In 1889, the United States was a young nation expanding rapidly westward. North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states. That November, Montana and Washington followed. In Colorado, Butch Cassidy staged his first bank robbery, stealing $20,000.
In Nashville, a group of women set out to preserve the legacy of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. Led by Amy Jackson (wife of Andrew Jackson III) and Mary Doris, the women formed the Ladies’ Hermitage Association to prevent the home from becoming a residence for indigent Confederate soldiers. The state ultimately awarded the home and portions of the surrounding land to the association, and its members began preserving the site and its history.
In a dark vault rarely seen by guests, three female dress forms stand sentinel, each dressed in garments from a bygone era. One wears an elegant evening gown with asymmetrical drapery. Another features a skirt-and-shirtwaist ensemble — a daytime uniform of the period. The third displays a gray overcoat designed to protect against the elements. Together, these pieces illustrate not only the fashion of the time, but also a shift in women’s roles from homemakers to civic activists.
The garments appear in a larger exhibit, Saving Old Hickory’s Hermitage: The Women Who Preserved History — And Changed It, on view through Oct. 31 at the Hermitage. Curators selected the pieces using archival photographs from the Hermitage, and the Fashion Archives & Museum of Shippensburg University loaned them representative pieces for the exhibition.
One standout garment, the skirt-and-shirtwaist ensemble, offered a more feminine interpretation of a man’s suit — often seen with a matching jacket absent from this exhibit. During the 1880s and 1890s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, women made up 15% of the workforce. “The skirt-and-shirtwaist ensemble was very much the ‘uniform’ of the new woman,” says Karin Bohleke, director of the Fashion Archives & Museum of Shippensburg University. “In fact, skirts hemmed at the ankle were described as ‘trotter’ or ‘trotteur’ in French. It reflected how much women were on the move.”
The ensemble also crossed social class, age and race, signaling a broader cultural shift. Women of all backgrounds wore it, marking the early days of a mix-and-match wardrobe. Key developments, like standardized measurements for ready-to-wear garments, spurred this on, Bohleke explains. “In addition, the garment industry had finally caught up to the industrialized menswear industry in its ability to produce efficiently made-to-measure items for individual wearers,” she adds.
The evening gown offers a striking example of the era’s elegance. Intricate embroidery and beading cover the garment, displayed alongside the shoes worn with it.
“The evening gown is one of my favorites,” Bohleke says. “It embodies the elegance we associate with the general era of the Titanic.” The dress’s asymmetrical drapery is characteristic of evening gowns at this time, she explains. As is the combination of different kinds of trim and fabric.
The gray overcoat, while practical, also makes a statement. “[It] is a great example of how clothing of the time period combined elegant design with genuine protective qualities for dealing with the elements,” Bohleke says.
While fashion represents only one element of the exhibit, it remains essential to understanding the broader story. “Fashion matters because it is the way we can connect with our ancestors in 3D,” Bohleke says. “Nothing is more intimate and personal than the clothing [someone] wore.”
These garments offer a different perspective than historical photographs or painted portraits, she notes. And they served an essential role in history — part personal expression, part public statement, part practical concern.
“There are so many stories one can tell through clothing,” Bohleke says. “Personal, economic, invention, politics, trade, labor, women’s history and much more.”