape you know in Newport situated in here in in naret Bay um you know and it’s just surrounded by water on all sides and just incredibly um beautiful uh and again just a few more things Newport has this lovely deep
Harbor um that’s very vital to its sailing and yachting Community um the grand houses that we see in the Gilded Age series are along the cliffs here um which I just highlighted in blue so that’s the beautiful Cliff Walk and then the northern tip of the island here um
Whoops uh that I’ve circled here this this is where a railway line did come onto the island uh in the 19th century um so interesting to think about how people got here right I wanted to ask you like what was the trip like from New York to Newport at this
Time yeah I think it was part of the adventure you know and I think another reason why people liked it it seemed just far enough away and it was a little bit tricky to get uh to this island and certainly the most luxurious way to come
Would have been by private yacht and end up in the harbor and this is a wonderful photograph um from the Library of Congress collection sewing John Jacob Aster’s guests arriving at a little Landing Outpost that you know the New York Yacht Club had um so that was one
Way uh let’s see you know you could also of course people were coming to Newport from much farther a field than just Boston and New York so lots of people are making these multi-day Journeys and maybe ending up in New York City staying at one of these Grand hotels and they
Would hop a train that would start taking them to Rhode Island but not directly to Newport uh this is the train station in West Kingston Rhode Island there was another train station in Wickford Rhode Island at the Wickford Junction and you’d have to go by stage
Coach then and then on a steam trip so steam ship for the final leg of the journey so it was essentially the 19th century version of Planes Trains and Automobiles wow yes so um the show you know we it is like I said a very central location in
We see it a little bit in the first season and second season it’s like full on Newport um but my sense was that the way Newport is depicted is very I want to say isolated it’s like an isolated vision of Newport we see Interiors we see facades
We know that some of them are CGI and you know the Elms is not really on the ocean but I wanted to ask you you know you mentioned Newport as like this bustling City what was Newport Beyond these mentions what was Newport the place like yeah I think you know that’s
Always such a great question and I wish I had the time machine so um you know but there’s lots of great local that’s where we’re all historians right instead of the time machine exactly you know we spend tireless hours like trying to interpret old photographs we’re so lucky with the diverse archives
Here in the city but um you know I’d mentioned that train that came down um from the northern tip of the island and it would have come in here uh to Long Warf you know which is definitely uh not looking as glamorous as the types of
Things as you mentioned that we see on the series I mean Bob Shaw and his team of set designers just do like the most magical job everything seems like an extra Vivid uh Living Color um so again you know we’re only sort of seeing I think one dimension and just sort of
Mentioning these other aspects of the island that you know just enamor me you know is the geographic beauty of the place and you know I think to do that you know there are some um location shoots obviously they really are on the cliffs here uh in Newport with the
Television still that we see on the screen and newport’s cliffwalk is is just one of the most magnificent walks in the world I might be a little bit biased but it’s a three and a half mile journey and you’re right along the edge of um the Ocean and here’s a great
Picture postcard depicting people enjoying it during the Gilded Age the 40 steps here is just a Scenic Outlook along the cliffs um and there’s a lot of interesting um chat that it was a place where actually the staff from The Mansions used to gather at the end of
The day so we see uh that depicted a lot in the series that the van Ryan and the Russell’s um staff you know talk to each other out in the street and you know 40 steps is a place that they might have met and I love seeing the women here in
Their white dresses with these black you know jackets over them you know some of these um ideas about what you wore on summer vacation is very much depicted here a wonderful day at bathers Beach Easton’s beach in Newport um some rough surf this day which was you know if
You’re adventurous this was a great day uh to be in the ocean um but you know these women’s bathing costumes you know as fashion historians we think about this often Karen how did they a lot of clothing to be in the waves heavy heavy clothing absolutely so
The other great thing about Newport were you had all these short scenic drives and that was something that people really like to do with their Leisure Time um during the Gilded Age was to go out for a carriage ride and you could take these drives this is Hanging Rock
It’s technically in Middletown Rhode Islands um the adjacent town in the Paradise Valley as it’s called which is just again such a truly beautiful spot for enjoying landscape people might have taken a ride out to loton Falls even further field which is in Portsmith and you know these would have been you know
A good occupied um portion of your day you know you’d leave Bev Avenue in your Carriage it was an hour or so to get out there you’d have your picnic you’d come back so it was a great uh fun days journey wow you’ve really taken us in the time
