Sophia Zweifel, 2017 Isabel Bader Fellow in Textile Conservation and Research

One of the textiles we have selected to study from the Queen’s University Collection of Canadian Dress is a linen “duster jacket” dated approximately to the 1870s (figure 1). Duster jackets were worn while riding or travelling to protect lower layers of clothing from dust and soiling. However, there is little known about this particular jacket in the collection. It is quite an elegant jacket, cut long and loose with pagoda-like sleeves that create a caped effect around the back. The full length of the centre front is fastened with flat wooden buttons covered with the same linen that makes up the jacket. The edges of the sleeves as well as the neck are trimmed with elegant pleating. The jacket’s stitching was all done by machine, but in a chain stitch, characteristic of early sewing machines. These details of construction help situate the garment in a particular period.

When we came across it, we noted what appeared to be a heavy, somewhat lustrous finish on the surface of the linen. This was of particular interest for our project, and we were really keen to find out what the finish might be. If the jacket was simply starched, and the lustre was created just by the heat and pressure of ironing, then it wouldn’t reveal too much additional information about the piece. However, we were curious whether other substances might be present that would have acted as waterproofing agents. When viewed under UV light, we could see that the finish around the top of the garment had been disturbed, by what looked like rain. We also noted that there were some original repairs on the jacket (which were very well executed!), and that the finish had been applied after the repairs were done. This indicated to us that the finish had been applied in the household, as a part of the jacket’s regular maintenance, and was not merely an industrial coating applied during the manufacturing of the fabric. We set out to analyse the finish in hopes that it would offer some added insight into the intended function of the jacket when worn.

In the meantime, I did some research into 19th-century waterproofing methods. Due to the voluminous skirts of dresses and coats worn in this period that often dragged along the ground, as well as the delicate and sensitive luxury fabrics that were often used, there was a high demand for waterproofing solutions to keep these underlying layers of fabric clean and dry. There were some outrageous patents filed for skirt protectors that involved lifting skirts with cords or straps and securing them within rubber protectors cinched around the wearer’s ankles (figure 2). These were too unstylish and impractical to catch on, and even the more stylish skirt protector solutions that conformed to the fashionable silhouettes of the time did not become popular.[1] However, waterproof jackets had been adopted since Charles McIntosh first discovered a method of applying rubberized coatings to fabrics in 1823.[2] The “mackintosh” or “mac,” as rubber-lined cloaks came to be called, did not become fully practical until the 1840s after the discovery of the vulcanization process for rubber, which prevented the coats from becoming rigid in the cold and sticky and odorous in heat.

By the 1880s, many mackintoshes were being designed for women, in fashions very similar to that of the duster jacket in the Agnes collection. The cape or “mantle” feature of the mackintosh coats was highly functional as it prevented water from entering at seams or fastening points, and encouraged water to run off the body of the wearer. This style endured for some time even in Canada, and we can find similar cuts of waterproof cloaks in the Fall and Winter Eaton’s Catalogue from 1897–1898 (figure 3). In an 1884 image of a woman wearing one of the latest mackintosh designs (figure 4), we see a frilly collar, similar to the pleated trim of the duster jacket’s collar, that became a common feature of women’s mackintoshes. We can also see in the image the stiff “hand” (texture, or drape) of the rubber-lined textile, offering us a good tactile sense of what these waterproof garments were like. This image leads me to wonder if the duster jacket in our collection, likely made by a local dressmaker, was designed to be of a similar style to these waterproof coats. Despite their popularity, actual mackintoshes remained relatively expensive. The linen duster jacket’s relative simplicity, as well as the fact that it is unlined, suggest that it may have been made for a middle-class woman. It is not unlikely that some women during this period would have opted to have less expensive coats made for them, and that they chose to apply alternative waterproofing coatings to the fabric themselves.