The beguiling form of the fashionable 19^th century woman – the billowing hooped skirt, shapely corset, and coquettish parasol – were all made possible thanks to baleen (or, as they called it in the 1800s, “whalebone.”)

The huge strips of baleen found in a whale’s mouth (which they used to filter food from the seawater) was the “plastic” of the 1800s; light, strong, and flexible, it could be molded into hoops for skirts, handles and ribs for parasols, and “busks” that gave corsets their shape.  Without the whaling industry supplying this vital material, women’s fashion in the 1800s may have been very different indeed.

Through a display of fashion magazine plates, examples of “raw” and “worked” baleen, and 10 exquisite dresses highlighting how fashion changed over the decades, When Women Wore Whales explores the surprising and fascinating role that the American whaling industry played in 19^th century woman’s fashion.