Puffed Sleeves

"Merry Christmas, Diana! And oh, it's a wonderful Christmas. I've something splendid to show you. Matthew has given me the loveliest dress, with such sleeves. I couldn't even imagine any nicer." Anne of Green Gables, chpt xxv

You may all remember how puffed sleeves were always a dream of Anne's.  And if you were anything like me, you were rather inclined to take Marilla's part when you actually saw the massive clouds of fabric around Anne's arms when tender-hearted Matthew made a point of making this dream come true.  But Anne was radiant in her happiness, and puffed-sleeves surely had a similar effect on many women of that era.

Puffed sleeves seem to have come and went several times during the 1800s.  During the early 1800s the puffed sleeve was in, though a puff was not too large, and could be placed on the shoulder, or slightly further down the arm.  http://www.vintagedance.com/dress-early1800s.htm   The went out of fashion again, only to pick up later in the century, where the size of puffs seemed to peak.  Here is a picture of an antique black suit coat jacket with enormous puffed sleeves, which the seller believes to be from approx 1894: http://www.etsy.com/listing/64996235/antique-1800s-black-puff-sleeve-suit  Huge, eh?

Lucy Maud Montgomery herself loved fashion.  Not an entirely uncommon obsession in young women.  The puffed sleeve interested her in her own life, long before she wrote Anne.  In one of her scrapbooks, Montgomery had glued in a clipping from a fashion magazine of an elegant lady in a slim-waisted dress, with billowing puffed sleeves.  Clearly, she allowed Anne to share in her joy for a fashion of her youth.  This is an amazing link, please check it out, displaying the puffed sleeves that were known to Montgomery in the 1890s, the ones she loved, and the ones Anne would have worn:  http://lmm.confederationcentre.com/english/collecting/collecting-2-1.html  If you have looked at these, then you will realise that the costumes in Sullivan's film of Anne of Green Gables are really entirely accurate.  I will leave it to you to judge how elegant they are.

Worth noting is that puffed sleeves do exist, in some form, today.  They are most common in wedding dresses, and in such a form they are not unlike the puffs of Montgomery's day, but in everyday clothing if they appear at all, they tend to be very small, and located at just below the shoulder.  http://notcouture.notcot.org/post/2083/  Perhaps not quite to Montgomery's taste, but then, who knows?!

"Twenty-one years later, in 1926, Montgomery talked even more nostalgically about those early fashion plates in her scrapbook, comparing the young women of the 1890's with the current flappers: "Many obsolete fashions are very laughable and ugly but this did not strike me as being so. Indeed, compared to the fashions of today it seemed to me dignified, beautiful and becoming. . . . No, I do not think the girls of '93 needed the rather scornful pity that is sometimes meted out to them by the scantily-garbed damsels of today. We were just as pretty, just as graceful, just as well-pleased with ourselves" (SJ,III,315). " - [from the confederationcentre link above]