Mimicking the Mode: The Fashionable Dress of Working-Class San Franciscans, 1880–95

In the late nineteenth century, the fashionable garments of women in the United States drew inspiration from the abundance of contemporary sources available to them, ranging from fashion plates in women’s periodicals to sewing patterns and ready-to-wear clothing. As Joan Severa details in her seminal book Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840–1900 (1995), studio photographs from the time demonstrate precisely how high fashion was reinterpreted by working-class Americans in terms of materials, fit, and wear to suit their particular needs and lifestyles. One portrait album recently discovered at an estate sale illustrates Severa’s thesis, and this article offers a close examination of the album in tandem with contemporary fashion coverage in newspapers and elsewhere, social history, and demographics specific to working-class San Francisco. A focused regional case study, it offers insight into dress codes at a particular place and time that have to date been little studied by fashion scholars.