Mourning Dress

Mourning dress was the Victorian era's most rule-bound costume. When Prince Albert died in December 1861, Queen Victoria adopted black crape — a crimped, matte silk — and never meaningfully left it, mourning for the remaining forty years of her reign. Her example hardened what had been loose custom into an elaborate etiquette, and an entire industry of mourning warehouses, such as Jay's of Regent Street in London, sprang up to dress the bereaved at a day's notice.

Grief was worn in stages. Deep or full mourning meant head-to-toe dull black crape with no shine and no jewellery except jet; second mourning allowed a little lustre and limited ornaments; half mourning, the final stage, admitted grey, mauve and white. Etiquette books prescribed the calendar precisely: a widow might mourn for up to two years, while distant relatives served weeks. To wear the wrong stage was a social solecism noticed by everyone.

The jewellery of mourning had its own language. Whitby jet — fossilised wood from the Yorkshire coast — was carved into brooches and beads, and hair of the deceased was woven into lockets and bracelets as keepsakes. The American mourning dress shown here, from the early 1850s, shows how the silhouette of ordinary fashion was simply translated into black: grief, but make it fashionable.