Jillian Chantal

This week I placed an order from one of my favorite catalogs. It’s called Bas Bleu which means blue stocking in French. So I thought I share with you all a bit of the history of the term.

Women who were tired of merely being decorative and doing embroidery and other feminine tasks were called bluestockings early on in history. In the 1500s, in France, women with literary aspirations were called this as they seemed to wear coarser stockings than the fine ladies in the salons.

By the 1700s, these kind of women in England had started meeting with men to discuss politics, literature, books, architecture and other daily news. They actually formed societies and called them bluestocking societies. The women dressed in their casual clothes as opposed to the clothes they wore when out at balls and dances. They wore dark blue worsted as opposed to silk stockings.

As time went on, the term’s connotation wasn’t positive and some men like Lord Byron weren’t impressed with these type women. I say a pox on him. I like to think I’d have been a bluestocking back then since I’ve always been enamored of learning of any kind.