Haughton & Haughton, dressmakers to the (Baltimore) stars
Jean Lee Cole, March 7, 2019
I’ve been trying to find out more about Louisa Courtauld Osburne Haughton, one of the original founders of the WLCB in 1890 and its final president—for twenty-three years (1918-1941). Very little about her remains in the “official” historical record: she is not included in biographical encyclopedias of Maryland society women and did not descend from or marry into any prominent Maryland families. Remaining single for her entire life, she left few traces of herself in ways that were considered worth documenting at the time.
She is referred to on occasion in newspaper accounts of the WLCB as a successful dressmaker, co-owner with her sister Maud (who, so far as I know, never belonged to the WLCB) of the firm Haughton & Haughton, So I went to the Baltimore Sun historical archive to see what I could find.
It turns out that by the early years of the twentieth century the two were in a shop at 713 N. Howard St., in the area now known as “Antique Row” (though to tell the truth, very few antique stores remain). By 1909 they were ensconced at 516 N. Charles St.—most recently, interestingly, the longtime home of the imported clothing and home furnishing store A People United.
The Haughton “modistes,” as they were called, employed several dozen people at the height of their success, and frequently advertised for dressmakers, apprentices, “waist drapers,” “skirt helpers,” and “finishers,” sometimes in as many as three different ads in a single issue of the Sun. For the most part, the workers they sought were women, but in one Oct. 1909 ad, they placed an ad for a male “first-class ladies’ tailor.”
For two women to run a successful clothing business would not be unprecedented at the time. Edith Wharton’s hapless character Lily Bart in The House of Mirth (1905) even entertains the thought of establishing her own millinery business, though she—predictably—fails to succeed, having been brought up to be adorned by hats rather than to be able to adorn them.
Nevertheless, I find it striking that the Haughton sisters were able so clearly to succeed in the socially conservative world of turn-of-the-century Baltimore. Here’s a great article from the 1948 Sun, written just a few years before Haughton’s death and decades after Haughton & Haughton shut its doors in the mid-1910s, which gives a sense of how Miss L. C. O Haughton— as she preferred to be called— remembered the atmosphere and clientele of the shop.
“From neck to hem line, [Haughton related,] dresses of that period were heavy with passementerie jets that gleamed like trappings of circus horses; or else were loaded with bows of satin ribbon or loops of velvet ribbon. It was not unusual to use on one dress several bolts of ribbon, each bolt carrying about a dozen yards. In the trade we facetiously called such decorations ‘soup-dippers,’ because they frequently dangled into dishes on the table.
“Bands of fur, even costly ermine, were used as trimming on dresses, sometimes 8-inch bands around the bottom of a skirt, and narrower bands for waist or sleeves” . . . Miss Haughton explained that these elaborate dresses belonged to settings of the period: large town houses of the wealthy; in drawing rooms the walls of which were covered with satin brocades; to the ballrooms of these homes, gleaming with crystal chandeliers, draped with yards upon yards of amilax, and with a string orchestra concealed behind palms, ferns and banks of roses or other flowers from hothouses on the country estates of the hosts. . . .
When the Misses Haughton were in business, gowns, except in emergencies, had to be ordered far in advance. Many and minute were the measurements taken of the customer, and the dress was designed to suit just her and no one else, to accentuate her good features and to conceal imperfect ones.
The foundations for the costumes constituted first a drafting problem in which a tight-fitted waist with standing high collar, skin and sleeve linings were cut to exact measurements. Nothing was haphazard, A fitting was then given, and alterations, if necessary, were made in the lining which was usually was of taffeta.
The many basted seams then were stitched, bound with narrow binding ribbon or pinked on a pinking iron of that day. Down the front of the waist lining were sewed numerous hooks and eyes. At least six sturdy covered whalebones were sewed into the waist, giving the foundation a rigid support. The high collar was lined with canvas and wired with “collar bones.”
From the many adjustable wire “Marias,” or dress forms, in the workroom one was selected that approximated the proportions of the customer’s figure. The foundation was placed on it and any gaps were filled in with cotton wadding or rags for padding. . .
All the foregoing preparations were in a way equivalent to the preparation of canvas for a painting. At this point the real creative work started. The modiste, either verbally or by drawing (if she could draw) communicated the special design that had been germinating in her mind. Highly specialized sewing women, including foreladies, fitters, drapers and others were called into play to execute the design.
Materials were brought from a stockroom and necessary lengths to drape on the foundation were cut with shears . . . Walls were whitewashed at the end of each season. Floors were bare. Into the cracks between the wide planks dressmaker pins fell and formed a thin line of silver. In addition to the “wire Marias,” sewing machines, tables, chairs (their legs sawed off to make them low), a large cabinet stocked with spools of sewing silk, and a clock completed the furnishings of the room, or rooms as the case may be, dependent upon the size of the establishment.
On the low seats sat the sewing women. They were usually slight of build and stoop-shouldered because of their occupation . . . Under their long slender fingers, which were pricked from needles and pins. fell their dreams, translated in a perky bow, the flow of beautiful drapery. They were articulate as poets in satins, linens, silks.
—Amelia Muller, “Carriage-Trade Modiste: Magician with Shears,” Baltimore Sun, Feb. 29, 1948: A5)
It was not a simpler time, nor was it likely a better one, especially for those “sewing women.”. But fun to reimagine nevertheless.
This content was migrated from the The WLCB log: Documenting the Woman’s Literary Club of Baltimore 1890-1941