On Friday, March 13 2015, Liberty Hall Museum hosted A Ladies Night Out: A Night of Vintage Fashion. For a couple of hours attendees were able to relax and enjoy the night with a glass of wine and a few appetizers, all while learning about vintage fashion ranging between the years of 1840 and 1955.

For the first hour of the evening, ladies had the chance to walk around the carriage and view dresses and gowns that were owned by the Kean family. All dresses are still well kept and some of these were created and first worn in the year of 1849. For example a white floral wedding dress that has been worn by four women of the Kean family and passed down throughout the years still in the exact form it was in when it was first made although it has been altered a few times. “The first person who wore the wedding dress was Christine Kean Griffin, who wore it in 1849, and it was last person wore it sometime in the 1990’s,” Rachael Goldberg, collections manager at Liberty Hall Museum exclaims.

Some of the other dresses included a 1955 Christian Dior Circa. “Christian Dior created a new line in 1955 with this dress a part of the line,” comments Goldberg, “he wanted to bring the skinny waist back when World War II had finished. He created this dress for women to have that very skinny look, and it has a built in corset.” Other dresses that were presented at the event were a 1950’s green strapless cocktail dress and a purple long sleeve 1860’s civil war dress.

Another dress that was shown to the audience was a Charles Worth Gown, made sometime in the decade of 1890. This dress illustrated an example of how a lot dresses were held down with weights. Goldberg explains how “a lot of dresses would have weights in them so the bottom of the dress wouldn’t fly up every time the wind passed by.”

Besides the weights that women would have to wear along with the dress, women would also have to put many items of undergarment under before putting on a dress. First they would  put on a silk undergarment that would only go down to the knees, followed by a corset [and without the silky undergarment the corset will be painful to wear], and followed by a petticoat and finally the dress. “By the time a women is done getting dressed she will be wearing six to eight pounds of clothing, and they would [still] have to change about three to four times a day.”

All in all the attendees had a spectacular night learning about vintage fashion. Attendees mingled with others over a glass of wine while admiring not only the dresses but the vintage advertisements placed on the table as well. Some of the advertisements focused on bicycles, while others talked about electric corsets and the women’s eyes. Attendees were also able to try on a few fashion clothing like hats, a petticoat, as well as admire some of the jewelry that was worn by the Kean family. By the time the event had finished people walked out with a smile on their faces while talking about the how pretty some of the dresses shown were.