Machine so you know and you know this is depicted in Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence and sort of going out to these more bucolic parts of the island you know the Vanderbilt family had their mansions in Newport but they had these Farms out in Portsmouth where
Kept horses and it was this sort of even more relaxed um environment than um uh the houses along the cliffs well you do need to entertain yourself if you’re there all summer long exactly so um another kind of favorite scene of mine uh in this season is of
Course the tennis match at the casino so I was actually quite confused is it is it really an actual Casino the way we think about casinos today or you know what was it exactly uh yeah so no in the 19th century the word Casino um was really used more inclusively it was
Essentially a social club where people got together to do all sorts of things and gaming and playing cards um was certainly um done at the casino but it was really a recreation center basically uh for sporting events um you know today it is the international Tennis Hall of
Fame um and I think I have some slides of the Casino coming up here we can jump back to those um but yeah this is Belleview Avenue where the casino is located and you know I love this Photograph you know I think it again is showing that real bustling cityscape
Here’s another view of VW Avenue and the entrance to the casino is right here so you go through this kind of magical gate and you’re actually in this beautiful open area for playing tennis that’s completely surrounded um with places for people to sit and have tea and have
Lunch um and spend time but the casino is also built with six storefronts as part of its business plan uh and these were meant to be shops um that people could come and Pi pick up fashionable things for home and for yourself um so that was a really big part of the
Business plan of the casino let’s so um you know when we we have these scenes in the show um they’re so visually beautiful and one of the thing you know we we have these like you know Landscapes opening up and all of this like beautiful depiction of Newport
But for me the one thing that really jumped at me was the difference in what people are wearing from City to Newport um so you know we know of course that in the summer wealthy Gilded Age women would change their wardrobe to lighter colors and lighter Fabrics uh but still
There’s it still seems to be sharply different than what they’re wearing in the city we hardly see any color maybe some Stripes even the men change into white or tan suits so um can you describe to us like what was the fashion Landscaping you Bard at this time did
People bring clothes from home did they purchase them in newort um were there any kind of Newport renowned um designers that they went to what was it like yeah that’s a great question and um something I’ve just been um spending so much time for many many years reading magazines women’s magazines you know
Everything from the most popular ones that we still know today such as Vogue and Harper’s bizaar to the delineator and some of these magazines that um you know are not still in publication but were really everybody’s handbook for for um information about dress um and when you’re looking at these magazines
Usually around April like the spring issues start giving a lot of advice on how to prepare to go on a summer vacation and they recommend for women everything that you might need to bring um and you know there’s some really py fun quotes some great you know hilarious
Writers um from the 19th century you know talk about um the new fangled sports of resorts you know and they said you know young ladies used to go on vacation and you maybe just need a book or a watercolor set but by the 1870s and 1880s they’re saying oh no now you need
Specialized clothing for bathing for croquet to play tennis um to do archery you know all of these uh incredible things and one of the biggest purveyors for this type of clothing um in the UK was a gentleman named John Redfern who founded his clothing company
Um on the aisle of white in the city of cows the great Resort um in England um and he Branch expanded his business pretty pervasively throughout the 19th century you know he had a branch in London and Edinburgh and Paris and then he comes across the Atlantic and ends up
Establishing branches in New York and then Newport Rhode Island uh so that’s pretty exciting for us here in Newport and I’ve been following the Red Fern company history from how they sort of bounced around Newport and the interesting thing was a lot of these big companies whether they were international branch expansions or
Branch expanding expansions from New York to Newport they only came for the summer so they really operated as popup shops and I find them in different locations throughout the city um from year to year and it seems like it was a bit of a competition uh for getting your
Deposit into a lease and you know making sure that you had sort of prime real estate uh for the summer this is a really lovely um coat in the University of Rhode Islands collection from about 1895 we know with these great leg of mutton sleeves um and those of us who
Get to spend time with material culture often get to see the specialness of the Interior um and the label here so I love this red fern label ladies Taylor with all these incredible Royal warrants and then little Newport Ro Island down there at the bottom amazing because you think
About branches and popup stores or something very contemporary but you can see that it has a like a really extense of History yeah I was so surprised to find that you know I it just wasn’t something that I had really thought about um and it’s just it’s fascinating I also wonder
