Museum Notebook: A fashionable wedding

Mary Maxwell's wedding outfit Photo / WRM 2021.25

A recent acquisition to the museum's collection is the current featured Outfit of the Month on the second floor of the museum. It is a wedding outfit but not like we know today.

When Mary Maxwell wore her two-piece outfit to get married in 1887 she knew she was at the height of fashion. Nineteenth century wedding garments were not yet the expected white of the 20th century. Brides married in all sorts of colours and styles but usually what was best from their wardrobes.

In this outfit the jacket has narrow shoulders, tight sleeves, a tall, fitted collar and tight corseting. The skirt, on the other hand, is full, made up of a complicated series of drapes around the hips and bottom, over a bustle (padded undergarment). It is a wonderful, lavish display of finery which you can imagine wearing proudly.

The overall effect and the bustle in particular make Mary's waist appear very slender. Just as today it is fashionable among some to emphasise the buttocks and reduce the waist through surgery, exercise, and training garments, the 1880s bustle created a desirable silhouette.

Bustles appeared in the 1860s and replaced the crinoline. Initially small, they were large and protruding by the time Mary got married.

Bustles were constructed in various ways, often with a rigid support (for example, metal or mesh) as well as some form of padding (horsehair, down, wool, or even straw). In this garment the bustle is defined with the addition of boning in the back of the skirt to further define its shape.

The bustle disappeared again by the late 1890s as the long corset took over the shaping function.

The contrasting colours of the silk and satin fabrics and the decorative buttons and ribbons add to the opulent effect. The seams are machine-stitched, reflecting the spread of sewing machines from the 1860s. Yet the drapery effects and finishing are all done by hand, as would be expected in a special outfit like this one.

The skirt also followed the style of its time in that it is asymmetrical. According to one women's fashion magazine from 1887 called Lady's World, "skirts now never have two sides alike".

Mary was 34 when she married James Scott Crabb at her family home of Parkhead, in Westmere, Whanganui. Today we would think nothing of marrying at that age but in the late 1880s she was 10 years older than the average woman of her time at their marriage.

Mary was the daughter of John and Catherine (nee Munro) Maxwell who had immigrated to New Zealand in the early 1850s from Scotland.

Mary was born in Whanganui, the third of five children. Her eldest brother George was killed in action at Nukumaru in 1868 and her youngest brother drowned in lake Westmere in 1858. By the time Mary died in 1940 she had outlived all her siblings.

James and Mary Crabb moved to Hawera after their wedding and had one daughter, Mary Catherine, who never married but ended up inheriting her grandfather's estate of Parkhead.

When Mary Catherine died in 1954, there was a treasure trove of clothes and other textiles in her house, of which this wedding outfit is all that remains. A cousin of Mary Catherine, Edna Buddle, cared for the outfit until she passed it on to her daughter Margaret Gault. Margaret donated it to the museum in 2021.

Trish Nugent-Lyne is Collection Manager at the Whanganui Regional Museum