#fibrearchaeologist

[marzipanandminutiae]

I´m struggling with a writing research question and you seem like the person to ask, so I hope you don´t mind me showing up here: do you happen to know when girls/teenagers made the transition to adult style dress (i.e. full length skirts, or at least I´m under the impression that this is the distinction)? My brain insists it´s 17ish, but of course I can´t find the reference now that I´m looking, nor any other. The story is set in the (late) victorian period.

16-17, yes! You were pretty much on the money there. this chart, printed in Harper's Bazaar in 1868, expresses the generally agreed-upon age ranges, although of course individual practice could have a 1 or 2 year margin of error

(the implication being, of course, that at 16 she would adopt the instep-length skirts of adulthood. the reason it says "2-16" is the toddlers often wore longer skirts than girls who could confidently walk. I'm not fully sure why that was, I admit, but I'm pretty sure what they mean is "this length is theoretically appropriate for girls of all ages between 2 and 16")

(and keep in mind that these are approximations and magazine ideals- I generally average it out to "knee-length when very young, calf-length when a pre-teen or young teenager." parents weren't necessarily freaking out because their 12-year-old daughter had her skirts an inch shorter than Harper's said she ought to. not everybody saw this chart; not everybody had the ability or desire to hit precisely every benchmark on the list at its assigned age. it's a good general rule of thumb, basically)

this whole "long skirts = adulthood" thing started around the 1820s-30s, of course. before then, little girls and adult women had pretty much identical hemlines. and hairstyles; see also, mid-late Victorian and Edwardian practice of putting one's hair Up as a sign of maturity around the same age as letting down skirts