Maternity Fashions in History
In 2020, maternity clothing is a massive business, with most pregnant people choosing to keep up with the main fashion trends, meaning fashionable maternity wear is ever-changing. When you consider that a pregnant person is constantly buying new clothes to accommodate their growing bump...it’s an expensive business! However, having an entire fashion market dedicated to pregnancy is perhaps more modern than we think. In history, things were a tad bit different.
Throughout history, clothing has been an expensive commodity, with most of the population (the aristocracy have always been a tiny fraction of the actual population) having only a few outfits, with which they would cycle. No 1730s ‘commoner’ would be buying new clothes every few months of their pregnancy, there was simply no money for that. Oh, and they would also be pregnant a lot with infancy death rates being so high. But, surely you can’t wear the exact same clothes through pregnancy as you would when not pregnant? Well, yes and no. Let me explain.
Since the very early medieval period in Europe, the regular dress of all classes was incredibly adaptable to pregnancy. Many garments had laced bodices, allowing for the dress to be loosened due to pregnancy, or just general weight gain. Many dresses could also be laced from the side, allowing even more room for growth. And when your pregnancy ended, you would wear the same dress and just lace it up fully once more.
But this was a time with no stays or boned bodices, so what happened when these more ‘restrictive’ garments came into popularity in the 16th century? Well, pretty much the exact same thing. Firstly, one must understand that stays and corsets only cause damage when worn incorrectly or tightlaced (a very rare phenomenon in the 19th century), and the only thing moving your organs around is well...being pregnant. You would take your pair of bodies or stays and simply keep tying them looser and looser as the pregnancy progressed, making sure you still kept bust and back support without squishing the baby. In the 18th century, specific maternity stays came into being. These are your usual stays but with extra lacing on the side panels to make it easier to wear with a growing belly. Of course, at home, one would rid themselves of any clothing that was uncomfortable during pregnancy and lounge around in a wrapping gown, which is basically just a dressing gown.
The regency era, with its fashion for high waistlines, was perhaps the greatest fashion period for pregnancy. Stays were relatively short, not getting in the way of the bump much, and flowing skirts allowed the bump to grow freely. And a high bust is pretty useful for breastfeeding! But, this didn’t last long, by the 1830s the waistline was dropping to its more natural state and clothes were starting to be closed in the back more frequently. The joy of the past, especially the 18th century, was that most items of clothing closed in the front, allowing for the gowns to be closed further apart as the pregnancy progressed. Clothing was often made with growth in mind so that the garment could be worn with fluctuating weight, but this came handy in pregnancy. Some garments were gathered at the shoulders with a drawstring at the waist which could be let out when necessary. As the 19th century drew to a close and many more people found themselves part of the middle class with spare money for indulgement, the maternity wear business truly began. In the early 1900s, the first commercial ready-to-wear maternity clothes began being sold in the US by Lane Bryant Inc., selling shirtwaists with adjustable drawstring waists and more. As the century progressed more and more brands began selling purely maternity wear. Like the brand Page Boy who were known for selling wrap around skirts and by the 1930s, they were incredibly popular.
In western history, being pregnant was something that one didn’t discuss, it would be acknowledged, but many didn’t even use the word pregnant, instead opting for phrases like ‘with child’. It makes sense that as we moved into the 20th century, and speaking about pregnancy slowly became more acceptable in society that clothing specifically designed with pregnancy in mind became more popular. Gone were the days of wearing the same dress for twenty years even while being pregnant a good seven times! But, I do think there is something we can take from looking back at maternity fashion in history. Nowadays we are so consumed by new fashion trends and constantly buying new outfits that we rarely wear the same thing for more than two years, but we really do not need to. It is not necessary.
