Katie Concannon handcrafted this dress for Hallowell’s bicentennial celebration. Photo by Bill McIntire
HALLOWELL — The Vaughan Woods and Historic Homestead and the Hubbard Free Library have teamed to create a display of women’s clothing styles and accessories. The fashion exhibit is scheduled to be on display through September at the 115 Second St. library.
The layers of clothing were not only a fashion statement but a source of warmth in the cooler months, according to a news release. A woman might have worn a shift with many petticoats along with a fichu or triangular shawl.
Today many pants and dress are made without pockets, an aggravation if one doesn’t want to carry a purse. Around the time of Maine’s statehood women often wore decorated pockets tied around the waist with a string and accessed through a slit in the skirt.
The fashion display shows how clothing and hair fashion were also used to indicate social status, and not always in a positive way. The display notes, for example, that specific details of how people dressed were used to identify runaway slaves. Hair styles were one of the few ways that slave women could express their individuality, but could also be used for identification as well.
A special feature of the fashion display is a dress handmade by Katie Concannon, summer intern at Vaughan Woods and Historic Homestead. She created the dress to explain how she saw women’s fashion with a historical view.
The next event in the Hallowell Maine Bicentennial Celebration is the granite symposium at Stevens Commons, to run from Sept. 11-19. Information is available at hallowellgranitesymposium.org.
The library is open from 2-7 p.m. Tuesday; 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday; 2-7 p.m. Thursday; and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
For more information about the display, contact Annemarie Kromhout, director of Hubbard Free Library, at 207-622-6582 or akromhout@hubbard.lib.me.us, or Kate Tremblay, executive director of Vaughan Woods and Historic Homestead, at 207-622-9831 or katetremblay@vaughanhomestead.org.
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