Chemisette Statistics (Mid-19th Century Original Garments)

More math!  This time I'm looking at trends in chemisettes in the mid 19th century, using original antique garments from the digital collections of the Metropolitan Museum (Met), Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA), Victoria and Albert Museum (VAM), and the UK National Trust Collections (examples primarily from the Killerton and Snowshill museum collections). Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 1 provided additional information on five of the examples from Snowshill Manor (marked with an *). Two privately-held garments featured in Nancy Bradfield's Costume in Detail 1730-1930 were also included. The online collections of Old Sturbridge Village, the Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village, the Museum at FIT,  the Kent State Fashion Museum, and Colonial Williamsburg were also consulted, but without locating the needed information.

I only included objects with images*, which were dated c.1825-1875, including "mid-19th century" and "second/third quarter 19th century". I didn't include garment fragments, or items with longer timescales ("19th century", "1800-1850"). Two examples from the VAM were included through a combination of their written description and the available thumbnail image.

The full spreadsheet is here. I spent many hours compiling this, so please use it only for non-commercial, educational purposes, and cite appropriately.

Results Summary (67 chemisettes)

Base fabric: 73% sheer fabric, 18% opaque fabric, 9% net.

Fiber content: 78% cotton, 12% linen, 10% other (1 silk, rest net of unspecified fiber).

Decoration: 64% included some form of embroidery, 37% lace, 10% tucks, 10% frills, 8% no decoration, and 16% some other decoration (including drawn/pulled threadwork, ribbon, insertion other than embroidery or lace, puffs, or woven figures).

Collar: 37% had no collar, 34% had a folded-over or laying-down collar (including large 'cape' styles), 19% had a frill, and 12% had a small standing collar.

Height: 73% were high-bodied (jewel neck), 15% were low-necked (boat neck), and 12% were open from waist to neck in a V-shape. The V-shape category was initially categorized with the high neck styles, and some may have been missed. The low-neck and V-shape strongly correlate with the "no collar" and "no fastener" categories.

Fastener: The largest category, 54% of the chemisettes, did not have any visible fastener: this may include hook-and-eye closures, but also unclear photographs, unfinished chemisettes, and chemisettes without fasteners that were not obvious enough for the 'none'. Buttons (24%) accounted for the most fasteners; this included chemisettes with only a single button at the neck, or a small number of buttons on the top portion of the opening. 13% of the chemisettes explicitly had no fasteners; another 7% had additional side-ties beside those at the waist (all but 1 of these were low-necked chemisettes with no front or back placket).

Opening Location: Front-opening chemisettes accounted for 70% of the total; a further 16% were back-opening; 10% had no opening (all had low necklines).

Caveats:
Many of these chemisettes were made of fine, semi-sheer cotton. Very few were definitely opaque, while others were truly transparent. I have largely erred on the side of calling the semi-sheer garments "sheer", though the call could have gone the other way.  The six net chemisettes did not have fiber content listed.

The one silk 'chemisette' was an anomaly in many ways, and may be more usefully considered as a waistcoat. It has been included none the less. Likewise, one opaque embroidered chemisette with tapered front and back points and no waist tape may be a pelerine. Some of the V-shaped sheer chemisettes may be fichus, while others have a waist tie suggesting they are, in fact, chemisettes to be worn under a gown.

There was some overlap between collar categories; generally, a frill was counted as a fold-over if it did not stand straight up or was attached to a folded-down collar; a standing collar was put on smooth and was larger than a edge binding; lace put on smoothly and not lying down counted as a standing collar if it was more than 1/2" or so, but as trim on 'no collar' if it was smaller; a frill was more full than what it was attached to, and generally standing or too small to lie down.