{"id":586,"date":"2022-08-16T18:49:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T18:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wbbm.digitalprojects.brynmawr.edu\/dev\/?page_id=586"},"modified":"2022-09-07T11:53:22","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T15:53:22","slug":"dress","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wbbm.digitalprojects.brynmawr.edu\/why-build\/exhibit\/education\/dress\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Quaker Lady Dress”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Taylor Hall is built in the High Victorian Gothic<\/a><\/strong> style, which was popular for nineteenth-century  British and American colleges, churches, and state buildings. However, Taylor was built in a monochrome gray stone, which deviates from the emphatic polychromy that was typical of the style. Quaker conventions of plain dress<\/a><\/strong> influenced the design of Bryn Mawr\u2019s architecture as well as the ideal image of its student. Francis King\u2019s desire for Hutton to capture the ideal of \u201cQuaker Lady Dress\u201d in the design of Taylor Hall may have been a self-conscious play on the term \u200b\u201cdress,\u201d which can refer both to a person\u2019s clothing and <\/em>to the decoration of a building. Just as Bryn Mawr\u2019s founders dressed the campus in a reserved version of High Victorian Gothic style, Joseph Taylor specified in his will that Bryn Mawr students should wear simple clothing and avoid jewelry or frivolous fashions. The refined simplicity<\/a><\/strong> of Taylor Hall communicated the guarded<\/a><\/strong> education the College would provide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Photograph
Unknown photographer, Taylor and Merion Hall, \u200b
after 1894. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, PAB_Taylor_020.\u200b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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“There is a certain style of \u2018Quaker lady\u2019 dress, which I often see in Phila, which tells the whole story\u2014she has her satin bonnet\u2014her silk dress\u2014her kid gloves\u2014her perfect slippers\u2014but they are made to harmonize with the expression of her face which is both intellectual and holy\u2014so may \u2018Taylor College\u2019 look down from its beautiful site upon the passing world and we hear them say \u2018just right.\u2019\u201c\u200b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Francis King, letter to Addison Hutton, 1879. Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Thomas Family Papers, MC-962.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"A
Unknown artist\u202f\u200b
Quaker Woman (Elizabeth Fry) with Birds<\/em>, 19th century (?)\u200b
Wood engraving on gray silk, 13 in. x 9 1\/2 in (33.02 cm x 24.13 cm).\u200b
Gift of Helen Dechert\u200b
Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, 1978.8\u202f<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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This young, Quaker woman, possibly Elizabeth Fry, is simply dressed in an unadorned gown, shawl, and bonnet. Yet, the glossy silk surface conveys the refinement of her clothing. Although today we associate Quakers with frugality, by the end of the nineteenth century, codes of Quaker simplicity<\/strong> permitted such luxuries so long as they avoided excess. Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) devoted herself to prison and asylum reform.\u202f\u200b<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"A
Unknown illustrator\u200b
“Godey’s Fashions,\u201c Godey’s Lady Book and Magazine, <\/em>vol. 110, no. 657, March 1885\u200b
Bryn Mawr Special Collections, AP2.G56\u200b
\u200b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The colorful, richly finished garments and accessories depicted in these nineteenth-century fashion plates (published in the year Bryn Mawr College opened) provide a sense of the \u201cfrivolous\u201d fashions that Joseph Taylor rejected for Bryn Mawr students.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"A
Unknown illustrator\u200b
“Godey’s Fashions,\u201c Godey’s Lady Book and Magazine, <\/em>vol. 110, no. 657, March 1885\u200b
Bryn Mawr Special Collections, AP2.G56\u200b
\u200b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Return to: From Guarded to Worldly Education<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Continue to: Classicism and Anglo-Saxonism<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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