October 5, 2009
Getting some good insights into 1872 fashion vs. 1874 fashion so I can illustrate Martha Summerhays coming into Arizona Territory and meeting the wives coming out from their husband's tour of duty. She was shocked at how out of style the women were.

My hunch is that the women coming out of Arizona were not fashion plates but were doing something equivalent to wearing straight length pants in the bell bottom era. I need to boil it down to some basic things that would be apparent in a drawing (not easy, has to be really simple).

For example, as I understand it, sleeves, ballooned out at the elbow to the wrist and this went away, or went more straight in 1874. Also, the waist in 1872 and prior emphasized a ballooning bottom, whereas in 1874, skirt styles started to go straighter? Is that correct? And that women wore little hats to expose their ringlets in the early fashion, not sure what that evolved into. Need to get this all straight.

Here are my first roughs for the scene:

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
—Warren Buffet