A lot about this coat I was initially interpreting it like oh maybe it had a skirt that you know is no longer with it um but then also through my research I’ve been finding that red fern really started to promote this idea of the separate the
Blazer so I’m so curious you know again uh really wondering uh a lot about this piece and then seeing those women with um you know the Blazers over their lightweight summer dresses when they were down on 40 steps you know Newport is so Breezy and cool in the summer um I
Think people thought a lot about the climate and Blazers just became I think essential component of sports sare I have a a random question about the label actually see that it says a ladies tailor and I’m wondering if it’s because Redfern is a man like would a woman be a
Dress maker or There’s no distinction between those two things yeah it’s so interesting and like the Red Fern like so many of these companies that Branch expand it was usually like it was I think initially red Fern’s son Ernest who came to the United States and set up
The tailoring firm uh here um but from my understanding you know the term tailoring really comes from the stuffs of what you’re working with so when you’re working with wool and cutting tailored coats um you’re sort of a tailor and when you’re working with silks and organza and embroidery and
Bead work um you’re a dress maker um and red fern like so many of makers of clothing in the UK um tailoring and the wool was the stuff that they were really really uh good at so interesting tell us more about new newport’s kind of retail because it’s it’s quite fascinating
Because it is like going back to this idea of Newport as a place it really gives you a sense of the place that they were storefronts that they were popup that they were kind of public spaces not just going into a dress maker going into a wealthy person’s house but also
Something more akin to the shopping that we know today yeah absolutely um and you know another person whose career I’ve been really interested in is um Katherine Donovan she was an Irish American dress maker um who immigrated to the United States um in the early part um of the
19th century she had a long and pervasive career and she really when you look at her she pops up all the time in Vogue magazine and her um you know she has this really newsy obituary when she passes away in 1906 so we learn so much
About her and her shop in New York and it was only recently going through the Newport daily news that I figured out that she did have a shop here in Newport as early as 1885 um so I was really like thrilled to find this out um you know she was the
Known dress maker to the Vanderbilts the Asters the gouet and you know she had a business model which was pretty pervasive in New York in the 19th century is that she was copying French fashion she was finding out what was going on in the grand Couture houses in
Paris but not everybody could get to Paris every year so she was making copies of these dresses in New York uh for her clients and then kind of coming up to Newport and you know the Gilded Age is a really transitional time for fashion history as we know you’re sort
Of sandwiched between the importance still of the custom dress making trade but ready to wear clothing is increasing in popularity and demand so I think a lot of these dress makers were selling ready to wear Goods too like antel cloaks fans hats so I think they definitely had all of these things in
Their shops too and shopping was really starting to become a Pastime in Newport you know going up and down bellw Avenue and going in and out of these shops um was a Leisure pursuit in and of itself so what could a woman during this time period expect to find in a store
Like that yeah um let’s see maybe I can skip ahead a few slides here here are some great examples of Katherine Donovan work these you know great frothy dress making so this is like the dress making versus the tailoring and you know you’d need both of these things when you came
To Newport these types of dresses for dinners and dances and those tailored clothings uh clothing for walking about and again I love to share with everyone what um those of us who work with objects often get to see are these beautiful labels so that’s how we know
Um who these dress makers are they leave a little bit of their legacy in their gowns and again another glimpse of um the shops along Belleview Avenue a beautiful building built in the early 20th century with these Grand Windows now for visual merchandising just like you’re saying Karen all of these modern
Concepts are coming to Fashion here uh in Little Old Newport Rhode Island um yeah so here’s another um dress maker who I just wanted to highlight Molly Ohara um you know I have found out so much about her career and she had a shop in that beautiful Odin building that I just
Showed you um from 1906 to 1930 she came up every summer um and I know that Molly like Katherine she kind of I think I don’t know that they knew each other but I suspect that they must have um and that Molly really admired her she was
Like that generation younger and I think really took her place in the New York Fashion landscape um after uh Katherine Donovan um closed her business so these designers would be known in New York and then their customers would be expecting them to also be in Newport in the summer
Essentially yeah absolutely I found evidence that people ordered dresses in New York in you know in May June and then we’re like I’ll pick it up um at the Belleview Avenue store when I get there um so that was super convenient thing for their clients and lots of
Dress makers I think um you know started doing that and this is um that lovely label I just showed using this extraordinary suit from 1913 that’s still privately held by the Vanderbilt family they stewarded Alice Vanderbilt’s uh clothing collection and were generous enough to share some of these garments
