Clothes Make the Man (or Woman)

 by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Two years ago COVID-19 arrived, and since then we’ve all learned to live with a variety of changes. One of those changes that continues to evolve is how we present ourselves at work. With more meetings happening remotely, some office workers are opting for a more casual look on the job but keep “zoom shirts” or jackets handy to appear more presentable online.

In the past, people in the medical field, transportation, and business professions were expected to wear specific types of clothing to reflect their position, indicate their responsibilities and communicate their status and class. Think of them as work uniforms.

Our current exhibit All in a Day’s Work: Dressed for Success shares examples of how, over the years, different Chemung County professionals have dressed for work.

Three uniforms on display in our exhibit reflect some ongoing changes in our societal expectations for work attire.

A woman’s nursing uniform, like other uniforms in the medical profession, is designed to inspire patients’ confidence and trust. Being attended by someone wearing a dirty uniform is almost hard to imagine, and the importance of wearing a uniform in nursing can be traced back to Florence Nightingale. When Nightingale established the world’s first secular nursing school in 1860, she dressed her nurses in gray uniforms. The outfits helped identify nurses who had training, and the gray didn’t show the color or blood when wet. The uniform was also meant to neutralize the wearer’s appearance and deter unwelcome advances from patients under their care, who were commonly young male soldiers far from home.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, nurses shifted to wearing white. There were strict protocols and expectations for them to keep their uniforms starched and pristine. Wearing white was “proof” that nurses were clean, sanitary, and offered scientific care. Mid-century nurses wore starched white dresses, white caps, white nylons and white shoes, similar to the example on display from St. Joseph’s Hospital. Often nurses were required to care for their own uniforms which meant time-consuming work to remove from bodily fluids.

When women’s fashion became less restrictive, the style of nursing uniforms followed along. By the 1970s and 80s, nurses began to wear scrubs, and today scrubs are the primary outfit of choice for the profession which includes more male nurses. Scrubs allow the wearer more freedom to move, often come with pockets to carry tools, and can be worn by any gender. Scrubs come in a variety of bright colors and patterns which allows nurses to personalize their look, if their affiliated institution permits it.

Uniforms have also been part of transportation work. Each style of dress indicated what position workers held and informed the public what to expect. Early train and trolley conductors, airline pilots, and bus drivers wore matching uniforms that had a distinct military style. This inspired confidence in their skills and abilities, and helped to make them look competent. The Lackawanna Railroad conductor's uniform from 1954 is a good example of that style. It comes with fancy brass buttons that include the Lackawanna R.R. logo to indicate the wearer was someone of note. Today transportation uniforms vary. Airline pilots still wear military influenced uniforms, often with brimmed hats and epaulets on the shoulder. Bus drivers are more casual and if they wear hats, tend to favor ball cap styles.

Unofficial uniforms have been worn by office workers providing business services since the beginning. In the 1930s, American writer Upton Sinclair called professionals who receive salaries “white collar workers,” referring to the white shirts and business suits many workers wore. The term stuck and is still used today. “Business casual,” or business attire was expected in many professions as a way to command respect from peers and customers, as well as show respect to those they worked with. Male workers who dressed this way communicated an unwritten message of who was in charge, and what position someone aspired to.

For women entering the workforce during the last century, fashion trends shifted from ultra-feminine to more traditionally masculine. Early on, it was unthinkable for women in offices to show up without wearing stockings, heels, skirts or dresses. Women began to wear suits similar to their male colleagues, adding shoulder pads to convey power and authority. The office worker’s outfit we have on display is a man’s suit from 1930, when white-collar workers were expected to wear suits, hats, and dress shoes to the office every day.

Today, advice for anyone interviewing for a job is often to dress for the job level above the one they’re applying for. What we choose to wear is a kind of language. We represent the organizations we work for as well as representing ourselves, and our clothes can say something about us.

Whether or not the more casual styles adopted during the pandemic stay with us, we’ll just have to see.

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Fives Ladies, Five Objects

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

In honor of women’s history month, I thought I’d shamelessly steal Smithsonian Magazine’s idea of sharing five objects from our collection associated with five local women.

1. Hannah Marshall’s Cape 

Hannah Marshall (1819-1890) of Horseheads worked as a Quaker preacher for decades. During the 1800s, Quakerism was one of the few Christian sects which encouraged the active participation of women as preachers and spiritual leaders. Hannah is one of the only local women known to have preached here during the 1800s. She never married and was widely respected in her community.

2. Fanny Brooks’ Blouse 

Fanny Brooks (1836-1906) was born into slavery in the south. She, her husband George, and their two children moved to Elmira in the late-1860s. They were part of a northward wave of migrants which tripled the city’s African American population following the Civil War. Fanny was an active member of the Douglas Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church and was a financial backer of the church they constructed in 1890. Although the building is gone, a stained glass window bearing her name remains. She and her husband had four children, the youngest of whom became the first African American to graduate from Cornell.

3. Dr. Rachel Gleason’s Medical Case 

Dr. Rachel Gleason (1820-1905) graduated from Central Medical College in Syracuse in 1851, just two years after the first woman to graduate from an American medical school. In 1852, she and her husband Dr. Silas Gleason opened the Gleason Water Cure on Elmira’s East Hill. They ran it together until 1898 when Silas’ health began to fail.  Rachel specialized in women’s health and published a book and several articles on the subject. She sponsored and offered training positions to other female physicians including her sister and daughter.

