Long before Brooklyn hipsters modeled LL Bean boots and Angela Adams bags hung from the shoulders of people in Los Angeles, Mainers had a keen sense of fashion.
In the 1870s, for example, fashion-conscious Maine residents knew that the voluminous style of women’s skirt known as “polonaise” was giving way to a much slimmer silhouette called “cuirasse,” from the French word for means tight, like armor. When Hannah P. Adams of Belfast received her wedding trousseau around the time of this change in trends, she included a dress in a newer style, along with a knee-length jacket called basque.
“Mainers have always been in style, and that’s something we see in our clothing collection,” said Jamie Kingman Rice, deputy director of the Maine Historical Society. “Because of ties to British shipping in the mid-19th century, people in places like Eastport and Belfast would have had access to the latest fashions and fashion ideas. But we see that people in more rural areas were also interested.”
The idea that Mainers, at least some, have long exhibited a flair for fashion is the subject of an exhibit at the Maine Historical Society in Portland called “Northern Threads: Two Centuries of Dress at the Maine Historical Society “, with about 50 ensembles from 1780-1889, including the Hannah P. Adams gown, on view through July 30. The society’s clothing collection is so large that the exhibition has been split into two parts, with clothes from 1890-1980 on view from August 12 to December 31.
The historical society is also currently home to two other exhibits that help illustrate Mainers’ connections or obsessions with fashion over the past 200 years. “Cosmopolitan Styles of Mildred and Madeleine Burrage” focuses on two Maine sisters who were artists and includes drawings by Paris fashion designers in the 1920s and 1930s. It is on view through September 24.
The other is “Representing Every Particular: John Martin’s 19th Century Fashion Illustrations,” which presents observations, opinions, and drawings on local fashion from a Bangor businessman’s diary in the latter half of the 19th century, on view until 6 of August.
Online versions of all three exhibits are available to view on the Maine Historical Society’s “current exhibits” page.
“Northern Threads: Two Centuries of Dress at the Maine Historical Society” is a two-part exhibit. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Rice, lead curator of “Northern Threads,” had begun preparing the exhibit for the state’s bicentennial in 2020, but the pandemic and other issues delayed the exhibit. So now it’s open during the historical society’s bicentennial year, which is appropriate, says Rice, because it highlights part of the society’s collection of some 3,000 garments.
The “Northern Threads” show marks one of the few times the historical society has displayed so many pieces of clothing, Rice said, as clothing displays are labor-intensive. Many pieces are light and fragile and must be handled and displayed with care. In addition, the lighting must be carefully arranged so as not to damage the fabrics. Some pieces cannot be left in the light and air for too long.
A 1931 Parisian design for an evening gown from the “Cosmopolitan Styles of Mildred and Madeleine Burrage” exhibit at the Maine Historical Society in Portland. Photo courtesy of Maine Historical Society/Maine Memory Network No.54252
Many of the clothes come from family collections, donated to the historical society, while many came to the historical society from the collection of the old Westbrook College in Portland (now part of the University of New England), which had a curriculum of fashion. Some pieces that represent the latest fashions of the moment come from families who lived in small, rural or remote places, such as the small town of Alexander, on Route 9 near Calais, or the city of Waterford in Oxford County. In the second part of “Northern Threads,” there will be an ostrich-feather adorned wedding dress that was worn to a wedding on the remote island of Matinicus in the 1890s.
This first part of “Hilos del Norte” includes Civil War-era military dresses and uniforms, boisterous dresses, dresses made from reused fabrics in a time when the material was not readily available, mourning fashions, and dresses with the “gigot” or puffed sleeves popular in the 1830s.
One of the gigot-sleeved dresses illustrates Rice’s view that the remote reaches of Maine have a conduit to foreign fashion. It is a two-piece silk and satin weave ensemble, circa 1830, and belonged to the Leavitt family of Eastport. It comes with a small cape, called a pereline, that fits over the dress. Dark purple silk was expensive in its day and was probably dyed with imported campeche wood, before the advent of chemical dye.
