Costume Moment – Dress and Petticoat

Dress and petticoat worn by Abigail Robbins, Lexington, Mass. MFA, Boston, 99.664.29a-b.

This trained gown and petticoat combination, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has always appealed to me. The rustle of the light silk and the drawstring pulling the fullness against the body in front, paired with its soft color made me think this would have been a dream to wear after the corsetry of earlier decades. Abigail Robbins (1759-1850), the wearer of this ensemble, lived until just before the era of the hoop, so she would have met corsets again. I dressed the mannequin for this photograph; click here to peruse the online record for this ensemble.

About Becky Fifield

Starting her museum career at age 13, Becky Fifield is a museum collections manager at a New York City organization. She is the Chair for Alliance for Response NYC and Vice Chair for the American Institute for Conservation's Collections Care Network. There's a bit of pun in the title The Still Room, delineating a quiet space brimming with the ingredients of memory, where consideration, analysis, and wordcraft can take place. Ms. Fifield’s interests include museum practice, dress history, historic preservation, transit, social and women’s history, food, current events, geneaology, roadtrips, and considerations on general sense of place. Becky and her husband, Dr. V, live in New York City.