Friday, June 13, 2003

Vintage June Brides

Ah, June ... moon, croon, swoon – all those spoony, Juney words remind us of the tradition of the June bride. These are timely thoughts for anyone within visiting distance of Copshaholm, the historic Oliver Mansion in downtown South Bend, where that glorious old home is host to a display of vintage bridal gowns that will last through the end of August.

Because the gowns are not simply set out as museum pieces but instead are displayed on mannequins as clever tableaux in the impressively appointed mansion rooms, we’re invited to imagine the real people who wore these impossibly pleated, betassled, and ruffled costumes – people whose names are woven into the ribbon of South Bend life, like Mrs. Stanley Clark, Mrs. Studebaker, Mrs. Muessel and, of course, the mistress of the house, Mrs. Oliver.

Our large, chatty tour group was struck by the teensiness of most of the gowns in those slim days before Rally burgers and chocolate brownie frappuccinos. We exclaimed over the doll-like beaded satin shoes and then glanced at our own spreading feet in Birkenstocks and chunky slides. Reviews of the gowns were hilariously mixed among our group. A pair of husbands chuckled over the vocabulary of antique fashion: “pouter-pigeon” padded bodices and “leg-o-mutton” sleeves; “I’m starting to get hungry,” one quipped. While some folks sighed over the intricate lace panels, appliqué and beading, another whispered, “Those women didn’t have no taste – these dresses look like curtains, with all them dingle-balls!” A teenager Valley-whined to her sister, “How could they wear something so uncomfortable?” while she tugged at her own strapless top and dangerously dipping hip-huggers.

As fashion always does, these gowns trace the story of women’s history between the 1880s and the 1930s, and you can see waistlines cinched to the fainting point and ankles hobbled in the years before women got the right to vote. Then everything busts loose in the enfranchised, fringed 1920s, particularly in a red and black party number with beaded wild horses racing across the flat bosom. Hemlines rise and fall, breasts are displayed or not, and the brides wear headpieces that make them look like queens, or French maids, or madonnas. Such is the story of American womanhood, then and now.

The title of the show, “Veiled Illusion,” plays on bridal veils made of illusion lace, but also, to me, hints at something more ambivalent. While wandering the mansion’s rooms, I kept thinking of the truism that British novels usually conclude with marriages, while French novels begin with them. We all know that weddings, for all their pomp and circumstance, sometimes mark the beginning of complicated times. Looking at the fragile tissue of some of these splendid old gowns, you wonder what the lives of these affluent women were really like.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times, perhaps in their recent spirit of full-disclosure to the point of over-sharing, lifted the illusion veil from the rich and famous weddings they profile in each Sunday’s “Style” section. Their 5-year follow-ups on several of these high-profile marriages reveal the not-so-startling truth that Beautiful People have bad and good partnerships in the same proportion as the rest of us. It turns out that what elders sternly told me would be the “hard work of marriage” is harder work for some than for others, for a multitude of reasons. Metaphors for what keeps a partnership aloft float through every wedding ceremony, but my favorite image is a needlepoint wall-hanging given to friends when they married, with the resigned, midwestern 19th-century image of yoked oxen and the finely stitched saying: “When two fond hearts in one unite/The yoke is easy and the burden light.”

Burdens come in many forms, however, and at the exhibit I found myself dwelling on the lives of the women who wrought these amazing gowns with a kind of detailed domestic labor that has now disappeared from most social classes. While the necessary drudgery of household maintenance was designed to be invisible in the 19th century, the folks at the Northern Indiana Center for History do not let visitors forget that the burden of making weddings beautiful – from stitching tiny beads on gowns to hauling silver trays of food from floor to floor – was bourne by real people, who also had a place in the household, as well as in this factory-workers’ town. Our tour group enjoyed the final mannequin we saw, dressed in a cook’s uniform and passed out gratefully in an easy chair, a leftover bottle of champagne empty beside her.

When our tour finished, it was too early in the afternoon for champagne (though it sounded tempting). So, I did what any self-respecting woman would do after two hours of looking at beautiful dresses that were way too small; I hauled myself down West Washington Street to the Chocolate Café for a big dessert, to enjoy another kind of spooning that rhymes just as deliciously with June.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on June 13, 2003
Customs & Rituals • Women & Men • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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