In the 1830s, the people of Eastport would have been influenced in their fashions and tastes by the constant stream of British ships bringing European goods to the remote Maine seaport, Rice said. The number of British ships calling at Eastport increased by 800 percent in the early 1830s.
Examples of the gigot sleeve on dresses from the 1820s and 1830s, on display at the Maine Historical Society. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Another theme that can be found in the historical society’s clothing collection is the creativity of Mainers, who sometimes bought the latest fashions but adapted them with their own hands and ideas, Rice said. The dress belonging to Hannah Adams in Belfast, for example, is labeled by a Boston clothing designer, WH Bigalow, 150 Warren Ave., Boston. But later, the dress was hand-embroidered with colorful floral designs, hinting at daisies, berries, cat’s tails, and poppies. A chenille fringe was also added.
There is an area of the “Northern Threads” exhibit dedicated to adaptive reuse. A very clever example is a green, white and pink silk brocade dress worn by a member of the Jewett family at a Portland ball in 1825 in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the Revolutionary War. The dress fabric dates to the late 1730s or early 1740s, and the dress was initially made in the 1770s. It was later altered and redesigned for the 1825 ball, but in a Colonial Revival style.
Some other examples of Mainers’ own creative fashion adaptations will be seen in part two of “Northern Threads” when it opens in August. One is a women’s bomber jacket, think Amelia Earhart, which was popular in the 1930s. It was made by a Maine woman who worked in a shoe factory and had access to leather.
Complementing the flashy fashions are some surprising personal stories. Among the various military uniforms on display is Oliver Otis Howard’s dress uniform coat from Leeds, when he was a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point in the 1850s. During the Civil War, Howard he lost his right arm at the Battle of Seven Pines in Virginia. After the war, he was commissioner of the US Freedmen’s Bureau and founder of Howard University in Washington, DC, today one of the best-known historically black universities in the country.
The other two fashion exhibits now at the historical society also stem from personal histories. Sisters Mildred Giddings Burrage (1890-1983) and Madeleine Burrage (1891-1976) came from a Maine family that made their fortune in lumber in the Bangor area, eventually settling in Wiscasset. Mildred studied and worked as an artist in France, where she became interested in haute couture. Madeleine became a jewelry designer, and the two traveled extensively in Europe and South America, often writing home about the fashions they saw.
Among Mildred’s collected documents and writings are original drawings and descriptions of dress designs from fashion houses in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. The drawings were sent to potential clients in the days before catalogs and websites, said Tilly Laskey, curator of the Maine Historical Society and the Burrage exhibit.
Thirty of these “line sheets” with dress designs are on display as part of the show. Addresses and other information show they weren’t sent directly to Mildred, and it’s unclear how she acquired them over the years, Laskey said. Many of these drawings are in color and come with pictures of fabrics and color swatches.
Laskey also curated “Representing Every Particular: John Martin’s 19th Century Fashion Illustrations.” Martin’s drawings are particularly interesting because he was neither an artist nor a student of fashion. He was an accountant and merchant from Bangor who was a keen observer. His own father had died when he was young and she knew very little about him. So he had a strong desire to help his children learn about his times and his experiences. He left behind a 650-page diary and several albums of notes and sketches, made from the 1860s to the 1890s. He drew what he saw and added his own commentary.
Annie Martin as drawn by her father, John Martin, in 1866 from “Representing Every Particular: John Martin’s 19th Century Fashion Illustrations” at the Maine Historical Society. Photo courtesy of the Maine Historical Society/Maine State Museum/Maine Memory Network No. 101171
One of his last drawings, “A Society Lady of 1889,” shows a woman wearing a bustle dress, brightly colored with orange, red, violet, and green, and holding a parasol and a small handbag. In his description of the drawing, Martin calls the subject “a society lady of today” and notes that while the material for the dress is not expensive, “it shows that the wearer is a person of good taste.” Ten of his doodles and illustrations are on display.
“He can get a little sarcastic about what people wear and his descriptions are quite funny,” Laskey said. “He was drawing these freehand and offering a lot of information about what he saw.”
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