Maine Memory Network

Dress designed by M.M. Conlan, ca. 1910

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1910 Location: Boston Media: Velveteen

  view a full transcription

Lace two-piece summer dress, ca. 1914

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: circa 1914 Media: cotton, lace, mother of pearl

Fashionable Maine: early twentieth century clothing

Maine residents kept pace with the dramatic shift in women’s dress that occurred during the short number of years preceding and immediately following World War I. The long restrictive skirts, stiff collars, body molding corsets and formal behavior of earlier decades quickly faded away and the new straight, dropped waist easy-to-wear clothing gave mobility and freedom of movement in tune with the young independent women of the casual, post-war jazz age generation.

Rum, Riot, and Reform - Temperance Membership

"… will have the honor of leading this glorious reform." Neal Dow, Spring 1846 X The Youth's Temperance Visitor Rockland, January 1861…"

Historic Clothing Collection - 1910-1920 - Page 1 of 2

"… simplification was influenced by the dress reform movement’s revival of the short waist bodice, tubular silhouette (last popular in the early…"

Historic Clothing Collection - 1910-1920 - Page 2 of 2

"… provide further examples of this high waist reform style, which also reflects aspects of the influential French designer Paul Poiret’s work."