Moments in Time: Stories of New Mexico’s History; Fashioning New Mexico

The arrival of the railroad changed fashion in New Mexico. When a Victorian woman visited Santa Fe for the first time, culture shock went both ways. She would have been surprised and shocked to see the local women in their loose-fitting comfortable summer blouses and their short colorful skirts, and they would have been shocked to see her wearing long sleeves and tightly corseted and long skirts. I imagine a fashionably dressed woman would never admit it, but she probably wished she could dress that way on those hot days, but she was fashionable. She had an image to maintain. It was very important for a Victorian woman to create a currently fashionable silhouette

that she was wearing the proper undergarments that would, well, in short, make the dress stick out in the proper places. One of the pieces of clothing that is probably the most misunderstood in the Victorian era would be the corset. The corset would support the bosom by lifting everything up. It also gave great back support, and it smoothed out all those curves that us women can develop on our waistline. When you think of corset, you think of tightly corseted, skinny, 18-inch waist, sucked-in, hollywood version, I can't breathe, cut the laces. Did that happen? Yes. Did every woman tight lace? No. There's plenty of photographs of women from the Victorian era with very normal-sized waist and very good posture.

And there were many different styles, many different colors. A woman today picks her underwear according to her own taste and a woman back then would have done the same. Many women in the Victorian era felt that a tiny waist, a very beautiful slender waist, was a sign of gentility and the higher classes. A woman who had to work for a living, whether she was a schoolteacher or a seamstress, she probably wouldn't be able to have a luxury of tight lacing. She would have had a thicker waist. A woman of high society, a rich man's wife, didn't have to work for a living. She could tight lace and it was a sign of her status in life. However, we know that women are women.

And even the working class ladies would strive to bring their waist in for a slender effect because they wanted to look like the ladies of high society. Some people felt that it was a sign of gentility and propriety and that a young woman would need to have a slender waist to catch herself a good husband. The Victorian bustle was a very amusing and unusual piece of clothing and the underwear wardrobe. A modern woman cannot understand at all why a Victorian lady would want to make her butt look big. A woman would find that if her bustle projected the proper amount, and each woman could decide for herself how big or small she wanted her bustle to be, if a bustle dress is tailored

properly to the body. The projection off the back end can again make the waist look smaller by comparison. And it creates an extremely elegant look when the dress is fitted properly. Someone said, how would you know when a bustle was large enough? Well, when you could rest a T-sad on it, of course. When I see a bustle, I think of a birdcage tied around a woman's waist made of wires and cloth and boning, very intricate contraptions to provide the foundation for all the heavy drapery that was fashionable at the time. What I think ties the past with the present, a modern woman with her little scanty underpinnings, and a Victorian lady with her eight layers of underwear, her corsets, her bustle.

Both women know that what they're wearing underneath their outfits is what truly makes them feel and act more feminine as they step out for the evening.