With the Newport audience and I curated those exhibitions a few summers ago and this lovely suit was one of the ones included and Molly Ohara had a streak of good luck in her career um she was recognized really early on in 1897 she won a model doll competition where
Designers were working in this tiny scale um to show off their creations and that really kickstarted uh her career which I think is most important because then she was featured uh in the magazine so we have this glimpse of what she looked like in 1897 um and here she is a little bit
Later in her career so again Molly oara and kathern Donovan’s names are sort of lost to history but when I go back to the documentary sources they must have just been so well known that’s what you know that’s what strikes me as you were speaking that you know we have these
Women we know very little about them but obviously they were very well known and very successful uh entrepreneurs exactly and you know Molly Ohara designed for theater and Broadway she was designing for you know the social Elite she was design designing for first ladies so she was having you
Know this career just like you know really contemporary designers that we know today you know um so the model of American fashion if you think about someone like Asuka deara was like set by this previous generation of women designers who I think are sometimes very much underrecognized
Um you mentioned before kind of in passing this idea of um Resort fashion that we see during that time period maybe a little bit before the 80s but kind of like in the 70s late 60s early 70s this new idea of Resort fashion um this this idea that there’s a specific
Way of dressing that’s tied to a location that’s tied to going away so what are some of kind of like the Hallmarks of Resort fashion yeah yeah let’s take a look at a few more of these images and this is an ad from one of Molly’s competitors who had
A shop in the um uh casino building and again you can see here that you know she is bringing with her a lot of um these accessories you know the the gloves the parasols everything that you would need um so this was a great find and then
Also again she’s trying to balance that she like I got all this readymade stuff but you can also get something fitted here if you need to so this is the lp Hollander company uh and let’s just kind of Click ahead here these are so so actually
Before you answer my um my res question essentially what you’re saying showing us this ad is that you would go into a store you can buy all of these accessories all of those little things ready met but you can also order kind of Couture or customade garments because at
This time we still don’t have full readymade clothes yeah and I think that that was a tough thing for designers of Molly’s generation they had to try to figure out how to surf that line and you know Molly’s career is quite interesting to me as we move into the 1930s she further
Branch expanded to Palm Beach Florida and the very final advertisements of hers that I see um in the early 30s she’s getting very very much into like sportswar and and more ready-made things so that’s really interesting to think about like in comparison to these um late 19th century early 20th century
Dresses of Alice Vanderbilts you know these are the evening gowns um and then this is what we did as part of the exhibition like trying to give this sense of what Molly’s shop might have looked like so you know we did have that acknowledgement that you know a lot of
The advertisements say they were still able to custom fit things for you but that you could go in and buy some accessories you know you’re coming in to pick your dress up it’s ready but do you need gloves do you need a hat you need anything you know
You know and then uh some of these great dresses by Molly these are you know into the 1920s and starting to be in the 30s here and you can see the Simplicity um of the of the Silhouettes kind of coming into being Sure so let’s see yeah here’s you know again some Peaks inside the casino now to maybe answer your question a little bit better about the sports where Karen you know here’s a great again still from the from the series um onsite in new and here we can see
This idea of like Navy and white as a resort fashion kind of distinctive Resort fashion um element yeah you’re absolutely right I just that white summer dress over and over and over again that’s what you needed to get uh if you were going up to Newport you know again just showing you
Kind of the gorgeousness of this building you can see how you had all these little areas where people could spend time together um here people are just you know enjoying cocktails um on the porches and we’re so lucky that this building was preserved here in Newport amazing those of us who live
Here love it when we get invited to something there at the summer uh you know there’s still these wonderful parties um you know this was a great scene where the casino was used at in the evening um for um a ball there were definitely parties and dances um held at this social club
And then people would come there in the day to watch Tennis and everybody got the memo about the white so fantastic right and the gentlemen there probably in their Navy Blazers and now here are the folks playing tennis which is also amazing I love seeing women playing tennis in
Bustle dresses I wonder how it was possible because in the 1870s and 80s there was very little modification that fashionable silhouette maybe the skirt was a little bit shorter and it’s not until we get into the 1890s or the turn of the century that you start to see you
