This printed pink silk apron has scalloped edging and two slit pockets. The ornamented pockets also have multi-colored tassels; the elaborate pocket was quite common for this time. The apron was actually first a scarf and then adapted. This apron would have been worn by a woman in the upper middle class who did not want to appear too flashy, yet wanted to show off her unique style. The top of the apron is also quite small, suggesting that the woman who wore it had a tiny waist (or a very tight corset) and this apron would have only made her waist look smaller.

Keeping up proper appearances and selecting in the nineteenth century were of the utmost importance, as Colette explains through Claudine in Claudine at School: “I shall put on my blue skirt, with the pleated blouse that shows off my figure, and my apron. Not the big black apron I wear on weekdays with the close-fitting bib (though it’s quite becoming), but the pretty little pale blue embroidered one I wear at home on Sundays.” Claudine decided between numerous elegant aprons she owned to ensure that she wore the most “becoming” one to impress her schoolmates. Claudine’s friend, by wearing the poorly chosen apron, a “red, embroidered in white” she was actually made to “look paler than ever.”

Though it is unclear whether or not the wearer of the Printed Silk Apron looked “paler than ever,” it is clear that pairing the correct apron with the correct garment was an essential part of the early nineteenth century women’s and girl’s day.

 

Colette. “Claudine Goes to School,” in The Complete Claudine, 1-206. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976.

Buck, Anne M. Victorian Costume. New York: Universe Books, 1961, 145.

Printed Silk Apron, Historic Clothing Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 2011.8.230.