Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday

Saturday, March 24, 2018

It’s the Dress......


It may be a wedding dress but I have no proof.  I do know that it is a dress that is duplicate of my Grandmother Brooks’s wedding dress.  The layers of the ribbons allowed the woman to shorten it to make be a custom fit. They could hem them up into the inside or the could cut it. The photo was taken in the late1800’s and was from a set of family albums.



I have two albums from a house that my father demolished in order to build an new home. The photos from the family have given me clues that the house was built in the late 1800’s.  The town was Osceola, Iowa established in 1870s or earlier. From the photos I have found a dominate name of Webster in which there are many of the family buried in the town cemetery.

I have a photo of this in a rectangular format but can not pull it from my Sepia Saturday posts. This is my Grandmother Mable Zella Wheeler who married Leroy Brown in July of 1913. She became my Grandma Brown. Leroy Brown died in 1937 and a few years later my Grandmother remarried a widower and became Mrs. Oscar Brooks.



My Grandma had a photographer help her to get that ribboned hat to look good. I still have the ribbon hat and wedding dress which I am planning to give to a younger first cousin soon.

Other photos from the album gave me images of dresses but not necessarily wedding dresses. The style of dress does make it look to be a newer styled dress with the drapery on the skirt.

It is definitely not a wedding dress but is at the photo studio with all of there street corner props.  Probably this is more of the early 1900s. Things are more complicated with this dress than the original ribbon dress that I started out with at the top photo. The diamond shapes and patterns at the bottom of the double ruffled makes it more complicated in design. In the photo albums I did notice that the studios have lots of combinations of props in which for them to take photos.  I have a couple that have a stairway included.




The last photo I share today is one of a couple standing on the fake street corner. The dark colored dresses were popular but the guy even has his top coat on along with his hat. The drapery on her dress is a little bit more complicated as the style developed.

Visit others who are following this same theme today of Sepia Saturday  by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by today.

5 comments:

L. D. said...

I haven’t blogged for a while on this site. It felt like I was turning in late homework. I was a lot rusty in the writings but it would help if I write a day or two before the due date.

Molly's Canopy said...

Interesting selection of dresses. And how fortunate you are to have the ribbon hat and wedding dress to pass on to family!

Barbara Rogers said...

Such lovely dresses...and having one that could be used over again was always a good family idea, though young brides weren't thinking along those lines, their mothers were! I am not sure when the "tradition" began of wearing white gowns for weddings, for certainly a lot of women didn't.

La Nightingail said...

The dress in your first and third pictures appears to be the same dress with the exception, in the framed picture, of the bodice being covered with a lacy cape. Also, the two women's facial feature look like they might be related? The dress with its skirt tucks reminds me of today's ladies' slips which are made for the very purpose of trimming them to the needed length.

Sr Crystal Mary Lindsey said...

Those dresses were all complicated and its truly incredible what they were sewn by hand. The young bride in the top photo looks so young and sweet.
When you look at these you realise how short time is. We come and we go, with only the photos as memories as to who we were.
Thank you Larry.