All Dressed Up, Circa 1870

The WAY THE WEST WAS WORN

There was a time in southern Arizona when the ladies didn't sweat. They only glistened. They also didn't breathe too deeply or walk too fast. The place was then called Arizona Territory. Men were men, women seemed dainty, and hardly anyone of note had a thing to wear that made much sense at all. If they did, they weren't letting anyone else know about it. It had to do with fashion. In the business districts of 1870 New York, men could face winter's bitter challenge snug in their heavy suits and long woolen underwear. Lakeside in the Chicago of 1880, women had at least four layers oflinen, silk, and wool to protect them from the bite of the spring wind. And in southern Arizona, what were their counterparts wearing to face the heat of summer, the blazing sun, the dust? The same things, long johns and layers upon layers of clothing. “How in the world did they get into a stagecoach?” wonders Jean Hildreth, who served 23 years as curator of costumes for the Arizona Costume Institute at the Phoenix Art Museum.

They may have taken off their jackets, but never the corsets. But oh, it must have been tempting.

“You couldn't do such a thing,” she says of the restrictive nature of the clothes worn by Anglo-American women who arrived in Arizona as wives of frontier soldiers in the 1860s. Their numbers grew as the region became more accessible anddesirable with the coming of the railroads in the late 1870s. The railroads brought new opportunities and new businesses. The passengers brought Eastern clothes and middle-class sensibilities.

Be it 1860 or 1880, come to stay or just passing through, these women were hooped, bustled, petticoated, and corseted. The men, those with trades to ply, businesses to run, deals to make, were their equals. They too were the picture of propriety, albeit a bit rumpled.

Says Hildreth, “When you see photographs of these poor men, what a wrinkled mess they are.” Certainly not their original intent when dressing up for a portrait sitting at the Buehman Studio on Tucson's Congress Street. But the suits were woolen, and back then, like today, the temperature could easily hit 100° F. or more in the shade.In addition to the questionable charm of the woolen suits, there were the highnecked shirts made suitable with the addition of stiff celluloid cuffs and collars. These fellows were as buttoned up and down as their women.

“Poor men,” sighs Hildreth. Only where comfort was concerned. The men who left their images in that studio were citizens of substance or the hopes of it, or pretensions to it, and they dressed accordingly, regardless of the climate.

“I expected that there might be some changes in the styles,” says Dr. Brenda Brandt, associate professor of Textiles and Historic Costumes at Colorado State University. She researched the dress of the early Anglo-Americans in the Sonoran Desert region while at the University of Arizona. She had thought the women might have lowered their necklines, placed less emphasis on the restricted bodice and waist. In the common vernacular, they might have loosened up. They didn't, not much.

“They modified by rolling up sleeves on blouses,” says Brandt. They also may have taken off their jackets, but never the corsets. Not in public. But oh, it must have been tempting.

“They had these steel horrors, grommetlike things that would fasten up the front, then the lacing went up the back,” says Hildreth.

Such constrictions, in apparel and society, brought forth a plaintive line from Martha Summerhayes. A military wife, she arrived in Arizona in the 1870s and saw the Mexican women in their short-sleeved blouses and calico skirts. She later wrote, “I have always been sorry that I did not adopt their fashion of house apparel.

She also met the Native Americans. They wore what nature and then trade provided. The result could be as austere as the landscape, a skirt and little more. But as a new society dominates, so does it dictate what everybody else should wear.

The first Europeans to arrive came with an eye on their status and their backs. Clinking and clanking their way to empire, they were wearing or carrying metal and leather armor. That's something to ponder, a metal hat under the Arizona sun.

"It doesn't matter if you are comfortable as long as you are alive," comments Mark Santiago, collections manager of the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson. The society has a massive period costume collection as well as armor from the Spanish colonial years. "They were tough," says Santiago of the men who wore the metal shirts.

Three hundred years later, men on the same land were wearing the blue wool of the United States Army and still marching. According to Tom Peterson, "In the case of the infantry, they marched for days and days and days with no change of clothing, maybe a change of under-wear once a week." So much for the romance of a uniform.

