How did they dress for statehood, the women of the Utah Territory? They dressed up, to be sure. Jan. 4, 1896, was a big day for women as well as for the state. Utah women were becoming full citizens: They got the vote more than 20 years before most women in the rest of the country were to get it.
According to BYU professor Mary Farahnakian, the average middle-class Utah woman of 1896 owned only three or four dresses. So she might have worn the same dress to the Tabernacle to hear patriotic speeches and to the ball on Saturday night. It would have been her best dress, the one she wore to church. It would probably have been made of silk or taffeta with a fitted waist, leg-of-mutton sleeves and elaborate trimmings.Even if she were merely standing on the street observing the parade, she would have dressed up. She would also have worn boots, leather gloves and her heaviest jacket or cape. She would have certainly dressed for warmth. This was January, after all.
A storm came in a few days before the statehood celebration. The Deseret Evening News reported on Jan. 2 that public schools had recommenced after the holidays with very light attendance due to the storm that interrupted streetcar service.
But the day of statehood itself dawned auspiciously sunny. Celebrants gathered to watch the parade. They were dressed as nicely as the people of any state in the union they were joining.
Carolyn Webb, wardrobe mistress at Pioneer Trails State Park, says the women of the Utah Territory were fashion conscious from the first. Brigham Young's records show the supply wagons he commissioned were bringing back fashion books as early as 1848. The illustrations of the day would have shown dresses with tight bodices and huge full skirts, supported by hoops or crinolines.
Hoops seem the most impractical idea imaginable for pioneering, and Webb says they likely weren't worn for performing daily tasks. But pioneer women owned them, she knows. And they owned corsets, heavy formal corsets as well as corsets of a lighter nature, meant to be worn under everyday dresses.
Even through their first decade in the valley, when they were poor, the women sought style. Webb says she has seen pioneer dresses that were remade as many as four times. Women altered a skirt, or a sleeve, or the cut of a bodice, in order to keep abreast of fashion changes.
Appearance was important, says Webb. She says several of Brigham Young's wives criticized another wife for coming to the city in her oldest work dress.
In 1857, dressing well got easier. With the coming of Johnston's Army and all its supplies, the price of yard goods dropped dramatically. Calico went from 85 cents a yard to less than 10 cents a yard, says Webb. The average woman could afford a new dress. During this decade, two-piece dresses were becoming more popular. Sometimes instead of the bodice portion, a blouse was worn with the skirt.
In 1868, in Paris, the bustle began to bud. Women were tired of wide skirts, were ready to gather the fullness of their dresses behind them, in a huge pad of fabric that accentuated "the back of the hip," as the rear end was referred to in those more proper days.
Alison Gernsheim, author of a photograph collection called "Victorian and Edwardian Fashion," notes, "Just as the main interest of the dress was concentrated on the curve of the bustle, the elaboration of the hair was also at the back, in a big chignon of plaits or curls." Every woman added false braids and twists to her own hair. Gernsheim says the chief source of hair for these additions were peasant girls of France, Italy and Germany, "who hardly missed their hair because they wore traditional head-dresses."
By 1876, the bustle disappeared, but still the skirt was flat in front and pulled into a train in back. The train was draped and decorated and swept the street if the wearer stepped outside.
Brigham Young was not the only one to decry this silly waste of material. Critics such as Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance, and leaders of the suffrage movement on both continents commented on the impracticality of such dresses, which trailed in the dirt and hobbled their wearers.
All across the United States and in Europe began a movement against the constrictions of women's dresses. Women wanted to ride bicycles, ice-skate, play tennis. They were working in offices as well as on farms and in factories. Some experimented with trousers. But it wasn't until after World War I that such a bold look became widely accepted.
In the late 1870s many English intellectuals turned to the Pre-Raphelite style. These dresses had an Empire waist, or no waist at all, and featured slashed or small puffed sleeves. A woman could actually walk and breathe in what was called "the aesthetic." False hair was considered in poor taste by this segment of society. Such dresses were not unknown in Utah, says Webb. They were worn by women who considered themselves artists or intellectuals.
