Back at the Reed Homestead... we are moving on to the next pile -- stacks and stacks of shirt-like garments with no closures (other than a few with ties at the neck).
We hired a woman in 1995 to start pulling clothing literally out of garbage bags and start cataloging. (Sadly, we still have pieces from 1809 still in garbage bags -- yes, the black plastic kind.) She called these shirt-like garments "sacques" and this is want she wrote about them... "...I would like someone after me to write the word "sacque" which is what we're going to use for the generic term. A sacque is a garment which hangs from the shoulder down without interruption, without darts, without a waist seam, so a man's sacque coat is one that was not cut in at the waist. And that seems to be a generic form for this style if garment, no matter how it's being used, but as I said before and you got on the VCR I think, these can be used as a working garment with a skirt, held in place with an apron. They can be used as a short nightgown for hot weather and when somebody is ill and is using a bedpan. They can be used over your dress when you're doing your hair and that's probably about it. Oh, yes, and the other thing is for maternity, when it's an expandable top for when you're pregnant and obviously can be used for nursing as well. And nobody has as many as you have." We have attempted to locate information about this type of garment, but clearly we're looking in the wrong places because we're coming up empty. We can find "saques" certainly but they don't look like ours. Any ideas? Dede O'Hair _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
