margrethe dress
A shirt dress meets a smock for all your day dress daydreams.
the form
The Margrethe dress; artist smock meets shirt dress. With classic menswear details and an easy one piece body, this dress has become a favorite for us. Roll up the sleeves for the summer, pair with a sweater and tights in the winter.
The slanted patch pockets hold a phone or a hand with a deeply rewarding ease. Named for Early 20th century American photographer Margrethe Mather.
Margrethe Mather “Billy Hustema” c1923
in the details
We source shell and vintage buttons for our clothes. And use finishing touches like sewn down facings and self same fabric pockets and linings. We are committed to these heirloom techniques so our garments last a very long time. Care and craft is what motivates us.
in the wild
fabric & manufacture
For this form we chose a phenomenal heavy weight linen. It’s substantial yet completely breathable so it can be worn year round. Linen is lauded as a very green fabric due to its use of less water and almost no pesticides. The fabric is printed in Italy using azo free pigment ink.
We cut and sew each dress in our barn studio in Upstate NY. We support a MTO (made to order) and limited batch production model. This means that we make each item as it is ordered and cut down on inventory waste.
our prints
Click on any print to read the whole print story.
*can’t find the dress you want in the print you want? Contact us for a special order.
some history.
Around the 1820s missionaries popularized western dress in Hawaii (and greater Polynesia). This shift was bound up with some awful things (colonization…body shame…). However lemons can make lemonade and for us that lemonade is this durable continuum of a dress called Mu’umu’u - a comfortable, unfitted dress often in a bright print with unusual details like back pleating, bib yokes, ruffles, frog clasps, nehru collars, kimono sleeves. These dresses trace their lineage to the Mother Hubbard, a frumpy, bib fronted, full length house dress. Nowadays we experience this form mainly as a nightgown.
During the 1800s the Hubbard form split into two distinct but related entities in Hawai’i. The Holoku—a formal dress with a train (translates as “Go, stop.” meaning it was easy to move in). And the mu’ mu’u—a utility garment to be worn informally (translates as “ To cut off.” meaning it was shortened and had no sleeves so it could be worn as an undergarment). By 1870 the Holoku had evolved so far from its simple Mother Hubbard beginnings, it was considered to be Hawaiian dress.
In the 1890s the Holoku took two forms—a “traditional” Holoku that retained the width, bib, and puff sleeve. And the “fashion” Holoku that was more fitted and incorporated all kinds of influences germane to the fashion of the day along with increasingly longer trains.
In 1949 the Hawaiian garment industry, flush with the success of the Aloha shirt, introduced the Holomu’u (translates as “Go, cut off.” easy to wear and without a train) - a day dress that was fashionable, fitted, ruffled and exportable. This enabled the Holoku to retain its more formal status and its ability to signal “Hawaiianess.”
Whether it’s called a Holoku, a Mu’umu’u or a Holomu’u we see these as a single, inclusive form.
For more read: A Brief History of the Design Evolution of the Hawaiian Holoku and Designs of Hawaiian Wear: an Evolution in History