Know much more practical yeah and it’s quite amazing and actually I think like you know we should say that tennis is one of the first sports activities where we have gender mixing and women really are um playing tennis professionally from the beginning yeah exactly you know know
Tennis I think was so important when we think about the um modification of women’s dress um you know finally the loosening of the corset and the going away of all of these Contraptions that kind of really constrained 19th century women um you know just again here this is an advertisement from the Jordan
Marsh company which was more of a middle Market department store um because I do like to think about these multi levels and you know very wealthy women were shopping at Couture houses but there’s some much evidence too that they were you know absolutely going into these new department stores as well the Jordan
Marsh company was a New England based uh department store a summer dress like this was advertised for $25 which would have been about $125 of um today’s money so um still a really expensive garment and then we see Bertha here and wearing almost an exact uh you know version of this white summer
Dress in new abolutely with all the Ruffles and she looks like a cake and and you know it occurred to me watching the show first to your point about the department stores because I do like they don’t really show them going to department stores and I think even
The wealthy would go at least to have lunch and socialize and you have these rooms where you could socialize in the department store and another thing that I was thinking and maybe you can help a little bit with that I think during this time period women change clothes several
Times a day right and we don’t really see that in the show I mean they do change our clothes quite a bit but we’re not we don’t see them sort of like talking about changing or needing to change from morning to afternoon to evening um so I don’t know like do you
Have anything to say about that yeah yeah and I just sort of popped ahead to this slide this is a shop in Newport and um you know I just wish there were more photographs of Interiors of stores and I was so thrilled find this one of the
Bonon miliner shop on them Street um which is you know sort of down the hill and much closer to the harbor than um Belleview Avenue more of a local shopping district but I know that the women of the summer Colony definitely went to these stores on them Street um
As well so yeah so so interesting to to think about yeah how much stuff you needed um and people think yeah you know that women might have changed in the morning you had a an for going out in the morning and then the afternoon you were definitely going to participate
Maybe in some kind of sporting event go bathing so you would change again then you needed to change for dinner so I think it was a minimum of three changes and then people can speculate that it might have been as many as five you know depending on how busy you were exactly
What you gotten invited to that day um just sort of popping you outside of that Bonton milliner shop and seeing what them Street uh would look like and yeah again you know they show blooming Dales a few times in the series um you know which I think is um
Fascinating you know and these are all the little accoutrements that you would need you know hats and pocket books and parasols and an advertisement from that same Jordan Marsh catalog which you know shows these cloaks and mantel that didn’t need that exact fit so that’s stuff that you know people are starting
To be able to buy those things off the Peg and fashion retailers and dress makers are realizing that’s like big business um so interesting to think about and really what’s enabling all of this is like this boom in production this ability to produce in big numbers
And cheaper and um something that we we didn’t have before and all of a sudden you have to you know you’re making all of that stuff and you need to say to people you need that stuff you need to change you need a bag that matches this
And a parasol that matches that and you know all of those little things to to be respectable and to show off um your wealth really so we I I want to make sure that we leave enough time for questions um so I want to ask you one
More thing um and I I see that you have uh on the screen um Owen playing with her racket so want to ask you exactly about that um that in the show you know I I think that’s one of the things that are also are shown distinctly different between
New York between the city and Newport um is the centrality of leisure sports sports activities you know in season one we have the croquet match at the I think it’s it’s one of the first uh episodes of course you know we talked about the tennis match in um at the casino in
Season two um and these I I think that in these scenes we we really see social life organized in a very different way that we would have in the city this mixed gender Sports very different from kind of like the the home public sphere Eis of the City so H how
Dressing for sports different and and what kind of influence did it have more generally on American fashion yeah I think great question you know on the screen here I’ve had these um wonderful advertisements from a woman named Alice mayard who I just have been so enamored with trying she’s still a
Little bit of a shadowy figure um but you know we see this wonderful knit wear you know this is the 1890s now um so you know we’re starting um 1890 to 1900 so we’re starting to see like even more casualness in the clothing and I think like Resort lifestyle also again you
