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      Hume Family Collection - Costume
 
 

 

History in Photographs : Images from the Hume Family Collection

Costume

 

Detailed descriptions of clothing and accessories for special occasions often entered into Katie's letters. Making her own clothes, or remaking them to suit the latest fashion, meant dress was also part of Katie's work, sometimes interesting, sometimes tiresome. With her usual attention to detail, Katie kept a record of what she spent on clothing for herself and later for the children. Unlike many other women in rural Queensland she had access to shopping in Toowoomba and sometimes travelled to Brisbane. Using a dressmaker in Brisbane was also mentioned in one of the letters.

 

Pages from Katie Hume's Diary of Accounts, 1869-1898

Canning Downs, Warwick...Nov. 13th, 1867

My dearest Loaf,
...This visit has given me an opportunity of wearing all my 'pretty things' which do not often come out at Drayton & which send my husband into raptures, but it does not take much to do that.

In the morning I wear a white dress, or the striped print I made up just before I left Drayton & for dinner, my green muslin, foulard or the white dress of dear Min's you sent me, which with blue ruche round neck & sleeves, & sash tied behind, makes a nice dinner dress. On Sundays I wear my wedding bonnet (as good as new) & lace cloak so now you can picture my 'toilettes'. (Bonnin, p. 90)

Camp ... Feby. 15th, 1870

My dear Sophie,
... The longer I am married the more do I find out and bring to light innumerable goodnesses on the part of my dear Kats. I never thought anyone could be so good. and then she's so clever - she makes all sorts of things with her machine not only for herself & Ethel, but for me - all my light summer clothes. Then she's so economical, she seems to dress on nothing a year & do it well. At present she has no less than seven dresses in her wardrobe not yet made up that she brought out with her. (Bonnin, p. 172)


Baby Albert aged 1 year and a half 1875, Photograph Album Vol. 1, p. 31(b)

Mrs Hume at Yandilla, [1886]
Photograph Album Vol. 1, p. 51

Ethel Hume at Fairseat, [1890s], Photograph Album Vol 6, p. 22.

These three photographs illustrate the range within the collection. It offers historians studying the dress of the period, a time of rapidly changing fashions, an exciting glimpse of bourgeois attire.

There is a lack of work written on the area of female attire in Queensland, particularly with regard to regional difference. Although in many of the photographs the people are attired formally, the survey provided by the collection could contribute to research in this area (See Maynard in Reekie, pp. 51-65).
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