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Did Regency Women ACTUALLY Wear Wet Dresses??

Bernadette Banner

458,947 views

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⤠ TIMESTAMPS ⤟
0:00 - The Myth of Wet Gowns
2:00 - The Methods
2:55 - What is Muslin?
3:16 - Sponging
4:56 - Love Learning? (Ad Spot)
6:20 - Regency Wet T-Shirt Contest
9:00 - Dampened on the Body
9:52 - Dunking the Dress
13:32 - Going for a Walk
15:30 - Final Verdict
18:14 - Hilary's Book! (Plus Credits)
19:45 - fox friend

20 Comments

@KateVinee 10 months ago

As someone else has pointed out, what about the furniture? Imagine how distraught you'd be as a host to have butt-print water marks all over your silk upholstery 😬

@lenlaegrim 10 months ago

As someone who, in fashion history classes, was always told that the muslin was so finely crafted and thin you could wear a colored gown or petticoat under it and it would look as if the gown were wet because of how translucent it was, it's wild to me that people actually say the dresses were soaked in water in an age where people died from a cold

@PokhrajRoy. 10 months ago

Imagine several centuries into the future and someone spreads a myth that crop tops were actually normal sized tops but shrunk with the help of a washing machine.

@hairbrushed 10 months ago

When she asked, "is someone just walking around with a sponge, redampening everyone.?" All I could think was "Moisturize me! Moisturize me!" 😂

@savingplayer1613 9 months ago

*Regency lady who didn't have time to finish her laundry before the party *Oh, haven't you heard...

@kerwynbrat5771 10 months ago

I am very old, my great grandmother who was born in 1850 and lived to be 106 years old, told me that her mother told her that she would dampen her dress (very racy). She said they would wet the under dress (nothing but light linen/cotton it won't work on other fabrics) and hang it and wait until it was not dripping but still very damp and while letting it dry to that point they would pull it tight (no wrinkles). Then they would put them on with a dry overdress. The water would transfer to the overdress dampening it as well. She said they would only do it when her papa was out of town otherwise he would have really been mad. She said mom told her they would do it in the summer.

She also taught me to wear a long dress and how to sit and "inadvertently" hike my dress up a couple of inches to show off my "shapely" ankles!

@weeesssa 10 months ago

Also weren't houses much damper and draftier? Spending one day in a damp dress seems like a recipe for never getting warm again and dying of pneumonia.

@teddieryan2288 10 months ago

I’m a 85 y/o woman from Texas, USA. When I was a child, before air conditioning or even electric fans, my mother would dress us in thin Cotton lawn nightgowns on very hot days. She would put on a a cotton nightgown too. Then she would wet a large towel and wet our clothes. Then we would take a nap on the porch. Survival. This grew out of heat survival. The fact that male artists found this enticing or artistic notwithstanding.

@daleannharsh8295 10 months ago

Since there are many documented tirades against stays and corsets sue to perceived impact on women's health, you'd think you could find at least one ranting against women going about in wet/damp dresses for the sake of fashion.

@midneis 10 months ago

The fact that there so many layers of clothes UNDER the supposedly dampened dress destroys this myth.

In all the painting the dress is clinging to the female form as if it's the ONLY layer, I can imagine a nightgown looking like that, but the moment we are talking three layers of different fabrics (like it was in reality), the whole "clinging to the form and getting in the crack" disappears.

@javadkhusro 10 months ago

My guess is that they were not actually walking around as a dampsel in distress.

@taz2906 10 months ago

I wonder if this myth comes from the idea that Regency dress mimics the look of the wet drapery of ancient Greek statues.

@FashionFun-n3f 10 months ago (edited)

It's so interesting that they said the nature of the Indian muslin (edit) would naturally cling to the under fabric. With how thin the cotton is, I can see this clinging very much in wind and walking, sitting. It will just have the wet "look" I think. Someone back in the day probably said something like "the dress clings like they walked out of water" and the myth began...

@celizat118 10 months ago

The first Regency dress I made out of a beautiful muslin made it immediately obvious where the skirt dampening myth came from - the fabric just naturally clings. So funny that wetting the skirts actually removes that effect lol

@pyrpyr5Wolf 10 months ago

A couple of weeks ago, I wore a cotton lawn skirt I've hand sewn on a windy day and it looked exactly like it was wet for how much it clung to me so I can 100% see someone in the period describing the muslin gowns like that. And tbh here in England some people must have been caught out in the rain with their gowns getting soaked😅

@EmilyGOODEN0UGH 10 months ago (edited)

As someone who lives in a hot area and who has actually WORN damp clothes intentionally to cool off: the dip method - you only dip and wring the top third of the garment, the water wicks down a bit and is not drippy, but is enough to cool your back and shoulders. The sponge method is done with a COTTON washrag/flannel well squeezed and briskly rubbed while you wear it. The sponge method is actually a good way to "emergency iron" a few wrinkles out of a cotton shirt as you are running out the door. So it might have happened in the June to August part of the season?

@josephkarl2061 10 months ago (edited)

“Bernadette Banner And The Half Damp Gown” sounds like the beginning of a bestselling series of novels 😜🤣

Edit: 1k likes and the most enjoyable comment thread I think I’ve ever started! Thanks to everyone who left a comment here. I’ve really enjoyed what people have posted 👌🙂

Also, huge thanks to Bernadette for creating this great community that got us here. In so many ways you make the world a better place ❤️😎

@hannahl8905 10 months ago

I once walked to the bus stop wearing a long cotton skirt, and got caught in a surprise torrential downpour - it was like the sky opened up over me and said "screw you in particular". My clothes all got so wet and cold, my skirt in particular was drippy and clingy in all the wrong ways and absolutely disgusting and so uncomfortable to wear, it took so long to dry, and I caught cold afterwards. So my first thought when I read the video title was "Just... why???????", and hats off to Bernadette for actually going outside in a wet dress, I hope you didn't get sick from it

@pierrotcrow 10 months ago

My main takeaway from this video (which is my takeaway pretty much any time i see Indian muslin) is that Indian muslin is one of the prettiest fabrics ever made. About 3 years ago there was an exhibition that explored how traditional Asian fiber craft influenced and shaped the textile and garment industry in the West at the Art Institute of Chicago that featured an Indian muslin Regency gown, and I must have spent 10 minutes just staring at it in awe.

@galndixie 8 months ago

A college history major told me that until the early 1900's people never washed their hair, because shampoo hadn't been invented yet. Same student also said that nobody ever took a bath, because they didn't have bathrooms in those days. And she got this information from her college history professor. I looked at her and said "So, ask your professor, if nobody ever bathed or washed, how it is that we have antique stores and museums loaded with historic wash basins, water pitchers, and bathing tubs from the medieval ages to the more recent past."