MRHS Talk: The Women Who Created the Fashion in the 19th Century

The Mystic River Historical Society presents a talk by Laura Crow on Wednesday, December 3, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. at the Mystic Congregational Church Fellowship Hall about the women who created the fashions in the mid to late 1800s. New England’s industrial revolution began in the countryside. While Boston, New York, and other urban areas were the centers of the financial world, manufacturers seeking skilled labor and waterpower established textile mills across rural New England. Large centers like Lowell, Massachusetts, and more modest industrial towns like Willimantic and Manchester, Connecticut, grew up in this process but much textile production also took place in many small factory villages and industrial settlements that were scattered across rural New England. Throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, thousands of rural women and children did domestic outwork, making hats, buttons, suspenders and other clothing items in their own homes for local merchants who paid them by the piece. The skills and fashion sense of these home workers were the focus of the exhibition, Women of New England: Dress from the Industrial Age 1850 – 1900.

Laura Crow is the Director of Design and a Professor of Costume History, Design & Technology at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Dramatic Arts. She has designed Costumes for Broadway, Off-Broadway and Regional Theatres and represented the USA at the Prague Quadrennial five times. Her exhibition Women of New England: Dress from the Industrial Age 1850-1900 was displayed in an abbreviated version at the Connecticut State House, and subsequently in its complete form at the Benton Museum of Art and then at the Gallery in the Jorgenson Center for the Performing Arts on the UCONN campus.

The program is free for Society members and a suggested donation of $5 from non-members is always greatly appreciated. Refreshments will be served. For more information, call (860) 536-7449, email info@mystichistory.org or visit www.mystichistory.org.

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