When women wore gloves

Rings were worn over evening gloves. Same with bracelets.

No glove, no love.

So how did you know how to get your ring fitted--whether you wanted it close to your skin or over your glove?

Kid gloves for evening were like a second skin--pun not intended. They were very snug and not particularly flexible. I believe that bracelets over one's gloves were a huge faux pas--remembered that from Auntie Mame.

Incorrect r4.

For rungs, opera gloves (long evening gloves) were very fitted. There would be little difference in ring sizing for large baubles shown on gloves. If gloves were to come off say for dinner then rings were not worn over gloves. Day gloves or driving gloves usually never worn with jewelry.

^^rings

Glove Etiquette: The Top 7 Things To Know

Good question. Unsatisfactory answers.

For leather driving or day gloves, I just turn my rings around so that the stones are near the palm of my hand, and there's plenty of room, even if the gloves are very tight.

For long evening gloves, yes, you can wear jewelry over the gloves. I personally don't like that look, but it's acceptable.

Don't ANY of you have mothers or grandmothers who could clue us in?

99% of women did not have rings with "large stones."

Nonetheless, I have no doubt that many DLers' forebears did.

Mother always says that only saloon girls and other "fast women" would dare to wear jewelry on the outside of their gloves.

Or perhaps it's some European affectation. Regardless, it's "pretty cheap goods," according to her.

Jewels over gloves is an old-fashioned look.

Engagement rings were turned around toward the palm as mentioned above. They weren't as garish then as they are now.

If one wished to know if a woman was married back then, perhaps one could ask the woman herself. I believe that they were allowed to speak when spoken to.

There were rules for jewelry. Most women only wore a wedding ring and an engagement ring during the day. It was considered vulgar to wear cut stones before 6:00 pm. In the 1950s, cocktail rings became popular, but they were not worn with gloves. Costume jewelry primarily consisted of earrings, necklaces, and brooches. Regardless of what some old biddy with a title may have done, bracelets were *not* worn over gloves. That is one of the reasons the gauntlet glove became popular. It allowed one to wear bracelets under the glove.

Miss Manners says etiquette allows for women to wear bracelets over gloves but never rings (despite what Paloma Picasso is doing in the photo above).

If you were a woman, you would have to make a decision when trying on gloves whether you would be regularly wearing your rings under the gloves, or whether you would be removing all rings before you wore the gloves. That would determine which size of gloves you bought.

I'm sure gloves kept a woman's hands softer and protected them from the sun helping to avoid brown spots. Probably immigrant and poor women could not afford them and anyway had too much work to do for them to be practical.

Even poor women wore simple gloves when going into town, visiting, or to church.

R19, Miss Manners is often wrong when it comes to matters of dress.

R20, gloves protected women's hands from the immense amount of dirt. In the early 1900s, it was not uncommon for hotels to literally launder money to prevent the bills and coins from soiling ladies gloves. Coal furnaces insured that most of the outdoors was filthy. Smoking meant that much of indoors was covered with a film of nicotine. The lack of air conditioning meant windows were open of the year, even in department stores.

Philip Roth’s [italic]American Pastoral[/italic] contains some interesting insight into the manufacture of ladies’ gloves. Newark NJ was once a hub of glove making (and other leather goods). Bamberger’s department store carried all the best lines, locally produced.

[quote] [R19], Miss Manners is often wrong when it comes to matters of dress.

We then should take [italic]your[/italic] authority on these matters instead, Anonymous at r22.

From the Etiquette School of America:

Rule #5: Your watch and rings are worn under your gloves. Bracelets can be worn over gloves, although many fashion experts say gloves look best by themselves.

A ring should never be worn over a glove, by Miss Manners

[quote] You can wear bracelets over gloves but not rings.

Ideas? Being a lesbian with a liking for a glove and a horror of dirty surfaces, I would love to find a way to pull off wearing day gloves with the typical biz-casual Millennial attire, but I haven’t yet figured out the perfect way to do it (or at least, how to pull it off without veering into Miss Piggy territory...)

The closest example I’ve seen to work is Anna Paquin in the Fox X-MEN movies, whose character Rogue wears elbow-length leather gloves (of necessity, to stop her fatal powers of touch from killing people) in the vintage off-white Southern Belle style, in conjunction with a simple 2000s graphic tee and plain black belted flared pants. It looks very feminine and pretty, but not in a way that’s too olde-worlde strange and affected like she’s LARPing.

[quote] Rings, not even wedding rings, should never be worn over gloves—and for good reason, for rings that fit a gloved finger would be too large for that same ungloved finger, resulting in even more rings, and marriages, going down the drain.

Can we put wedding rings out to pasture now? They’re vulgar, and so old hat besides. Such a pre-21st Century status signifier.

r28, just start wearing what you like. The key to wearing something uncommon is being totally relaxed and unselfconscious about it. The more you wear gloves, the more at ease you’ll feel wearing them and you’ll show yourself as having a sense of style all your own. Don’t go overboard with garden party tweeness and you’ll carry it all off charmingly.