Sort of mentioned like you know men and women having interaction and these more um relaxed circumstances and I think that plays out a lot with the younger um generation of the cast um you know GL Gladis and Larry you’re always trying to get some time alone with your peers away
From the chaperon and the um older people and I think like sports provided great opportunity for that you could be over here on the croquet Court having a little private conversation um this is another fantastic ad that I found recently and I think this sort of speaks to the
Hilariousness of suddenly all of the things that you needed to bring on summer vacation with you um and this is from a shop that was down on them Street kind of letting you know if you forgot any of this stuff and you’re here in Newport don’t worry we’ve got we got too
Covered exactly uh come on down so courting ritual and like relationships were very connected to I think a lot of what was um happening in Resort you know in Charles Dana Gibson’s like illustrations I think kind of like wonderfully uh capture some of that and again it’s pretty funny the delineator
Magazine from 1895 I see over and over again like you can write away to get you know the rules of how to even play some of the these games really funny um you know instances of women women saying all right well we set up the lawn tennis net
But we’re not really sure what we’re supposed to do now so everybody and by the way just to sort of like a little uh thingy um we see on the screen actually I we talked about the resort fashion and like its Hallmark I think like we’re seeing it
Right here right yes the red white and blue um anything with a sailor collar things embroidered with anchors uh you know these become really P pervasive and a lot of hats yep the boers the parasols um all this is like you know and this was I think season one episode one and I
Was like so excited up to a good start exactly yeah so you know and here’s croquet on the beach same thing these like frothy little white dresses um lots of red white and blue um Stripes uh all of these things become very much part of the resort look you can get the whole
Family kitted out here delineator magazine is showing you how to get it done um and I think we’re kind of closing in on some of my last images this is from Harper’s Bazaar love it so much we didn’t talk about bicycling and they haven’t shown series yet I really
Hope we have a we have a couple of minutes let’s talk let’s talk about that for a second yeah so you know the bicycling craze really really came to Newport and um you know Bell Avenue wasn’t paved and I’ve talked a lot about this with my friends at the Odin
Automobile museum um because we do think about how dusty all of these white dresses must have gotten um but there’s so much advice about bicycling in Newport and you know they say like if you haven’t ridden a bike before don’t go out on bellw Avenue make sure you practice on
The um and this looks pretty ominous here we have this two-way traffic and you know something else that was really popular in Newport was for the gentlemen to take the coaches out so you wouldn’t have your Coachman driving um the kind of sport of driving a carriage coaching
For pleasure um was very pervasive and you would obviously um you know need to be careful on Belle Avenue of this uh two-way traffic but so can you go back for a second so is that a divided skirt that we’re seeing here yeah so that’s a divided skirt you know safety skirt as
They called it so that you wouldn’t get caught up um in the chain um of your bike so such a great modification to women’s dress and you know this was an illustration done by um max cler who was in Newport and sketching um from Life um
So I love that and you know here we see women arriving at the casino these very famous lamp posts that we have here and you know this great now much shorter skirt than the things that we’re seeing in the 1883 you know version the Gilded
Age is still set in the 1880s so this is where fashion is uh is going and you know they have a great example of one of these divided skirts in the Mets collection which amazing uh so I just really love that it’s almost like women coming from the city into Newport got to
Experiment wearing something a little less rigid um a little a little less restrictive and kind of were into it and wanted to like maintain that like it seems so much more athletic and so much more kind of energetic than you know what they might be wearing in the city
Absolutely and you know I think it was this consumer demand for this type of clothing that then started pushing um you know what becomes the New York Fashion system which are these sport0 separate clothing that’s a little bit easy breezier than you know the formalized Styles coming from France so
I think it was incredibly influential what was happening uh at these Resort cities um along the Eastern Seaboard uh during the Gilded Age yeah wow I don’t know how 45 minutes just went by but they did and we’re already getting some questions um great great so the first
Question that we have um I think it’s a really good question what was the social status of dress makers and millionaires were these roles typ typically held by women yeah so that’s one of the things and I mean I don’t know that I can say this completely but you know as compared
To what was happening in France you know a lot of the first generation of coutures were men you know jacqu duay Charles Frederick worth um Etc but in New York it seems like there were so many women um and a lot of women who were in fact immigrants to this country
Like Katherine Donovan like Molly oara So within that you know one generation of getting here they were upwardly mobile um Katherine Donovan and Molly O’Hara both retired extremely wealthy women um Molly Ohara owned a lot of property um and had an estate that was valued at probably close to a million
