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A Separate Sphere: Dressmakers in Cincinnati’s Golden Age, 1877-1922 (Costume Society of America Series)

Amazon.com Price:  $24.91 (as of 02/05/2019 19:08 PST- Details)

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Description

Dressmaking, thought to be a natural extension of women’s proper work in the home, was once a common and lucrative employment for women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It afforded creative expression, prestige locally, and even the potential of financial independence. Yet as entrepreneurs, dressmakers faced unique business pressures, and with the advent of department stores and widespread mass production of women’s clothing, most were forced into bankruptcy.Coinciding with the exhibition Cynthia Amnéus organized for the Cincinnati Art Museum, this work examines the nineteenth-century ideology of women’s separate sphere, the early feminist movement, women in the place of job, and dressmakers as artisans and professionals. More than 140 stunning custom-made garments, historical photographs, and dressmakers’ labels document the superb artistic and technical skill of the women who produced fashionable dress in Cincinnati from 1877 to 1922.Bracketing Amnéus’s incisive study are essays by Anne Bissonnette at the eccentric tea gown, Marla Miller at the pitfalls of researching women’s cultural work, and Shirley Teresa Wajda at the dressmakers’ rich clientele. In all, A Separate Sphere offers a careful look into the lives of women being affected by ideological boundaries. Chronicling choices made by and imposed on both working-class women and their affluent counterparts, it reveals how these women managed to strengthen their prescribed sphere for themselves and for the community at large.

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