Veritable Hokum

Other fun things I learned while researching Women’s fashion in 1785:

* A petticoat is a dress that goes under your dress.

* We invented going commando way before we invented commandos. Panties only showed up in the last two hundred years.

* Buckles are old-fashioned elastic.

* Buttons are old-fashioned zippers.

* There were actually two separate periods in American history where women wore giant skirts with artificially tiny waists – one in the mid-1700’s, and one in the mid-1800’s.

* Clothes weren’t cheap. And the more ornate, the more expensive. The most expensive had crazy levels of ornament and detail. We’re talking like, embroidery, sequins, lace, images of nature and mythology…honestly, I’m kind of jealous.

* Speaking of which, people actually thought Liberace was straight.

* The French made the best women’s fashions, and the British made the best men’s fashions, and those were somewhere between wars and pastries in the list of things they hated about each other.

In other news, the poll is nearly over, and given a choice between a race, a war, and a vegetable, it looks like most of you chose vegetables.

So get ready. Next week, Potato Begins.

(I’m actually really excited.)

~Korwin

Update 3/26/2015:
Originally, this comic called the ‘jacket’ a ‘riding coat’, and the ‘shift’ a ‘slip’. Turns out ‘riding coat’ is a whole different thing from the less-specific ‘jacket,’ and ‘slip’ referred to the bottom hem of a dress, not the t-shirt shaped undergarment depicted. It has since been corrected. Women would also wear a shawl-type garment to protect their shoulders from the sun, which I hope you can imagine as I haven’t depicted it here. Thanks to Isabella at ExtantGowns.com for the corrections!