Many women have a White Summer Dress sitting at the back of the wardrobe. It lies in wait of a summer day when picnics are packed and sun lotion is poured. The perfect day to wear a white summer dress is on a hot summer’s day and there is nothing cooler and more comfortable than a pretty white dress, eh girls?
A White Summer Dress - The Perfect Summer Attire
Did you ever wonder where and under what circumstances the dress originated? One thing is for sure, white summer dresses did not always exist and there were times when comfort was very far from the minds of the people who had to wear them… ask the ladies of the Victorian times!
Back in the Victorian days, it seem that women’s clothing couldn’t be more different to the light white summer dress for thick fabrics covered every bit of skin several layers deep. It’s a wonder that people ever enjoyed the summer sun decked up to the hilt in all this cloth. Bare arms were unheard of and ankles were well and truly covered up for fear of scandal or a bad reputation as a ‘scarlet woman’! Hard to believe these repressive days were only just over a hundred years ago.
Victorian dresses were all about corsetry (the tighter strung the better!) and heavy layers of clothing. I guess the last thing a Victorian summer dress would leave you feeling is gay and carefree unlike today’s light and airy white summer dresses.
If you didn’t have much of a waist in Victorian times all you had to do was to squeeze into a corset and as if by magic, a waist would appear. Such corsets in the nineteenth century were rigged with bone or steel with the poorer versions comprising of rope. I should imagine a lady dressing in those days was like hoisting the sails on a ship! Thank goodness for the Victorian Dress Reform who turned their attention to those agonizing constricting undergarments.
Why wear white in the summer? White coloured clothes are the best to wear during a hot day because they are cooler. If you choose to wear black dresses as opposed to white summer dresses the likelihood is the last thing you will feel is cool and gay! Clothing made of white fabric reflects the sun and does not absorb it as is the case with all other colours of the spectrum.
Next time you are out shopping for a cool summer outfit, make sure that you head for the section that sells white summer dresses!