Glamour and grieving: How the Victorians dressed for death | CNN

Courtesy National Media Museum

During the Victorian era, mourning was not taken lightly. After the death of her husband, Albert, prince consort in 1861, Queen Victoria wore nothing but regal mourning dress until the end of her life.

Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire, the most recent exhibition from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, showcases the opulent mourning dress from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, also went into mourning after the death of her father and again in 1914 following the death of her husband.

Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Getty Images

Members of the aristocracy and upper classes also wore mourning dress following the death of a royal. In 1910, attendees wore black to Royal Ascot in tribute to Edward VII, who had died just before the races.

Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Thomas J. Watson Library, Gift of Mrs. John Barry Ryan

In concept, mourning dress was supposed to be an outward display of inner grief, as depicted in this Charles Dana Gibson illustration from 1900.

Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Thomas J. Watson Library, Gift of Mrs. John Barry Ryan

Mourning attire was also a social obligation. Choosing not to wear black or dress modestly while grieving was considered vastly inappropriate.

"The exhibition really became a look at how high fashion standards were really absorbed into the attire of mourning," explains Jessica Regan, assistant curator for the exhibition. "We wanted to maintain an emphasis on the idea of this rapidly changing silhouette during this period."

Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Costume Institute/The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library/Gift of Woodman Thomson

Fashion magazines, which started to gain prominence in the mid-19th century, gave the middle class a closer look at the mourning etiquette and dress of the upper class, which they would try to imitate.

"Mourning fashions typically corresponded to the prevailing silhouette of the day, and followed the general trends in fashionable dress," Regan says. This dress, dated 1902-05, reflects the preference for lighter, airier fabrics at the time.

Almost all of the garments featured in the exhibition are black, understandably. "Black was fairly well established as the color of mourning by the late Middle Ages in Europe."

"Retailers of mourning goods often advertised the quality of their black fabrics," Regan adds. "They offered that their black goods were never dyed over other colors."

"As you entered the later stages of mourning, there was an increasing introduction of colors. First white, then shades of gray and mauve."

"From around the 1840s, retailers specializing in mourning goods developed to fill consumer demand, and so they offered all of the textiles and accessories that one might need for a period of mourning."

Mourning accessories, like this silk parasol, projected the same luxuriousness as the gowns.

Black hats and fine veils (like 1915 piece from Henri Bendel) were popular on both sides of the Atlantic.

Story highlights

New exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art looks at tradition of mourning dress

During Victorian era, upper and middle class adhered to strict mourning traditions

Mourning fashions and accessories were a significant business until the start of WWI

Industrialization of textile production and rise of fashion magazines helped market grow

CNN —

Today, mourning a death in the family often means donning the most formal black outfit in one’s closet for one solemn afternoon. But 150 years ago, it was a reason to stash away one’s current best and purchase a whole new grief-appropriate wardrobe.

During the Victoria era, mourning rivaled weddings in terms of pomp, etiquette and fashion – a theme explored at the latest exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire focuses on the boom years of the mourning industry, from 1815 to 1915, when the rich and middle class alike paid through the nose to look properly anguished and fashion magazines devoted pages to the most coveted fashions for the grieving style plate.

“It’s an intersection of fashion with what can be a very personal projection of grief,” explains Jessica Regan, assistant curator of the exhibition.

Grieving, Victorian style

Throughout the West’s upper classes, mourning was not to be taken lightly. Whereas men were largely allowed to get on with their lives, for women, mourning was a job in itself. A widow could be expected to visually grieve for more than two years (although the loss of a child or parents only required one.)

The most prominent part of this display was mourning dress, which was meant to be a visible manifestation of grief. A 1863 diary entry from a Tennessee teenager named Nannie Haskins, which will be projected at the exhibition, makes the correlation plain: “What do I care whether it becomes me or not? I don’t wear black because it becomes me. … I wear mourning because it corresponds with my feelings.”

But this didn’t stop mourners from dressing fashionably. While the lower classes would often dye their existing garments black in response to the death of a loved one, the upper classes – and later middle classes – bought new wardrobes of black gowns, parasols, bonnets and brooches.

Expensive mourning crepe, a stiff crinkled silk gauze with a matte finish, became the “iconic fabric of bereavement,” according to Regan. The discerning sought out unfading black textiles, since true black – black that wouldn’t fade to brown or blue – was as much a display of personal wealth as it was of grief.

The most famous example of this dedication to mourning dress was the so-called Black Ascot of 1910. When Edward VII died a few days before the horse races, the British aristocracy attended in elegant black regalia (impressive hats included) that reflected the top trends of the time.

“(Mourning dress) was a way of sharing one’s grief with the community, (but) it certainly was also a display of economic and social status.”

Mourning goes mainstream

Like most industries, the mourning business was invigorated by the industrial revolution, which made textile production faster and cheaper. This made it possible and profitable to bring specialized mourning fabrics, once restricted to the very wealthy, to the middle class.

“The industrialization of textiles became affordable to a much broader segment of society,” says Regan. “Retailers of mourning goods developed on a much grander scale and target middle-class consumers taking advantage of these readily available textiles.”

The industry was also further propelled by the birth of the fashion magazine, which brought both high fashion and upper class sensibilities to the attention of the working class consumers.

“This gave a broad segment a clear view of what standards of mourning attire were through fashion illustrations and detailed descriptions,” Regan says.

The death of funereal fashion

But mourning traditions started to decline soon after their peak. By the early 20th century, dress codes and rigid social standards were losing their grip on society, and as the world was shaken by World War I, excessive displays of grief began to be seen as both both insensitive and gauche.

“The elaborate traditions of mourning were really reconsidered in the face of great loss of life,” Regan explains. “Elaborate mourning dress came to be seen as putting more attention on the mourner and a showy display, rather than focusing on the loss of the deceased.”

The changing role of women also led to mourning’s demise. As women became involved with the war effort and joined the work force outside of the home, the periods of seclusion expected in Victorian society were no longer compatible with their lives.

This tradition continued for a few more decades before finally giving way to the looser practices of today. Black is still worn (as it has been since the Middle Ages), but grief has become a much more personal experience, rather than a social obligation.

“The standards have become much looser in favor of individual judgment,” Regan says.

Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire runs from October 21 to February 1 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.