Dollars um and guilded age money uh at the time of her death so um they were very upwardly mobile and um I think had really very successful careers and as we saw like sometimes you might even see their picture in a magazine which is really you know really
Interesting thinking about sort of like the celebrity of designers and I think uh if I’m not wrong this is the the time period where kind of designer names are starting to become important you know in France of course we have worth the the British worth but he’s working in France
And you kind of get that name recognition um so it seems that these women are also you know we could kind of see them within this same system yeah you know and they were putting their own name in the dresses and I think that that was significant
You know even though they do kind of pull tight to that French Legend of like oh well it’s my dress but I I know what’s happening in France you know but I think it meant something so for sure absolutely because we even see like dress makers into the 20th century who
Are not putting labels in so that is telling you they are branding themselves they do have a brand name to to maintain um so we we have another interesting question um do you have any information about the black community in Newport and did their guilded age fashion also follow the same
Trends yeah absolutely and I can direct um you to a really wonderful website that’s set up by the 1696 Heritage group here in New York and a few years ago there was a joint project between the preservation society which stewards all the beautiful houses um that are
Depicted in the series and two wonderful historians here in Newport um Keith and Teresa Stokes and they’ve done a lot of research into newport’s African-American Community um and Newport was a place that provided a lot of opportunity there was a wonderful dress maker a woman named Mary Dickson who had a shop on
Belle Avenue she was a competitor with uh Katherine Donovan and had a really successful business and Teresa Stokes has just done some really wonderful um um research on on her life and work and there was again a Vibrant Community here where people were thriving they were
Business owners and very much part um of the fabric of newport’s diverse Community yeah and I think you know one of the things that um we’re not used to seeing and we’re we’re seeing in the in HBO Gilded Age is this middle class African-Americans and and they did at
The time you did have um there were not substantial numbers but they there was a big community of middle class African-Americans and certainly uh they were um they were addressing in a similar way um as we as we can see um um another question um is about the bathing
Costumes and the kind of Fabrics uh that were used or you know what what can you tell us a little bit more about the bathing costumes of that time period yeah right I think as a young dress historian the first time I actually was in the collection and
Really being in there with that material culture and seeing and feeling the Fabrics of the bathing suits that’s when I was like oh wow you know I’m not sure because you know they usually have these cotton over dresses that we see but you know this Woolen bodysuit um underneath so you know
There’s a lot of layers of clothing and then women wearing stockings and bathing shoes and sometimes even gloves uh you know in into the water was really um I think quite daring um and you know it’s great to see the transition of bathing costumes in a relatively short period of
Time when you think about what happens between 1890 and maybe the end of the Gilded Age being sort of the 1920s it’s like wow you know Beach culture changes a lot and um in Newport like you know like all the European Resorts too you really didn’t lounge around in your
Bathing suit you know that’s something that comes a lot with modernity and as we move into the 1920s and 30s you know you went and that was again another one of these complex changes right Karen after bathing if you’re gonna have lunch at the club you changed and I just I
Don’t know how yeah and I and I also think like we need to make the distinction between dressing and walking and kind of promting by the sea and bathing and that was not necessarily I don’t know that Bera Russell would go in you know she might prominade um in her beautiful gowns but
Not necessarily maybe her daughter might um but I don’t think for the older generation going in was not necessarily something that they would do in public right or just like today I think you know there’s people who are a little bit more sporty SP shall we say than others or people who
Definitely have different temperaments I think um you know and I think it was people who really believed in that idea of the cold plunge and you know kind of like diving into the waves who might kind of go for it um and then other people just you know it’s a hassle you
Get your hair wet like how do you change back into this lingerie dress you know it’s like so interesting to think about and um someone is asking about corsets um work coret worn on vacation as well yeah absolutely and by women of every sort of Social and economic class as
Well uh it was just like how tight were you going to be able to lace it and I think definitely um corsets for sport were you know maybe you know not Lac quite so tightly but um you know it was a foundation garment that you know women were just most comfortable
Wearing and that actually um is a perfect segue to the next question someone is asking about what clothes did the servant wear yeah you know that’s really a great question and Newport as well as New York were full of specialized shops where people would buy uniforms for their um
