Long before it got fast, fashion was slow. For colonial women, who waited months for letters, parcels, journals and newspapers, it moved at a glacial speed. By the time the latest Paris and London trends had landed, they were already out of date. Fashion, for the average woman with a family to clothe, was the least of her concerns.
Right up to the 1940s, women made all the clothing for their family, along with soft furnishings – rugs, cushions, napery and tea cosies. No fabric was wasted. Garments were handed down, unstitched, turned, patched, repaired and altered, particularly during wartime and the Great Depression. Old curtains became dresses and coats, sheets were restitched, and wedding dresses remade into underwear, sleepwear and babies’ clothes.
“It wasn’t high fashion,” says Iris Skinner, Templin Historical Museum’s House of Fashion curator and member of the Common Threads Chapter of the Australian Sewing Guild. “It was
