Fashion, Culture, and the Pioneer Women of North America: An Analysis

This essay delves into the fashion and lifestyle of pioneer women in North America, focusing on the significance of the prairie dress. It examines the challenges faced by these women, their roles in settling the American West, and the influence of their environment on their clothing choices. The essay analyzes the prairie dress as a practical garment, its design elements, and its evolution, reflecting the cultural and historical context of the 19th century. It also explores how advancements in technology and access to resources affected the fashion choices of rural women compared to their urban counterparts. The essay references scholarly sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic.

Fashion Design

Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 – PIONEER WOMEN NORTH AMERICA ............................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

CHAPTER 1 – PIONEER WOMEN NORTH AMERICA
Pioneer women gives rare look at the frontier life by eyes of the Pioneer women who
settles American West. They shared in danger and work towards settling West. Many of the
women were mothers and wives but some of were single women with the motivate of seeking
husbands, homesteads and the new opportunities. The pioneer women not helps to shape future
on West but earned the new status for themselves. Other than this, women experiences physical
tool as they were expected to have the babies, care for sick, supervise domestic chores and also
take control of garden crops as well as poultry. It can be examined that while the rural women
were aware well of advanced that being made in the house hold technology in period before
electrification of prairies in 1940s, they were aware that new technology would change live less.
In regards to this, there was blaming farm women for not for adopting the modern conveniences
(Abrams and Wright Jr, 2020). Women are mainly putting with the inconveniences until they
could move to congenial home in city. On the other hand, this can be pointed that seeing the
reticence on prairie women to modernize kitchen was not similar to acceptance of machinery of
husband on farm. At the first glance, talk of non- household technologies as ones which mainly
changed quality of live of rural women. The car, radio and telephone improved the things for
men. Experience of female has own unique and internal reality, live of women should be
evaluated and analysed within context of time they mainly lived. In context of exploring reality
of impact of the technology on prairie women of rural in years of present century, this is not
possible to consider the experience of women, various through this was and without considering
experience of husbands. This was not possible fort the rural women to char over fence as the
women in in the large cities. It was also not possible to get on the street cars to go to meetings or
shopping. Non- household inventions were of more important to the rural women than the urban
women in order to improving quality of the daily life (Shields, 2017).
Prairies are temperature grassland of the North America. It is located in heart of
continent. Climate is continental kind with the extreme temperatures. Summers are the warm
with temperature around 20oC and the winters are cold with the temperature almost -20C. In
prairie, women wore the prairie dresses because in winter it was comfortable. They are
comfortable for all day wear and prairie women can do all its household related activities. In the
rural areas, cost of dress is low as comparison to the urban areas. They know about stitch the
dress easily according to the size (Berlin, 2017). The pattern of Prairie Dress is based on dress

worn through Stalwart women who was conquered 19th century American prairie. It was flowing
dress that worn traditionally with practical apron but look stylish. Without or with apron, ankle
length or mid calf, dress is comfortable and feminine. Prairie dress has the roots in the 19th
century in America and is explained through high neckline, full length sleeves, long skirt and
ruffled details. While style has plenty of the modern updates, this retains similar romantic and
bohemian feel that this has time to re- emerges in the fashion. For dress, select the soft fabric like
gingham, lightweight cotton, wool challis, calico and rayon. For Apron, select the light weight or
medium weight cotton like muslin, gingham and broadcloth. In regards to this, something
regarding cotton floral print feels classic and refreshing. The rayon slub floral fabric from the
Harts Fabrics has soft drape and nice texture. This was soft and the flow-y fabric choice for this
dress as it is better and comfortable for prairtie women. On the other hand, Organic Cotton plus
has better selection and different colours of broadcloth and muslin. Towards end of the 19th
century, rate at which fashionable silhouette changed quickly. Enhancing popularity of the
patterns as well as growth of the fashion periodicals of women encourages the home dress
making during second half of 19th century (Fowler, 2019).
Women live in the prairies because there is more availability of the resources. There is
better agriculture and dairy farming. Scientific methods related to cultivation and tractors use
combines have North America surplus producer of the food grains. Prairies are called 'Granaries
of world’ because of surplus wheat production. On the other hand, dairy belt is mainly extends
from Great Lakes to Atlantic Coast in east. Other than this, North America prairie is better for
the agriculture. 2 million acres of the North American prairie, less than the 1% is not used for the
agriculture development. Little hills on prairie are known as pimples and they do not rise tall
than 1.5 meters (Lee, 2019).

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Abrams, J. and Wright Jr, J. R., 2020. Martha Wollstein: A pioneer American female clinician-
scientist. Journal of medical biography, 28(3), pp.168-174.
Berlin, I., 2017. From creole to African: Atlantic creoles and the origins of African-American
society in mainland North America. In Critical Readings on Global Slavery (4 vols.) (pp. 1216-
1262). Brill.
Fowler, W. W., 2019. Woman on the American frontier: a valuable and authentic history of the
heroism, adventures, privations, captivities, trials, and noble lives and deaths of the" pioneer
mothers of the republic". Good Press.
Lee, M. P., 2019. Quiet odyssey: A pioneer Korean woman in America. University of
Washington Press.
Shields, P. M., 2017. Jane Addams: Pioneer in American sociology, social work and public
administration. In Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social
Work and Public Administration (pp. 43-67). Springer, Cham.