Staff and servants um yeah you know and most of what’s depicted in the series is very practical you know darker dresses aprons um you know things things like that um you know when you’re working down in the kitchen you want to have a garment that’s going to be durable um
And hard wearing and it was really part of an employer’s responsibility to provide clothing um for their staff um so you know that’s definitely um interesting to think about and department stores had whole departments that you know specialized in Livery and so would um New York’s wealthy come to
Newport with their own stuff or would they have a separate stuffff working at their Newport mension yeah really a combination you know we’re sort of find that um there’s certain household staff like ladies maids and vetes that always traveled with the family um and even a lot of the household staff would come
For the summer um but there were year round staffs at the houses um gardeners and people superintendence that maintain the property all all year um so that was interesting and you know one of the reasons to immigrate to Newport was sort of this entree with domestic service but
You know here in the United States I’m finding from Census records some was maybe only a Coachman or a footman for like a year or two and then they kind of move on and they have these economic opportunities to get maybe into the hotel business or the clothing business
Or the tailoring trade or open a restaurant um so there’s a lot of sort of that possibility here um in a resort city did the did staff and servant have also a leisure time when they were out in in Newport do you know um I think so
You know um definitely you know there’s a lot of um you know the the image of 40 steps that I showed um you know people would have days off and people talked about um you know being able to enjoy the public beaches and um you know there were closed areas certainly the
Exclusivity of the casino or the more private beach clubs but um New York um Newport had a you know a public beach with a boardwalk and a roller coaster and um all of these things that were open to everybody what do you think about the way that Newport is depicted in the
Show um yeah you know I I like it and I think um you know we’re so thrilled to have our tiny little city by the Sea um depicted uh in this way in the series and um yeah just to really share some of the geographic beauty of the place with
With people um you know I think is great and I know with filming there are limitations because you know there are contemporary buildings and the streetscapes are not quite the same like the drive from Newport to Portsmouth on the North End of the island uh it must
Have been such a beautiful drive uh in the Gilded Age but like everywhere there’s a lot of development now and and things don’t look exactly the same so I think it’s a challenge to recreate with authenticity um really looked like in the 19th century um kind of going back to like
You know the um accuracy of the show someone is as asking um saying that sometimes the the dress looks very kind of gudy um a lot of vertical stripes and patterns and appliques and multicolored so um was fashion really that over the toop yeah I mean I have more of the
Stills that sort of tend to have the um daytime Resort Wear but I know what you mean I know exactly you know what where the questions coming from and I you know I’ve thought about that a lot myself because you know we are in the later
Part of the 19th century we do have the Advent of synthetic D so those of us who have spent a lot of time in collections know that like the ultra Sonic you know color these Apple greens these vibrant blues and purples that you could get from anal and Dy is actually quite
Um realistic and the Couture houses and the French um high-end textile manufacturers were definitely experimenting with these new technologies so um you know I think that the show does surf this really fun line of these like you know points of departure that are very authentic but then the costumes are part of
Storytelling right exactly yes and I think also I’ve noticed a lot of these like like Stripes going like this or like as asymmetry in some of the Ruffles and details that seems a little exaggerated I don’t remember ever ever seeing something like that in collections um but as you say it’s the
Starting point is is pretty accurate but then they kind of take it to to the next level um Rebecca thank you so much this is I I could go on for another full hour um I really really appreciate that you know you shared all this wealth of
Information with us it’s it’s been it’s been an amazing uh right yeah well thanks emillion I just uh love an opportunity to get to share um some of this very specific Newport um research with a wider audience so thanks so much for having me thank you both so much um I that is
Unfortunately all the time that you have although we we really could go on all night or even all week and you know prect every single episode live uh that would be fantastic um for more of the Center for Women’s Center for Women his women’s history’s take on the Gilded Age
I can’t speak tonight uh please be sure to visit our blog women at the center you can also sign up for the Museum’s mailing list and follow us at nyhistory.org to get the latest on upcoming Salon programs like this one the New York Historical Society is currently open Tuesday through Sunday
You can reserve your Ed entry museum tickets on our website and we hope to see you on Central Park West soon to see our current exhibition women’s work on view in our Joyce be Cowen women’s history Gallery through August 2024 thank you all and have such a wonderful evening