Famous Australian
Clothing Patternmaker,
Johanna Weigel (1847–1940)
Introduction
Johanna Wilhelmine Weigel
(1847-1940), paper-pattern manufacturer, was born on 11 February 1847 at
Bromberg Stadt, Posen (Posnan), Prussia (Poland), second of five children of
August Astmann and his wife Emilie, née Sachs.
As a young woman she went to the
United States of America and in New York worked as a designer at
McCalls, a leading
paper-pattern establishment, where she met August Louis William Oscar Robert
Carl Weigel (1844-1915), an engineer who had been born in the German dukedom
of Brunswick. In 1876 she and Oscar married in New York; they travelled to
Melbourne for their honeymoon, arriving in March 1877 in the Mysore,
intending to stay for six months.
(Source:
Australian Dictionary of Biography)
Education &
Training:
Johanna was raised in a
wealthy estate in Poland. At 16, she came home to find the Estate paddocked
and there was no one around. Someone suggested that she go to Vienna to stay
with her Godmother and it was here that she learnt to sew. She discovers
that she is talented and also does translations from the French and German
fashion journals and sends them to the New York Fashion Journal where they
were well received. The Editor of the New York Fashion Journal met her in
Vienna in the early 1870s and offered her a job in New York.
(Source:
ABC: Madame Weigel: colonial fashionista: Audio file: July 2015)
Experiences:
"By her own account,
after many requests from friends who admired her dress sense Johanna Weigel
started to cut patterns from her own clothes and give them away. The
easy-to-follow instructions for measuring, cutting and sewing made the
patterns popular and their increasing success led her and Oscar to start
their fashion business in 1877 in premises in Lennox Street, Richmond. They
imported all their printing machines and tissue paper and soon established
offices in central Melbourne and Sydney and agencies throughout Australia
and New Zealand.
In 1880 they started Weigel's Journal of Fashion, a monthly subscription
journal that claimed to be the first fashion magazine to be designed,
published and printed in Australia. It included illustrated fashion
articles, housekeeping hints and serialized fiction. The impact of her
patterns and journal on women and their families, particularly in country
areas, was considerable. Miles Franklin later wrote that her mother was a
regular subscriber to the Journal:
It was an 'elegancy' to which she clung through the leanest lean years .
. . Mother always dressed herself and us by Madame W's paper patterns . . .
Madame Weigel was to me a figure of legend as Mrs Beeton or 'The Ingoldsby
Legends'.
In 1893 Oscar (and therefore his wife) was naturalized. In 1890 they had
built Drusilla, a two-storeyed house with twenty-six rooms on twenty-seven
acres (11 ha), at the foot of Mount Macedon, where they developed a
substantial garden. The house burned down in July 1903. They subsequently
moved to South Melbourne. The Weigels were frequent contributors to charity,
much of their philanthropy being anonymous. On 7 February 1915 Oscar died at
Los Angeles while he and Johanna were on a business trip. Johanna returned
to Australia in April with Oscar's ashes. His estate in Victoria was sworn
for probate at £32,740.
After her retirement from active association with the business, Weigel
travelled extensively overseas."
(Source:
Australian Dictionary of Biography)
Opportunities:
Did You Know?
(Source:
Veronica Lampkin: Madame Weigel's Patterns)
Dr Veronica Lampkin received her PhD from Griffith
University in 2013 for her study of Johanna Weigel titled: "Mining
the archive: an historical study of Madame Weigel's paper patterns
and their relationship to the fashion and clothing needs of colonial
Australasia during the period 1877 to 1910."
Dr Lampkin has also written a book about Johanna Weigel called:
"Madame Weigel: the Woman who Clothed the
Australasian Colonies", was published in May
2015.
"Madame Weigel's girlhood had been
Prussian until a family crisis saw her move to Vienna in the early
1860s. From there, she migrated to America in 1872 and spent five
years working in New York where she met and married Oscar Weigel, a
pivotal character in her life and in the business they later
established in Melbourne, Australia, after migration in 1877.
Madame Weigel offered a vital new development for Australasian
seamstresses – paper patterns for home sewing. Issued through her
fashion journal, Weigel’s Journal of Fashion, Madame Weigel's paper
patterns soon gathered a loyal following that often endured for
decades.
The couple worked hard to achieve success, then in the 1890s left on
their first long tour to Europe. Whilst away, Madame Weigel provided
a series of letters for publication in Weigel’s Journal of Fashion.
Three more series of travelogues followed, each giving fascinating
detail of the woman that she was, the life that she led, the
fashions, nationalities, and people that she saw.
Madame Weigel was a keen observer of life in Australia and overseas.
Having stayed in many of the grand hotels of Europe, Canada and
America, her fellow guests fascinated her, as did the many
conversations she overheard.
Her greatest passion was as a motorist. She had learnt to drive in
Paris in 1900, and much later in life wrote that she was the first
woman in Nice, on the French Riviera, to hold a motor driving
license in 1901. She had driven down through France in these very
early days of motoring, proud to have travelled without incident.
Madame Weigel was willing to be seen as radical, taking on motoring,
winter sports, cycling and sea bathing when women should not have,
including the rational clothing needed for such new activities. More
than able to address the critics who opposed such outrageous
developments in women’s lives, she wrote - and signed - many
articles for her journal's readers to empower them towards change.
After a long life of 92 years, Madame Weigel died in 1940, her
business continuing on until 1969 in the care of her employees.
Many of the artefacts that are Madame Weigel's journal, patterns and
catalogue, as well as items made from her patterns, have been found
and collected by enthusiasts. She was, and continues to be, the most
remarkable of early Australasian business women."
(Source:
Veronica Lampkin: Madame Weigel's Patterns)
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Employment:
From her Richmond factory, Madame Weigel was
the first to manufacture paper patterns in Australia and established a
network of agents in rural towns across the country.
Next came her eponymous fashion journal which, among articles on clothing
trends, included travelogues from her regular trips to Europe.
“Quite a lot of her agents were women,” Veronica says.
“A few of them were trading behind their husbands, but quite a lot were
trading under their own name."
(Source:
Weekly Times)
Did You Know?
Weigel's created over 6900 paper patterns for women in Australia and
New Zealand
Used over 350 mostly women as distributors across Australia.
The Weigels looked after their employees even well after both Oscar and Johanna
had died because of their wills.
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Links:
Material sourced from
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Weekly Times
ABC: Madame Weigel: colonial fashionista: Audio file: July 2015
Veronica Lampkin: Madame Weigel's Patterns
Drawing
Today's Fashion - the Covers for Clothing Patterns
Primary
Middle Secondary
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: ICT Capability
Australian
Curriculum General Capability: Critical & Creative Thinking
1. You are to
go to
Popsugar's website to see the latest trends in fashion for women. (The
selected photo is from the Victorian collection to line up with Madame
Weigel's era)
2. Select on dress to draw as the cover
for your Clothing Pattern company in the vein of Madame Weigel: see below:
3.
Draw your selected photo - with the
three aspects of the dress as shown in Madame Weigel's cover. Don't forget
to add the accessories!
4. Extension: Do
you think you could make up a paper pattern for your selected dress or
garment?
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