From Plebian to Royalty:
Who Wore Stays?
AND: 2nd WARNING: I think the plan is to post it up and keep adding to the Post as we go.
AND: 3rd WARNING: It’s grown so big and that there are still more images to be added that one post has become too large- wordpress doesn’t like it! So we’ve had to divide it into 4 separate parts.
The Fully Boned Stays:
Introduction:
Like many others no doubt, I am currently pouring myself over’The Dress of the People’ by John Styles and am fascinated by some of the research and documents that this man has found. It is a wonderful book and full of down to earth discussions on eighteenth century Spending and Clothing .But in one particular chapter J.Styles goes through the accounts of a poor farming family and, if I’m honest, it’s been stirring up an old area of confusion.
The V&A also give a brief description of stays in general at this point of the 18th cent. They say, and I quote, “Although custom-made and very intricately designed, stays were usually very plain” Which is such an intriguing quote because they’re not all plain – so much so that it’d be hard to use the word ‘usually’. And the Historians at the V&A aren’t silly, so there is obviously a way to view this quote from a different angle that it makes sense. That ‘View’ might simply be only considering ‘One Function Stays’. That is: stays that weren’t also designed to be seen as an integral part of the front of the Dress. These ‘Two Function Stays’ tend to be prettier in fabric, covered (although not always – on many of them the boning channels are visible ) and made to generally be worn with a specific dress (we think!…this is another area that needs research). But back to our main discussion. All of these stays here, and those following – bar the V&A silk damask stays – are made of linen or wool and are plainer in appearance and not of the type of Stays that also doubled up as Stomachers (as previously mentioned).I once went to a re-enactment with the sole purpose to talk to some of the ladies about their stays. Many re-enactors are wonderful about accuracy and therefore I was really interested in what research they had turned up in their quest for accuracy. Now, this comment may be completely invalid as the Re-enactment was for 100 years prior to our period, but it’s a comment I’ve heard and read from other sources and one that is the backbone to my questioning. The lovely lady said: ‘Boned Bodies (stays) weren’t really worn by the working women and the poorer classes because- and lets face it – they’re really impractical.’ I’ll admit that this quote is not verbatim – I don’t have that good a memory – but what she said was definitely along these lines and very adamant in the fact that boned bodies would’ve been impractical for working women to do their working tasks in. Now: from this point on I have no idea how to lay out my argument or my images. So, I think I’m just going to write and hope it makes sense by the end, placing the images in where I can. Within these images we have more examples of plain linen or woollen stays, we have paintings of poorer plebian women wearing stays, we have paintings of plebeian women not wearing stays, helpfully we have paintings that could be either: I couldn’t tell so I just thought I’d shove them in for good measure. We have paintings of the upper classes wearing their stays and then we have quotes from accounts where plebeian women have owned or bought specifically ‘whalebone’ or ‘whalebone and silk’ stays and we have contemporary references to leather stays and ‘cheap stays’. Now, we are not going to include in this debate the Stays made to be seen as Stomachers. Why? Because, although these are beautiful examples of staymaking and design and are still called ‘Stays’; the fact that they were made for specific dresses therefore, assumes a larger wardrobe and I’m assuming: a greater amount of choice in clothing options. I’ll confess I have questions about these types of stays too but lets keep things simple for now and just deal with the underwear garment that is: the simple Pair of Stays.
Essentially what we’re comparing here is the two sides of the argument: ‘Working class wearing them’ or ‘Working class NOT wearing them’. Simple.
And, I know it sounds daft but I don’t quite know what to do with all the Milkmaid images we have. Image wise, there are quite a few portraits/caricatures and romantic paintings of these popular ladies, with them clearly wearing Stays but these images are more likely to be romanticized. Either the well-to-do woman is dressing down to appear like a milkmaid or the artist is buying in to the classic image of ‘the milkmaid’, so both can be very unreliable. John Styles does point out that in most of the images they are fairly well dressed and this could be likely due to their reliable businesses. Milkmaids, in our minds atleast, do seem to have been in a little class of their own – they earnt their own money, ran their own business and were idealised by wealthy women for way more than for just one fad or for just one generation – all throughout the Eighteenth century in fact, portraits were being painted with their rich patrons dressed up as milkmaids. The Bergere hats were even called the Milkmaid hat and there was a ‘country’ kind of milkmaid style of clothing. Beau Nash asked the Duchess of Queensbury to remove her Apron in his establishment due to it’s lower class connotations. It does seem that this love of the long, gauzy Apron stemmed initially from a flair in fashion to dress up and emulate a ‘Milkmaid’ and seems to have certainly been the reason why The Duchess was wearing one.