PORTLAND, Maine — If you've ever wanted to step back in time, look no further than the Maine Historical Society's new exhibit, Northern Threads: Two Centuries of Dress.
Part of the historical society's 200th anniversary celebration, the exhibit features collections dating as far back as 1780 and includes everything from mourning jewelry to dresses to civil war underwear.
"We were really excited to show an aspect of our collections that I don't think a lot of people knew we had and really wasn't very accessible," said Jamie Rice, deputy director of Maine Historical Society. "So, that's what this exhibition is sort of showing, drawing attention to specialties of ours, whether it's 1830s dress or Civil War garments or upcycling old fabric, making new dresses from old things. Those are different themes in our collection."
Northern Threads is the first of two exhibits and features clothing from 1780 to about 1889. The second exhibit will debut this summer and will feature clothing from 1890 to 1980. Rice said one of the most eye-catching displays once belonged to Captain Granville Sparrow. Sparrow was from what was then Deering but is now known as Portland, and served in the 17th Maine Infantry Regiment and the Red Diamond Regiment. Rice said Sparrow was keen on collecting artifacts from the war. The display includes wool underwear from the Civil War era and the captain's uniform coat.
"What's really great, I think, about this show is that it's a real geographic diversity, so a lot of the garments are from throughout Maine," Rice said. "[We're] really trying to demonstrate that people in historic Maine were really interested in fashion, whether it's urban or rural."
So, how did people access fashion? How did they get information about what was trending? Through dolls.
The exhibit features a collection of small dolls decked out in 19th-century fashion. Rice said people would share them with others to show how people were dressing and the latest fashions. Believe it or not, Maine was actually very cosmopolitan back in the day.
"Especially in the 19th century with the shipping industry," Rice said. "There are great clothes in here from Eastport. Eastport was a huge, bustling seaport. You really had a lot of access to European fashion, a lot of English fashions, a lot of French fashions because of the the maritime community."
Also part of the exhibit is the Silhouettes in Sequence collection. It shows how the shape of women's dresses evolved. The collection also includes a vest worn by Portland's first postmaster.
"Our collection is made up of garments that were made in Maine or worn in Maine or have some sort of Maine association," he said.
One of the most extravagant pieces in the collection belonged to Mary King Scrimgeour. She moved to Lewiston from Ontario in the 1870s with her husband who took a job at the Bates Mill as the head engineer.
"She was an inventor," Rice said. "She invented a radiator attachment. She had a patent for that. Both her and her husband were inventors, and she is very stylish. We have a large collection of her clothing."
One of the oldest pieces of clothing in the collection belonged to a child from North Yarmouth. It's a baby's dress and dates back to 1785.
"She was the youngest of 13 children, so they didn't need to pass it down any more," Rice said. "That's how it survived."
There is also an entire section dedicated to the bustle, which was an iconic look in the late 19th century. It shows what women wore under their dresses to get the right look.
"People could move a lot easier despite it being a giant dress," Rice said. "You could move a lot easier in this now because your legs could move rather than all of that fabric."
The entire exhibit is also available virtually through the Maine Memory Network.
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