FORSYTH, Ill. (AP) – Women gliding down the wedding aisle 111 years ago could seek material assistance if their bodies had been jilted by capricious genetics.
Fashion requirements around 1902 suggested the bride’s radiance would be enhanced by a full bosom and that, of course, posed a problem if you didn’t happen to have one. The haute couture answer, according to vintage clothing expert Nancy Torgerson, was “bust ruffles.”
Torgerson collects antique clothing, and her Forsyth home is bedecked with fashion statements your great-great-great-grandmother would have been intimately familiar with.
“Bust ruffles were a fashionable feature,” says Torgerson, 71, lifting and dropping some on a silk wedding dress to demonstrate how the ruffles give the illusion of amplitude. “It was called pigeon breasted, which I think is ugly, but at the time it was attractive to them.”
Perhaps nothing shows us as whom we were quite so intimately as the glad rags we used to wear. Torgerson has collected antique clothing, mostly women’s, for more than 20 years. A talented seamstress, she started collecting after being asked to make vintage clothing for costumed historical re-enactors. She began prowling antique stores and other emporiums, hunting the genuine article to “make sure I was doing it right” and fell into collecting as easy as slipping into something comfortable.
Her husband, Dick, would accompany her on frequent fabric fishing expeditions and got swept up in the hustle and bustle of it all. So much so, he now collects antique sewing machines.
“I was looking for something to collect. I like anything mechanical, and there were all these old sewing machines,” says Torgerson, 73, who regularly dresses up himself to play a 19th-century Illinois governor who actually lived in Decatur, Richard J. Oglesby, a man to whom he bears a remarkable resemblance. But unlike Oglesby, Torgerson now has dominion over several dozen venerable sewing machines. “And I think the oldest machine I have is from 1860,” he adds.
All these ye olde Singers et al survived the journey down through the years because they were expensive and treasured objects. Nancy Torgerson says wedding dresses frequently persist in the fabric of time because they, too, were precious things. “I didn’t start out to collect wedding dresses, but then I found that is what people saved,” she explains. “And they saved them because they were special.”
You can get a taste of what the preserved nuptial styles of yesteryear look like when Torgerson gives a presentation on wedding dresses and accessories from the 19th and early 20th centuries Jan. 27 at Rock Springs Nature Center in Decatur. She’ll have plenty of samples for the audience to look at, including several flashy numbers going back as far as 1841 that don’t faintly resemble the fluffy white and impractical creations that adorn 21st-century brides.
For a start, many old dresses are not white but in hues ranging from bronze to a brownish red. One silk 1859 number is done in brown and black silk stripes with some added flash coming from accents executed in black velvet. Torgerson points out that the version of the 1859 dress we’re feasting our eyes on now has a skirt altered to reflect the hot fashion trends of the 1870s, and thereby hangs a tale: These bridal gowns were reusable, designed to be available for parties, events and other special occasions. Nobody back then wanted to spend a fortune in time and money making a dress you could only wear once, big-bosomed or otherwise.
“A dress like this would have been a very serious investment,” she says. “So wear it once and put it away like we do today? No, no, no.”
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