Seersucker History

There’s been a heat wave moving across the Eastern U. S. this week which inspired this month’s post on a fabric that was designed for scorching weather. Feeling hot? Try some seersucker.

Closeup of seersucker. Peteski1 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

This fabric is undoubtedly more often associated with men but after finding a seersucker woman’s bodice in the MET’s collection I was curious to learn more. There are almost no examples of seersucker in women’s wear prior to 1940. Why is that?

Seersucker women’s jacket from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection. American, ca. 1881, cotton, 1983.44.2a, b, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/84116.