Brigham Young had designed a bloomer outfit for women, called the Deseret costume. It never caught on, says Webb. In a similar move, in 1880, in England, Viscountess Harberton founded the Rational Dress Society, to promote dress "based upon considerations of health, comfort and beauty." Members wore "divided skirts" but the division was covered by a draped tunic, so no one could tell the lady was wearing pants.
Tailor-made suits for women became popular during the 1880s. The suits had skirts, but from the waist up women looked like men, with pleated white shirts, ties and jackets.
Meanwhile, on the ultra-feminine side of the spectrum, Paris decreed dresses with tighter skirts in the 1880s. Since the silhouette was slim, interest was added with lace and ribbon trimming. The bustle made a brief comeback in the mid-1880s, then disappeared for good.
At the time of statehood, some 40 years after the pioneers arrived in the valley, the desired silhouette was, once again, slim. Slim with plenty of trimmings. Big sleeves were thought to make a woman's waist look smaller.
At the time of statehood middle-class Utahns had the means and dressed as nicely as women in any other part of the country, says Webb. Most women knew how to sew. In addition there were dressmakers and tailors galore. And ready-made goods were also available.
Ads from the Deseret Evening News in the first week of 1896 show winter wear and holiday dress goods on sale at F. Auerbach & Bro. department store. Fancy silk was selling for 75 cents per yard; and the ad went on to state, "Our New Year Offer - In order to keep the boom in our Glove department, we offer with each pair of Ladies' warranted kid Gloves at $1 or higher, the choice of a fine embroidered Silk or Linen Cambric Handkerchief."
Other ads show the Shang Hai company on Main Street was selling imported silk shawls. Shoes went for as low as $1 a pair. A Goodyear ad boasted, "Welts are leather shoes, not rubber." Shirts made to order sold for $1 at J.P. Gardner's. Middle-class women had all they needed to dress well.
Utah had its share of wealthy women, too. Mining money enabled some Utah women to go to Europe to have their clothes made. Says Webb, "There were women in the community who dressed in the height of Victorian fashion."
Families of prominent LDS leaders dressed nicely. Webb says Amelia Folsom Young owned a dress covered with $400 worth of lace. Even though her husband, Brigham Young, encouraged modesty and practicality, she was his hostess and he had a position to uphold in the community and the nation.
Webb says she has seen photographs of Young's daughters wearing evening dresses with necklines scooping well below the collarbone, as was fashionable in that day. She adds that older women who had been married in the temple no doubt altered the design of their evening clothes to achieve a more modest neck and sleeve line.
Designing clothes was a common practice. Gernsheim says 19th-century women were much more likely to modify and personalize the popular styles than are modern women. "A few created styles of their own, which in the days of private dressmakers were not difficult to put into effect."
So with anything and everything available, if a woman was looking to wear a new outfit to the statehood celebration, what might she have chosen?
In 1896, according to "The Evolution of Fashion," by Margot Hamilton Hill and Peter Bucknell, the most trendy colors for women were vivid to the point of garishness. Enormous gathered or pleated sleeves were still popular. Bodices were the focus of much decoration and they tapered to a small V-shaped waist.
Blouses were popular and practical. They were high-necked and cut full in the sleeves. Underneath it all, women still wore corsets. They were cut low in the front (something called a "bust improver" was often worn) and made of elegant fabrics. Following the line of the skirt, petticoats were cut tight to the knee level, and then flared out.
Outerwear, too, followed the line of the dress. Coats had leg-of-mutton sleeves. Shoes had little pointed toes and low heels. Day shoes looked like boots and laced up the front. Hair was waved and worn over a pad or frame to make it look fuller and give a nice resting place to the hat, which has an exuberantly wide brim.
All this was accessorized with handbags, parasols, umbrellas, small muffs, ostrich or fur boas, and, in the evening, for special occasions, such as a statehood ball, a woman would carry a large and ornate fan.