The Story of our Health Message

Dress Reform Gained Favor

There was a steady increase year by year in the number of women who changed to the new style. In June of 1863, about twelve years after Mrs. Miller had initiated the reform, an annual meeting of the Dress Reform Convention was held in Rochester, New York. In her opening address Dr. Austin stated that she invariably included as a part of the prescription to her patients the words “Adopt the American Costume,” and she claimed credit for having thus influenced at least a thousand women to follow her advice. As to its general adoption, she said further: SHM 116.2

“No reform, so truly conservative as this, ever made more progress, during the first years of its existence, than this has done. In all the Northern States it has hundreds of representatives; and in numbers of them it has thousands. It is known and worn in California, Canada East and West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Thousands of women in this State are wearing the American Costume. There are many neighborhoods, in central and western New York, where it is the common dress worn. There are counties in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and other of the Western States, where its wearers can be counted by hundreds.”—Laws of Life, August, 1863. SHM 116.3

In this same address before an audience of 1,700 people, Dr. Austin gives us a picturesque arraignment of the style of dress against which the “American costume” was a protest. Personifying “lank, sallow Disease,” she graphically pictured the results of his clutches upon wives and mothers, and added: SHM 116.4