4. Esther Williamson Ballou’s Concert Program 

Esther Ballou (1915-1973) was a musician and composer. She began studying piano at age four and started composing music in her twenties. She attended Bennington College, Mills College, and Julliard, where she also later taught. She also taught at Catholic University and The American University, both in Washington, D.C. She composed dozens of pieces, including one which was performed at the White House in 1963.

5. Jennie Fassett’s Ball Gown

Jennie Fassett (1860-1939) was the wife of area Congressman J. Sloat Fassett. During the couple’s years in Washington, D.C., she advocated for stronger child labor laws. Locally, she helped establish the Women’s Federation for Social Services. She was a member of the New York Women’s Suffrage Party and the Board of Trustees of the Steele Memorial Library. She was also a major financial backer of Elmira College.

Fickle Fashion: The Bustle

by Erin Doane, Curator

Many fashion trends are loved by some and loathed by others. I’ve always been a big fan of the bustle; especially the outrageously large ones of the 1880s. The bustle, a pad or framework worn under a dress to support the back drapery of the skirt, became very popular in the early 1870s. It came back into fashion about ten years later and was at its most exaggerated around 1885. At that time, the perfect bustle was so prominent and substantial that a tea tray could be comfortably balanced upon it.

Fashion plate showing bustled dresses, mid-1880s, from Wikipedia Commons

 Until I began digging more into the social history of the bustle rather than just the fashion history, I did not realize how hated the garment was. It was the source of aggravation and embarrassment. Trolley conductors rejoiced when it began going out of style in the late 1880s. Fashion writers in the late 1890s and early 1900s, called the bustle “unsightly” and declared it unbecoming, ungraceful, and uncomfortable.

Portrait of an unidentified couple, 1880s

An incident dubbed “one of the most distressing of the year” took place in Elmira in 1888. The Elmira Telegram reported on a local lady living in the first ward who had a terrible experience with her bustle. The unnamed woman was the wife of a well-to-do gentleman. She was not obliged to do her own housework but she chose to because she was such a good homemaker. One day, she was in a hurry to run an errand and decided it was not worth getting all dressed up. She was already wearing a good calico wrapper so she put on her sacque coat and tied on her bustle underneath it to give it “the proper swing.” She returned home after a successful trip, took off the sacque, and went about her day’s work. When the milkman arrived at her door she greeted him then remained on her front stoop to enjoy a passing parade of young minstrels. She enjoyed the music but she wondered why many in the crowd look at her with so much interest. Upon going back inside, she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror. She was still wearing her bustle on the outside of her wrapper! “The lady will not be comforted,” the Telegram reported. “It is said that in her dreams she sees bustles of all sorts, shades and sizes floating around in space, and after each one is a crowd of grinning boys.”

Advertisement for Langtry bustles, for sale in Elmira at

Dey Brothers, Durland & Pratt, and B. Erlich & Son, 1888

TheElmira Telegram reported that conductors in Philadelphia were glad to see the bustle go as the trend began to fade in the late 1880s. Part of a conductor’s job was to efficiently fill the seats, making sure as many passengers as possible could ride. In the morning, that was a relatively easy task. Women who were up and on the trolley before 9:00am generally had work to do and were not wearing bustles. By mid-day, however, middle and upper class women came out to shop dressed in the latest, greatest fashions. One conductor observed that “some of the appendages [bustles] are so large that when eight or ten women are standing up not even a thin man can get a chance at a strap.”

Bustles in CCHS's collection, 1880s, left to right: padded bustle; bustle made

of three coiled metal springs with cotton cover; metal mesh bustle

One man who was not entirely pleased with the sudden decline of the bustle was a furniture maker who developed a new design for a sewing chair. An article in the Telegram in 1888 reported that the unnamed craftsman created a chair that extended out in the back to accommodate the bustle. He patented the design and built a stock of the chairs to display for sale just as the bustle went out of fashion. I searched for the ill-timed patent but, since the newspaper did not give the man’s name or any other specific information, I had no luck in finding it.

Cage crinoline/bustle combination, 1883

The bustle abruptly disappeared from fashion around 1890. An article in the Elmira Daily Gazette and Free Press on July 18, 1891 asked “What has become of the bustle?” The writer explained that “in their palmy days there were millions of the unsightly things worn by women in every station of life” but now the garment can no longer be found for sale. A Gazette article a year and a half later stated that “thousands of women protested that they would perish beside their bustles before giving them up but now the bustle is as extinct as the dodo or the plesiosaurus.”

Group portrait of ladies wearing dresses with bustles, 1880s

Rumors of the bustle’s return to fashion appeared throughout the 1890s and the early 1900s. The garment’s reappearance was not seen as a good thing. The Dress Gossip column in a 1906 issue of the Elmira Telegram addressed the newest round of rumors. “It does not seem credible that sensible women, women with an eye to her own personal appearance and grace of movement, would for one moment contemplate with any degree of patience an attempt to bring into vogue the unbecoming fashion of a past generation.” Nevertheless, the writer declared it was “just as well to prepare for the worst,” i.e. the return of the bustle to mainstream fashion, despite the opinion that “it always was an ungraceful, uncomfortable fashion, this bustle business, and partook considerably of the character of an absurdity.” Those who disliked the bustle so much were likely relieved that it never did return as a major fashion trend.