Wired feathery pieces for hair or hat?

[mart]

The short one is a lapel or breast pin !! Had a tiny cap that screwed on the end to hold it in place !!  Others are hatpins !! Sold a few of the plain ones like yours,,, don`t bring but couple of dollars each !!  Now the fancy types are pretty pricey but everyday items,,,not too good !!

Please do continue the thread !!  We would love to see what you find !!

[wendy177]

Great would love to see what you find keep the thread going!!! Here are some photos of my hat pins!!!! love them

[snowflake]

Thanks, I'm glad to show them. I've been bursting to show these little things but there is no one I know interested in it. I just love that they have history.
I didn't think that little one was a hat pin after seeing the threading.

My goodness, Wendy! Those hat pins are stunning! Sometimes I wish we could dress like that everyday. I go through the Victorian Trading Co. Magazine/site and would love to wear some of those outfits!

[Oceans64]

Love that stand....  What a great way to show off those hatpins!! 

[talesofthesevenseas]

By all means, post photos! I love this kind of thing.

Snowflake, getting to wear the clothes is one of the main reasons I got involved with historic reenacting. I do get to wear things like bustle dresses and hoop skirts, corsets and crinolines and it is so much fun, especially when people want to take their picture with you or little girls look at you as if you are a fairy princess! If you like this kind of think you might think about joining a local reenactment group!

[snowflake]

That would be fun but there is nothing like that close by. We do have an historical society though. A family member used to be a part of it before she passed. They do dress up on various occasions throughout the year. My occupation is not a certain day/time schedule type work, so joining things can sometimes be a problem. Down the road it would be something I would look into though. I think I would enjoy it.

You must have a blast doing that! You really wear the corsets? Ouch...

[talesofthesevenseas]

Yes, I do wear the corsets, but they are not too bad if they are properly fitted by a person who knows what they are doing, and as long as you're in good health. Admittedly I tried to wear one while I was going through chemotherapy (for breast cancer but I'm fine now) and nearly fainted in my friend's living room. She had to get me out quick! But now that I am well and strong I can wear them all day long with no problems at all.

Here's the dress where the corseting is most obvious:

[snowflake]

That is a fabulous outfit. I just can't ever imagine wearing a corset being anything but torture. Sure looks great though. Sorry to hear that you had cancer but glad that you have beaten it! 

[talesofthesevenseas]

I should add that Victorian ladies were smaller than me, and since they worked on training their waists from the time they were little girls, they could get them really tiny. There is one lady, Kathy Jung who has done this and she is in the Guiness Book of Records with the smallest waist proportionately. She wears corsets full time and even sleeps in them. The only time they are off is to take a shower. Here she is. I don't go to this extreme obviously, but this is a good example of what Victorian ladies did!

[Oceans64]

Well that explains something that has stuck with me since reading the Little House on the Prairie books!!  In one story Ma tells the girls how before they got married, Pa could encircle her waist with his hands. I always figured he had HUGE hands!!!!  LOL

[talesofthesevenseas]

That explains it alright! What you're seeing in Kathy Jungs case is all the organs repositioned above or below the waist so that all that is left there is pretty much just her spine. You do shift your guts about even at the level that I do my corsets and you can fill them drop back into place when you take it off at the end of the day, which is a bit weird feeling!

I don't think that all Victorian women took it to Kathy Jung's level either. Undoubtably some did, but I have my great-great-grandmother's dress from 1890 when she was in her forties and had had two children. The waist measures 24" and she was about 5'-6" or 5'-7". I'm 5'-10" and I am comfortable cinched in to 29", but I can take off another inch if I want to really cinch in tight and she was definitely smaller in stature than I am, by the size of the dress.

I have read that the reason people were generally smaller than we are may have been due to a combination of corseting (resulting in lower birth weights) and the fact that we now have prenatal vitamins. People believed that women were frail and needed the support of corsets.

I have also found that you definitely do not over-eat when you are wearing one. You get a "full" sooner. So ladies then probably had smaller appetites and ate less than we do. I should start a corset diet fad. I could make a mint!

[greenacres]

And think anorexia is bad. How long after they had children did that change. Thanks for posting the hatpins.

[greenacres]

I wonder if the men today find that appealing!

[talesofthesevenseas]

Well the thing is it looks a whole lot better in a Victorian dress than it does in just a corset. Here is Cathy Jung (I misspelled her name in the earlier posts) in a Victorian style dress. There is a whole lot of interesting stuff on her Web site which I had not seen before where she talks about what it is like to corset to the level that she does:

http://www.cathiejung.com

[greenacres]

That is amazing! I just show my daughter and her chin is hanging. History is so interesting. I never would have thought watching Gone with the Wind, the scene where she's yelling make it tighter what it actually meant, but now I do.