Colonial Days in Old New York by Alice Morse Earle

The Dutch goodwife worked hard from early morn till sunset. She worked in restricted ways, she had few recreations and pleasures and altogether little variety in her life; but she possessed what doubtless proved to her in that day, as it would to any woman in this day, a source of just satisfaction, a soothing to the spirit, a staying of melancholy, a moral support second only to the solace of religion, -- namely, a large quantity of very good clothes, which were substantial, cheerful, and suitable, if not elegant.

The Dutch never dressed "in a plaine habbit according to the maner of a poore wildernesse people," as the Connecticut colonists wrote of themselves to Charles II.; nor were they weary wanderers in a wilderness as were Connecticut folk.