The current Royal Glover is Genevieve James, daughter of Cornelia James.

Their website is very detailed.

Yes, R24, you should since I have a knowledge of clothing history and Miss Manners does not. Note that the OP wrote, "When women wore gloves", not what were the acceptable practices in the last decades of the 20th century. My response was accurate for the practices or wearing gloves/jewelry up until the early 1960s.

Also, anyone who responds to the question, "What is the correct way to walk in high heels?" with "right, left, right, left" has no business commenting on the correct practices for wearing clothing. This is why women clomp around in heels like a linebacker in drag nowadays.

My gloves are covered with cum & Cheeto Puff dust!

[quotee] Yes, [R24], you should since I have a knowledge of clothing history and Miss Manners does not.

Oh my God... get a big whiff of [bold]you,[/bold] Elsa Schiaparelli!

R6 et al

Dinner and opera gloves fit very tightly, so much so it often took some time and effort to get them on properly. Once on they tended to remain until wearer undressed or at least returned home. Books for ladies or their maids often suggested using a bowl filled with ice water to aid in getting the things one.

All long glove had buttons on inside from wrist down to forearm. Milady undid those buttons and tucked upper park of glove into wrist area when dining or otherwise requiring use of her hands. This and or gloves could be removed say for dining if they were of a sort that could be easily done, and getting the things back on wasn't a huge drama.

Rings (except plan wedding bands) normally aren't worn with gloves.

Emily Post says...

text at r36, as you may have guessed, is not found in the r36 link.

What is this insanity?

Never said it would, just wrote what have learned/read over years.

People are capable of doing so you know.. Not everyone's internet skills are limited to cutting and pasting.

Main thing is gloves are never worn while dining. If a lady can easily remove her gloves (and get them back on again) without huge amount of bother all is well. But otherwise something else is called for to manage.

[quote]Not everyone's internet skills are limited to cutting and pasting.

Or proofreading, apparently.

Odd to think that the practise of wearing perfume and the industry of scent for fashion only exists due to the need to disguise the smell of leather gloves.

1. I am not good at reading cursive and for years I thought her name was Palsma Picasso.

2. I think I had my engagement ring and wedding ring in in a paper towel and threw them in the garbage.

Scent was invented and worn for many reasons. Prime among them was to disguise the rank stench from people not bathing.

Yes, often items of clothing were perfumed to hide objectionable odors, but there again things often weren't washed (many couldn't be) so something was needed to cover up the smell.

The French of course took this to an art form, but there again it came from fact people didn't wash. This and or despite the lovely surroundings fresh air was in short supply. No indoor plumbing (and bad manners) meant people often pissed or shat where they wanted, leaving servants to clear things up.

Maybe the pandemic will bring gloves back?

[quote] No indoor plumbing (and bad manners) meant people often pissed or shat where they wanted, leaving servants to clear things up.

This is so hard to imagine from a contemporary perspective. So people just blithely walked around, while others close by in the vicinity would just drop trou and squat? Where do you look in that scenario? What is the protocol? Do you just ignore it and give it a wide berth? And what if you need to shit or piss too? The privacy aspect is a mind bender.

R46

See video above about Versailles, because that is exactly what many did. Some may have been more discrete about shitting, but pissing was another matter.

There was one French princess who simply pissed as she walked along, leaving servants to follow behind placing reeds or whatever to sop up the liquid.

English weren't so much better either. IIRC during Regency period people would just go behind a screen at dinner and piss or whatever, then return to table to carry on... And no, washing of hands largely didn't happen either.

At Versailles and other royal palaces, great homes, or whatever people also just went out into the gardens and shat. Something fairly common world over well into 1900's and perhaps still, especially in rural areas. It is where phrase "shitting in tall cotton" originates. Tall cotton plants provided some privacy, and you had toilet paper right there with all those nice soft cotton balls....

R46

Privacy when urinating or even defecating is a relative term. The French long had public pissoirs which provided some measure of privacy, but everyone knew what you were doing standing there.... It has long been not unknown to find Frenchmen at least pissing any and every where they happen to be when nature calls. Along side of roads or highways, side of buildings, alleys....

To this day one thing that bothers many tourists (especially for some odd reason Americans) is lack of public restrooms, free or not. Many French just don't see what all the fuss is about.

Much of this likely has to do with French and many other European cultures see pissing and defecating in same order of natural bodily functions as sex, sweating, etc.... Everyone needs to do it to keep their bodies healthy so why all the shame.

We all can't be like Jackie Kennedy, running the taps or otherwise making noise to hide sounds while using the loo.

Love this look!

Madonna recreates the look adding a ring over the glove.