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Nineteenth Century Aprons

In the 1800s, both maids and wealthy women wore aprons. Servant aprons were traditionally white and were supposed to be “clean, neat and appropriate.” The maid’s clothing was meant to follow the fashion trends of the time while also representing her employer’s class status and wealth. Some aprons had lace, embroidery or pleating work on them to add a bit of sophistication if they were servants who regularly appeared in front of house guests.

Wealthy housewives of the time were also expected to show off their family’s status in society and their commitment to the domestic life. They did this by also wearing aprons, though the aprons were far more elegant and expensive than the maid’s white cotton apron. Popular materials included black lace, satin with chenille borders, shot silk, and satin. An apron of this caliber was necessary with a morning dress during the early nineteenth century for a woman of status. During this time, “never was there a greater rage than for aprons (of satin and shot silk) for morning or afternoon.” The elegant and colorful apron was also a symbol that a woman had the funds to be swindled by travelling merchants into purchasing “a gaudy ribbon or shining pair scissors.”

Another symbol which the extravagant apron represented was of the “fig leaf,” as worn by Eve in the Garden of Eden. Women termed their ornamental aprons “fig leaves,” thus drawing attention to their “sexual region.” Small decorated aprons were one example of “suggestive fashion.”

Aprons for both maids and housewives were not just worn in the home, but out on the town as well. The painting “Scene in Frankfurt Fair, April 1835. Part of the Line of Stalls Extending Along the River Mayn” by Mary Ellen Best shows a mother in a highly decorated and colorful apron and her daughter in a green pinafore apron. They are out shopping in a market and through the appearance of their stylish aprons, they are exhibiting their upper-middle class status as well as their ties to female domesticity.

White Cotton Apron with Lace, Historic Clothing Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 2011.8.125.