7/27/2019 High Fashion and Local Flavor The Piscataqua Decorative Arts Society Lecture Series

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 High Fashion and Local Flavor 

On September 24th, Astrida Schaeffer, costume historian and founder ofSchaeffer Arts, will give a lecture “High Fashion, Local Flavor: 19th CenturyWomen’s Social Positioning Through Dress in Seacoast, New Hampshire.” ThePiscataqua Decorative Arts Society is holding this lecture at the Stoodley’sTavern on Hancock Street across from the Tyco Center at Strawbery Banke

Museum in Portsmouth, NH. The lecture starts at 5:30pm, preceded byrefreshments at 5pm. The cost to the general public is $10.00, while members arefree.

Clothes have been an emblem for real and aspired-to social status for as long aspeople have worn them, but among those with few means the ability to usefashion to shape perception was fairly limited until the Industrial Revolution. Anumber of factors came together in the late 19th century that put the power of

7/27/2019 High Fashion and Local Flavor The Piscataqua Decorative Arts Society Lecture Series

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self-presentation squarely in the hands of women as never before. Access to newtechnologies, current information and the dissemination of new skills gavewomen all they needed to turn dress into social statement. The 1879s homemadedress of Celestia Freeman, a mill overseer’s wife from Somersworth, NH is thecenterpiece of this exploration of how a woman could make the clothes that

could “make the woman.” Freeman’s dress was recently featured in anexhibition drawing on the Irma Bowen Textile Collection at the University ofNew Hampshire.

Astrida Schaeffer has been making reproduction historical clothing for 27 years.Her master’s degree in History came through researching over fifty survivingFederal period dresses for her thesis topic at UNH. In the fall of 1999 she beganwork on UNH’s textile collection and, in the process of selecting garments for anexhibition Schaeffer participated in a mannequin workshop at the Textile HistoryConservation Center in the American Textile History Museum in Lowell,

Massachusetts. Besides her talent as seamstress, researcher, guest curator andassistant director of the UNH Museum of Art (2001-2010), Astrida is an authorand her book “Embellishment: Constructing Victorian Details”, based on theUNH Museum Collection, will be available.

The Piscataqua Decorative Arts Society is a non-profit organization with amission to promote original historical research resulting in publication. Theprimary focus is on greater Piscataqua region of New Hampshire and Mainewith connecting links to Massachusetts and beyond. For more information, checkthe web site (www.pdasociety.org) 

7/27/2019 High Fashion and Local Flavor The Piscataqua Decorative Arts Society Lecture Series

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