Peterson is chief curator for the Arizona Historical Society. In 1971 he joined the 5th Cavalry Memorial Regiment "A Troop," a civilian organization that re-creates the 1880s cavalry of Arizona through correct costuming and equipment.

To get a sense of what some of that costuming was like, you can go back in memory, photos, or newsreels to the United States Marine Corps, World War II era. With alterations, the pants of that uniform could be made into the pants of an 1880s soldier. The color and material match. However, no modern-day marine, tough as nails as they may be, has to face that additional trial of the soldier on the Arizona frontier.

"Not only do you wear woolen trousers but you wear long underwear," says Peterson. Long underwear, winter and summer.

"To high heaven," is how Jean Hildreth describes the resulting aroma that must have lingered out there among the mesquite as well as in the drawing rooms of polite society. Still, somebody must have done something to make their clothes fit the place.The cowboys did. They had their over-alls, boots, long sleeves, and vests to protect against the cuts, bruises, and thorns offered up by their life on the land. Miners, ranchers, farmers, the men who had to get right down and dirty, dressed for it. There also were some "respectable" women who broke pattern.

"There is some documentation that women who were under diminished so-cial controls would experiment with their clothing," states Brenda Brandt. Meaning, away from the judgmental eyes of the town, a ranch woman might have put on a pair of her husband's pants.

"They probably had to in some cases," Hildreth concurs. But what were the chances of that same woman going to town to buy her own pair of overalls?

"Rare," pronounces Laraine Daly Jones of such an event. Conservator for the Arizona Historical Society and in charge of the costume collection, Jones made it possible for me to step back into this long-skirted past. Under her supervision, I was dressed in recreations of garments that would have been worn by a rare woman passenger on the Arizona stretch of the Butterfield stage route. With the transformation, the question became not only how this woman got into a stage, but once there, how in the world did she fit, sit, breathe.

First there were the unmentionables, then the chemise, corset, corset cover, a wide hoop to give the dress its form, petticoats, a number of them, then the skirt, the bodice-jacket, gloves, hat, shoes, and parasol. By the 1870s, the hoop form would have moved more to the back, the front straighter. By the 1880s, a metal bustle would have followed along behind.

The WAY THE WEST WAS WORN

Any idea that the legs could kick happy and free under the hoop are dashed by walking. Without measured mincing steps, the hoop takes on a life of its own. Mine would have swung its way down the wooden sidewalks of Tombstone like a church tower bell calling the faithful. The later bustle presented its own problems. Sitting down in a Phoenix parlor would have required pushing the bustle to one side like some strange growth.

As for taking a horseback ride, one of the recreational activities women of Arizona Territory enjoyed, the layers of clothing might then include a pair of stirrup pants worn beneath the skirt.

As for taking a horseback ride, one of the recreational activities women of Arizona Territory enjoyed, the lay-ers of clothing might then include a pair of stirrup pants worn beneath the skirt.

Says Jones, "All I can think of is, heavens to Betsy, how did you survive in this kind of heat?"

Well, you do and they did, with rolled-up sleeves and lighter fabrics. The men also rolled their sleeves, took jackets off, undid some of those buttons. But they did hang onto that wool. It tailored well. It wore.

Now their clothes are in the museums of Arizona, treasures of another world. Seen from the outside looking in, they do still bring forth that vision of a more romantic time, a flowing, flirtatious time when gentlemen were courtly and gentle ladies glistened.

These were people who dressed for something far tougher than a southern Arizona summer. The sun might be hot, but it was nothing compared with the icy chill of Society should you break the rules.

Author's Note: For more of a look into the lives, the clothing, and the work of early-day Arizonans, visit: Arizona Historical Society, Southern Ari-zona Division, 949 E. Second St., Tucson, AZ 85719; (520) 628-5774.

Tempe Historical Museum, 809 E. Southern Ave., Tempe, AZ 85282; (602) 350-5100.

Sharlot Hall Museum, 415 W. Gurley St., Prescott, AZ 86301; (520) 445-3122.