The new century also ushered great changes in women's styles, which were rooted in the late eighteenth century. The "age of undress" was to impact women's wear as it did men's wear and cause a revolution in dress. Influenced by Classical ideals and the erroneous notion that white clinging dresses adorned Greek and Roman matrons, fluid white cotton fabrics became the mark of fashion.

These cotton gowns were following Classical aesthetics in body ideal as well as clothing. The "natural figure" with high rounded breasts and long rounded limbs were to be what the sheer cotton muslins aimed to reveal.(1)  The gowns clung to the body from the neck to below the breasts, which were released from the eighteenth-century conical boned stays that pushed them together in an upward direction. Gowns of the early 1800s were often lined with linen at the upper bodice. As in the past, this was done to protect the outer fabric from stress, but, in this era of transition, separate linen side pieces that crossed over and were pinned in the front could also give the wearer support.(2)  One such muslin gown from ca. 1802-1807 was found without provenance in the Ohio Historical Society collection (see image below). It did not take long for a new type of stays, which began to be called corsets, to be devised for those individuals that did not conform to the "natural" ideal. This undergarment could be padded for the slender or heavily boned for the stout.(3)  It extended to the hips, and triangular gussets accommodated these curves as well as those of the breasts, which they could direct sideways.(4)  The center front had a pocket where a rigid ruler-like "busk," often made of wood or whale ivory, was inserted top to bottom through the front of the corset and served to keep the posture erect. These corsets were important to the development of the new fashionable figure and, as with late eighteenth-century stays, many survive with provenance at the Ohio Historical Society and the Western Reserve Historical Society.(5)

This revolution in dress and wearing comfort may have started with children's clothes. It was to gain momentum and international recognition in 1762 with the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's best-selling and controversial novel Émile.(6)  The focus on "natural rights" and liberties that surrounded the American and French Revolutions further contributed to this new attitude towards the rearing of children.(7)  Traditionally dressed as miniature adults and expected to conform to adult standards of behavior, reformers argued that children, particularly boys, should be allowed to move freely in comfortable clothes that did not hamper their movement. This led to the upper-class adoption of the "skeleton suit" for boys, a combination of bodice and trousers buttoned at the waist which was to have a long life, as seen in the one-piece suit of Phillip Dennis (born 1832) from the Ohio Historical Society (see image below). This new philosophy also contributed to the adoption of trousers after a boy was "breeched," or removed from the dresses of infancy, which did not distinguish much between genders. Girls, who had been bound to silks and stays, began to be freed of both in the 1770s and were put in ankle-length dresses of light colored cotton or linen with low necklines, short sleeves, less constricted bodices and elevated waistlines covered with sashes, as can be seen worn by Bethia Gleason (see image below).(8)  These were the kind of gowns that were referred to when women started wearing robes à l'enfant, also called robes en chemise or robes à la créole, which women began to wear as early as 1775.(9)  Marie-Antoinette was portrayed by Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun in 1783 in such a gown which quickly gained the name of chemise à la Reine. Thus, the emergence of more comfortable and informal children's wear in the second half of the eighteenth century could have started a revolution that impacted adults as well.(10)

In this light, we can see a child's printed cotton frock (seen above) from the Massillon Museum as a garment that echoes women's "empire" styles (see 1805-1810 gown below), which might in turn have been influenced by children's clothes.(11)  The cataloguing record indicates that it was made for Ben Mowry, who was born in 1808 and was an uncle of the donor, a resident of Massillon, Ohio. As such, it serves to illustrate the continued preference for female-style garments for boys until the age of breeching. It is also of great interest as its printed cotton is much earlier than the style of the garment. The undulating floral sprays, also called "floral-trails," were popular between 1775 and 1785.(12)  The fabric could have been recycled from an earlier adult gown (see 1783 gown below), and its dark printed fabric would have been consistent with its use for children's frocks as it did not show stains as easily.(13)  The garment's construction is consistent with 1808-1809 fashionable styles with a very high waist and wide neckline, as can be seen in the September 1808 portrait of Sarah Ann Worthington (1800-1877) at age eight and the September 1809 portrait of Mary Tiffin Worthington (1797-1836) at age eleven (see images below).

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(1) Norah Waugh, Corsets and Crinolines (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1954; reprint, New York: Routledge/Theatre Arts Books, 1991), 75.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid.
(4) The corset guiding the breasts sideways was called a "divorce." See Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1995), 118.
(5) Natural linen boned stays, unknown maker or place of origin, ca. 1790-1815, Beman Gates Family, possibly worn in Ohio, OHS, H78871. Brown linen boned stays, unknown maker, island of Nantucket, made in of before 1790, worn in 1790 by Eliza Coffin Brown Chase, possibly worn in the Northwest Territory or in Ohio within the Connecticut Western Reserve, WRHS, 541. White cotton corset with busk pocket, made and worn by Ann Sharp (Mrs. John Marshall) (1807-1852) in ca. 1820s-1830s, possibly worn in Ohio, OHS, H47023. White cotton sateen corded corset, made by donor's grandmother, West Alexandria, Ohio, ca. 1835, OHS, H20161. White cotton corded corset and busk, unknown maker and place of origin, ca. 1836, belonged to Barbara Graybiel who married Abraham Schooley, possibly worn in the Connecticut Western Reserve, Ohio, WRHS, 48.642ab. White cotton corded corset, made by Mary Ann Bradley for her wedding, unknown place of origin, 1838, possibly worn in the Connecticut Western Reserve, Ohio, WRHS, 58.353.
(6) Elizabeth Ewing, History of Children's Costume (New York: Scribner, 1977), 20.
(7) Clare Rose, Children's Clothes Since 1750 (New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1989), 23.
(8) Such gowns are seen in portraits as early as the 1770s. Boucher attributes a ca. 1740 date for the introduction of girls' straight dresses with a 1780 date for their widespread adoption. See François Boucher, Histoire du costume en Occident de l'Antiquité à nos jours (Paris: Flammarion, 1965), 313; Ewing, 50.
(9) Boucher indicates that Marie-Antoinette wore such a gown in 1775 and that their vogue dates from ca. 1778-1779. See Boucher, 303, 307. Ribeiro indicates that the artist Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun first saw the queen wearing such a gown at Marly in the mid-1770s and again while pregnant with her first child in 1778. See Ribeiro, 71.
(10) Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (Williamsburg, Virginia: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in association with Yale University Press, 2002), 173.
(11) Children's frocks were fitted gowns intended for public wear that usually tied in the back with ties or laces, as in the present case. See Baumgarten, 160.
(12) Elsie McMurray, "American Women's Dresses -1780-1900: Identification and Significance of 148 Extant Dresses" (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Media and Technology Services Resource Center, 2001, computer file), 30; Florence M. Montgomery, Printed Textile: English and American Cottons and Linens, 1700-1850 (New York: Viking Press, 1970), 137, 140.
(13) On recycling, see Baumgarten, 189. On the use of dark fabrics for children's frocks, see Baumgarten, 171.
(14)