During the Victorian era, mourning was not taken lightly. After the death of her husband, Albert, prince consort in 1861, Queen Victoria wore nothing but regal mourning dress until the end of her life.
Courtesy National Media Museum
Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning —
Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire, the most recent exhibition from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, showcases the opulent mourning dress from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, also went into mourning after the death of her father and again in 1914 following the death of her husband.
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Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning —
Members of the aristocracy and upper classes also wore mourning dress following the death of a royal. In 1910, attendees wore black to Royal Ascot in tribute to Edward VII, who had died just before the races.
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Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning —
In concept, mourning dress was supposed to be an outward display of inner grief, as depicted in this Charles Dana Gibson illustration from 1900.
Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Thomas J. Watson Library, Gift of Mrs. John Barry Ryan
Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning —
Mourning attire was also a social obligation. Choosing not to wear black or dress modestly while grieving was considered vastly inappropriate.
Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Thomas J. Watson Library, Gift of Mrs. John Barry Ryan
Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning —
"The exhibition really became a look at how high fashion standards were really absorbed into the attire of mourning," explains Jessica Regan, assistant curator for the exhibition. "We wanted to maintain an emphasis on the idea of this rapidly changing silhouette during this period."
Fashion magazines, which started to gain prominence in the mid-19th century, gave the middle class a closer look at the mourning etiquette and dress of the upper class, which they would try to imitate.
Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Costume Institute/The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library/Gift of Woodman Thomson
Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning —
"Mourning fashions typically corresponded to the prevailing silhouette of the day, and followed the general trends in fashionable dress," Regan says. This dress, dated 1902-05, reflects the preference for lighter, airier fabrics at the time.
Almost all of the garments featured in the exhibition are black, understandably. "Black was fairly well established as the color of mourning by the late Middle Ages in Europe."
"Retailers of mourning goods often advertised the quality of their black fabrics," Regan adds. "They offered that their black goods were never dyed over other colors."
"From around the 1840s, retailers specializing in mourning goods developed to fill consumer demand, and so they offered all of the textiles and accessories that one might need for a period of mourning."
