Sleeves, Please!

Painting: "The Conversation" by Daniel Ridgeway Knight, American, 1839-1924

Today I am showing sleeves, because they are absent on blouses and dresses sold in stores. Many people overcome this disadvantage by purchasing boleros, jackets, shawl sweaters, and jackets to provide needed sleeves.  However, this creates more weight and layers that may be uncomfortable to some people, resulting in having to go sleeveless anyway.  My experience is that a dress should be able to stand on its own, without adding more things--even scarves and shawls. The homemaker needs to wear garments without a lot of accessories.

One thing I enjoyed about the styles of the 1980's and 90's was the variety of sleeve designs. It was not a fashion era of all one kind of sleeve, collar or bodice. The variety was endless and interesting, as you can see by the pattern pictures I have included here. 

Let us consider why we have no sleeves on women's garments today and ask a few questions about it.

1. Why are there so smany jackets and sweaters and little boleros in the stores wih sleeves, but not so many tops and dresses wih sleeves? It seems to be no trouble to put a sleeve on a jacket but not on a dress.

2. Why do most men's clothes have sleeves, but not women's?  In weddings, the men have long sleeved shirts covered by long sleeved jackets, long pants and are covered from neck to ankle but the women I have seen in weddings are shivering from the cold.

3. Why did the design technology of the previous decades include such a vast array of sleeves in sewing patterns and commercial clothing, but they cannot manage the same feat today"

4. Some people say the demise of the ladies sleeve is due to the extra cost of hiring someone to set in a sleeve, it takes extra skill, and costs more for the fabric. This does not seem to be a hindrance to creating sleeves on men's clothing.

As a seamstress and avid stitcher and lover of cloth, I find sleeves exciting and plan to keep wearing them no matter what the style.  I see women whose arms are not fit enough for sleeveless clothing, painfully and self-consciously wearing the sleeveless garments just because it is all they can be found.

Sleeveless in Victorian times was worn for evenings but generally not very popular to wear daily or while on the street, in shops, and daytime. In fact, the sleevelessness and the leggings and many of the get-ups worn in public today were worn only by circus performers in Victorian times.

I would like to find out the number and brand of the pattern below but the picture was a Pinterest collection and the number was cut off. I would love to purchase this and make it and wear it. I have no idea how to trace it.

Some people assume the Victorian clothing was all alike, but if you look carefully, there was a great difference in the sleeves and bodices and skirts from one garment to another. In fact most of the time no two dresses or blouses were exactly alike, just as it was rare to find two houses exactly alike.

I have seen ladies so uncomfortable in "sleeveless" that their husbands or boyfriends had to remove their own jackets in order to cover the poor shivering lady.

There are of course the alternatives of buying that extra sweater or jacket with sleeves and wearing it over the sleeveless dress. A lot of ladies do that, but in hot weather it is necessary to remove the jacket, and there are many ladies who just don't like sleeveless.

Some of the paintings I find from the previous centuries just would not be so pretty without the sleeves, and that is the way I feel about clothing today!

I noticed on the blog What Kate Wore the royal lady wears sleeves in public most of the time. Her designers seem to have no problem creating sleeves for her.

More sleeves: