1 button Riding Frock

[Possum]

How common would have been a 1 button riding/morning frock in the era of the Civil War? I have read that they were used as everyday wear in the 1820's. So, Could a jacket had been handed down to a grandson or son from a poor southern family? Would it be ok for the time period?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[nick19thind]

Re: 1 button Riding Frock

Very likely.
In the cities the workers would buy their clothes secondhand, wearing anything from 1820s tailcoats to 1850s frocks. There's a quote on the Daybreak Bhoys' website that describes the average poor man as resembling a "tattered 1840s gentleman."
As you said clothes were handed down when a person died, especially in rural areas (which were often several years behind the fashions of the time).
Also the one-button morning coat came back into fashion in the 1850s when gentlemen wore it as a riding jacket, so you could use that coat for a variety of impressions depending on time and place, from rich plantation owner to factory worker or poor farmer going to town.

[ElizabethClark]

Re: 1 button Riding Frock

Moderator Bonnet on, briefly:

Mr. "Rocky", please remember to edit your signature to include your real first name either before or after your in-quotes familiar name.

/Mod Bonnet.

A couple of things need to be considered when determining how out of fashion a garment might be and still be worn in the 1860s. I'm going to just ramble for a moment, and hope I'm making sense. :)

Keep in mind that with the Daybreak B'Hoys site, they're working with mid-to-late 1850s time periods. Going back to the late 1840s for fine "gentlemen's" clothing to appear on the used clothing markets of the city is a reasonable stretch. Going back further than that is not, for many reasons.

The first has to do with economic status. Those selling off clothing to the used trade do not come from the working classes for the most part--they come from more moneyed classes who can afford to replace their clothing with new things as the old goes out of style. A garment may not have seen much use before being added to the garment trade--perhaps a year or two of original use, before it is passed into the hands of a merchant.

That merchant then sells it off at a discount to the working and lower classes. They wear it to rags, and buy "new" used clothing when they must--and that "new" used clothing continues to move forward along the fashion continuum, because the first suppliers (those with some money to buy new) are continuing to do so all along.

So, looking specifically at New York City: the middle to better class gentleman has a coat made in the late 1840s. Men's fashions changing somewhat less quickly than women's, he wears it on a regular basis for two or three years. We're now to the very late 1840s, early 1850s. It may be set aside for awhile, or sold directly to the used trade... but by the early 1850s, it's on the market.

A new owner buys it second-hand in the early-to-mid 1850s. Being a poor fellow, he wears it constantly, and in all settings. It's going to start showing some wear, and then greater wear, and greater wear, as time goes by. By the start of the war years (about 4 years or so after he bought the coat), it's getting pretty tattered, but still shows all the hallmarks of once having been a very fine coat. There's a vast difference between "high quality, long-used" and "poor and tatty to start with". :)

So, going back to using a coat that's 40 years out of fashion: NOPE.

It goes against multiple realities of garment wear. First, the more hard-pressed the folks were to start with, the less likely they are to own the quality of garments that last for decades. Second, if they were poor, the original owner wore it a lot himself, and the likelihood of it being "pass down-able" on his death drops sharply. Third, if the family is poor, the chances of a good item being set aside and not touched for 40 years is just woefully slim. Fourth, the rapid production and increasing cheapness of men's clothing comes into play--the grandson of a poor farmer has a much better chance of buying some middling-quality, but "modern" garments far more cheaply than his grandfather ever hoped, and can "afford" to keep up to date a bit better than two generations removed from the modern cuts and styles.

There's more to it, but that's a general run-down. Going back a full decade from your current impression date can work, but much beyond that is getting iffy based on the realities of garment wear with frequent usage, the mid-century used clothing trade, and what I've seen thus far in dated engravings and photos of working class and lower class people.