Shop: Mrs. Black , Milliner and straw hat maker
Address: 26 Causeyside Street
Shop: Miss A Clark, Dressmaker and Milliner.
Address: 48 Moss Street
Shop: Miss Brown, Dressmaker
Address: 3 Back Sneddon
No respectable Victorian, and hardly any un-respectable ones, would venture out of doors without some kind of head covering. A lady who needed a new bonnet or hat might visit a draper, who sold both the finished article and basic shapes with the necessary ribbons, feathers, flowers and other trimmings for those who preferred to concoct their own confections.
However, not all women were able or willing to trim their own bonnets and hats and, as with dressmakers, the number of milliners and straw hat makers grew over the years. In 1851 there were 17 but by 1881 the number had risen to 40. Some drapers employed their own milliners, but there were quite a number of freelancers as well.
Milliners had to keep up with the latest fashions, because a woman who could not afford a complete up-to-date outfit would often give herself a new look with a hat or bonnet in the latest style.
The more fashionable dress bonnets were in silk of many different kinds, plain silk or satin, watered silk, figured silk; and transparent bonnets in net, crepe or lace were regarded as especially becoming. Velvet was the usual material for winter
Henry Syme, a local weaver and poet who often commented on mundane matters, wrote of changes in fashion in his poem:
‘When I Was a Lassie’
The young folk’s gaun gyte wi’ their pride an’ freegaries There’s nae Megs an’ Marys, they’re a’ misses noo; In silken balloons they gang trippin’ like fairies. Wi’ butterflee bannets far up off their broo.
When I was a lassie, oor bannets were modest, They measured twa feet ower the snoot tae the croon, But thae new French fashions tae me seem the oddest
That e’ere were inventit by limmer or loon.
The poem seems to have been written in the 1860s, when the brims of bonnets had receded to show the forehead and part of the hair. The poem contrasts them with the poke bonnets of the 1830s, which buried the wearer’s face within an enormous blinkering brim and had an extended crown to accommodate the high topknot hairstyles of the period.
Bonnets continued to diminish in size throughout the century and hats became increasingly important. A loose mantle or shawl was an important item in the wardrobe of a lady in the 1860s as this was the heyday of the crinoline, whose ‘silken balloon’ of a skirt could not be accommodated in a fitted coat, although a short waist-length jacket might be worn.
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