Allegra Alazas – Jennifer Hallock

Loosening Up in 1910

Though not the height of fashion, a white cotton shirtwaist was the unofficial uniform of schoolteachers in the Edwardian Philippines. Having used a chalkboard for a good part of my own teaching career, I can attest that having your sleeves already be white is extremely practical. Two of my previous heroines, Georgina and Allegra, thought so too.

laura-reed-thomasite-Calasiao — Miss Laura Reed, an American schoolteacher, or Thomasite, in her shirtwaist and skirt at Calasiao, Pangasinan, north of Manila. Photo courtesy of the Philippine Photographs Digital Archive, Special Collections Research Center, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

According to the Indianapolis Journal on January 1, 1900: “The shirtwaist will be with us more than ever this summer. Women are wearing shirtwaists because they are comfortable, because they can be made to fit any form, and because they are mannish.” Fashion historian Catherine Gourley explains that “it was similar to a man’s shirt. It had a stiff, high-necked collar and buttons down the front. Women often wore one with a floppy bow or tie. Some pinned a brooch to the collar.”

In contrast, high fashion in the first decade of the 1900s was a structured Gibson Girl silhouette that looked a lot like that of the previous century, particularly the painfully small waist. The badly named “health” corset “pushed the bust forward and the hips back in an attempt to avoid pressure on the abdomen,” according to the timeline of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) of the State University of New York. The shape was top-heavy with dramatic sleeves, “enhanced with petticoats that had full backs and smooth fronts” (FIT).

1896-fashion-plate — Sugar Communion’s heroine, Dr. Elizabeth “Liddy” Shepherd, as inspired by an 1896 fashion plate at the Met. (She will borrow the dress.)

Dresses did not loosen until around 1910 or so, but fortunately Sugar Communion is quite epic in scope so I can explore new fashion templates that look far more comfortable. I was surprised by how 1920s-esque they looked, and then I found that FIT agreed with me: “While changes in women’s fashion that manifested in the 1920s are often attributed to changes due to World War I, many of the popular styles of the twenties actually evolved from styles popular before the war and as early as the beginning of the decade.”

fashion-plate-1910 — Costume Institute Fashion Plate 105, 1910-1913, at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I paged through only a few of the plates at the Costume Institute Collections at The Met to get an idea of what I would like to see Liddy wear, when she gets the chance—when she is not tending to patients in a practical shirtwaist, that is.

I think the geometric patterns on the above skirt would appeal, though Liddy is not likely to be seen at entertainments like horse races, nor would she approve, probably.

See what I mean by the roaring twenties vibe? Ignore the hat on the right, which seems to be an inspiration for Dr. Seuss’s cat. Both of these dresses seem so elegant. The one on the left I can see Miss Fisher wearing while she solves a murder mystery.

I do not understand the knotted kerchief hanging off the belt on the right illustration above, but that blouse and skirt is otherwise very modern. Also, women began to dare to show some ankle—racy, I know!—though not bare skin. My heroine Liddy does not have the time nor inclination for hose, so socks and boots are her daily wear.

I think that back in the 1980s I had a blouse like the one above on the left. No feathered hats for me or Liddy, though.

These plates tell me that clothing was starting to become more comfortable, and even high fashion followers did not want to be dependent on a maid to dress them all the time.

Can you imagine having a ladies’ valet in 2020? “The yoga pants again, ma’am?”

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Sugar Sun series glossary term #32: Ah Tay bed

The Ah Tay bed definitely makes an impression:

Ben’s hips flattened and froze against hers. He pushed harder and harder until the carved floral bedpost pressed its pattern into her skin. She shut her eyes and her whole body clenched, burned, and then melted with him.

—Sugar Moon

I bet you’re wondering what that would look like—the carved bed post, not the sex. You can use your imagination with the sex.

Antique Philippines bed in Sugar Sun steamy historical romance series — An antique Ah Tay bed on auction. Leon Gallery opened the bidding at 160,000 pesos, or just over $3200. Salcedo Auctions hoped to get 350,000 pesos, or $7000, for theirs.

The elaborate four-poster Narra frame, with its intricately carved Art Nouveau posts, was the creation of Eduardo Ah Tay, a furniture maker in Binondo. The kalabasa, or squash-shaped, dome design became “a status symbol for the nineteenth-century mestizo elite” in their bahay na bato houses. (Cheaper beds—versions not made by Ah Tay—had spiral posts.)

ah-tay-bed-leon-gallery — Ah-tay bed of Don Lucio Lacson, the father of Aniceto Lacson who is notable for liberating Negros Occidental from the hands of the Spaniards alongside Juan Araneta. Family oral history suggests that Jose Rizal may have slept on this magnificent bed during his visit to Iloilo. Sold by the León Gallery on 2 December 2017.

The Americans did not know genius when they saw it:

“Look here, North,” the congressman said. “You gave us unmade rooms!”

Moss had checked the rooms himself. “What are you missing, sir?”

“Most of my bed!” Holt huffed. “Why, there isn’t a stitch of bedclothes on the blooming thing. Not even a mattress! I raised the mosquito-netting and found nothing but a bamboo mat.”

— Hotel Oriente, prequel novella to the Sugar Sun series.

Holt’s confusion was based on a real story of an irate newcomer to the Hotel de Oriente. The rattan platform, mattress-less bed was known among Americans for being “springless, unyielding, and anything but comfortable,” or “an instrument of torture, a rack, an inspirer of insomnia.”

Antique Philippines bed from Hotel Oriente in the Sugar Sun steamy historical romance series — Two photos of the “sleeping machine” at the Hotel de Oriente from the Burton Holmes Travelogue.

But actually, the genius of the bed was air flow. Woven rattan was both perforated and strong, which made it the go-to technique for a lot of local furniture, including the sillon chair. This ingenuous use of local materials kept you cool before the advent of air conditioning.

Eventually, even Philippines Commissioner Worcester, who once called the Ah Tay bed “that serious problem,” came to regard it a luxury of the tropics. Traveler Burton Holmes agreed the bed had been “unjustly ridiculed and maligned.” He said, “It is…perfectly adapted to local conditions, a bed evolved by centuries of experience in a moist, hot, insect-ridden tropic land, and from the artistic point of view is not unattractive.”

Antique Philippines bed in the Sugar Sun steamy historical romance series — Left: A modern-sized reproduction of an Ah Tay bed in the Museo sa Parian (1730 Jesuit House) in Cebu. Photo by Looney Planet. Right: A large Ah Tay at Casa Consuelo Museum at Villa Escudero Plantations in San Pablo, Laguna, as photographed by the Philippine Inquirer.

But don’t try to sleep on an original Ah Tay: not only might it be in delicate condition, but most are far too small. (Humans have gotten taller and rounder in the last 120 years.) There is a decent sized one at the Casa Consuelo Museum in Tiaong, Quezon, and its owners even claim that it—and everything in the house—is authentic. Or you can build yourself a modern-sized reproduction, complete with solid mattress frame, like at the Museo sa Parian in Cebu.

Either way, this is the type of bed where Allegra Potter will bring her handsome, six-foot-plus suitor, Ben Potter. This is where she debauches him in Sugar Moon.