Posts by Paula Baxter

Historical postcards are among the many images that the Library’s Digital Gallery collects. And I’ve found a gold mine of Easter Bunny cards. How easily does this secular holiday figure fit into our pop culture – you can see just by the types of scenes depicted on these cards. Fertility is one obvious clue to the pagan origins of the Easter Bunny, since rabbits generally have large litters. But why are these furry mammals hauling around chicken eggs? Another fertility symbol, a harbinger of new life. The use of a rabbit or hare for an Easter symbol may have started in Germany. Certainly, the Germans were the first people to make a sweet Easter Bunny, starting with 

At this point, I find myself taking another strategic break. We’re a little over one-third of the way through the nineteenth century. A holiday is coming up, undeniably the most important event of the Christian calendar. But it’s not religion I want to talk about. No, there’s a secular element to this holiday that weighs greatly with me. You see, I am a rabbit owner, and the Easter Bunny lives with me 24/7.

Popular culture has a way of imprinting itself on us. All my life, I’ve looked forward to Easter because of the delight its furry patron creates. How many of you have painted Easter eggs, put together or received an Easter basket replete with phony paper 

The new era of Victorianism affected masculine dress as well. Whether in Europe or America, men found themselves more mistrustful of dandyism. This isn’t to say that dandies didn’t continue to emerge from time to time, often in artistic circles, but the general air was one of cynicism. The illustrations I’ve used for this post are indicative of what two American men from different cultures would wear in the 1830s. An even greater impulse for change would affect men’s clothing. Scholars still argue today over the reasons for this change. One theory calls the decisions ahead “The Great Masculine Renunciation.” Most literature from this time period 

How did women fare in the 1830s? European society was growing more conservative, and the lusty days of the Regency were now looked back on with a shudder. Popular culture might admire the dash of a Count d’Orsay, but, for women, only courtesans and actresses were permitted the same license.

As one consequence, a trend was building for a greater envelopment of the feminine form in fabric. A new age was coming—one with powerful consequences for the future.

It began on the morning of June 20, 1837, when an eighteen year-old girl learned that she had become the reigning monarch of England. Her values would set a whole new standard for communicating gender. In fact, 

In France, a new dandy supplanted previous notions of this masculine mode. Count Alfred d’Orsay was a sensation in London and Paris of the 1820s and 30s. His great physical beauty, dandified dress, and elegant manners had men and women stopping in the streets to stare after him. His private life—he came from an impoverished branch of French aristocracy—proved scandalous when he was “adopted” by a wealthy English Earl and his wife, and no one was exactly sure whose boyfriend he was.

The Count’s dandyism was less restrained than Brummell’s. He favored velvets and coats cut with a dash. Like many members of the cult of celebrity, however, his 

Dandies were viewed with a little more skepticism across the Atlantic. The upheaval in Europe created by Napoleon’s rise and fall brought a steady stream of tailors and would-be dandies to America’s east coast cities. Yet in keeping with a country with more than its fair share of rough edges, the niceties of modish dress were something to regard with suspicion. Nor did it help that the largest showing of dandies regularly turned up in the U.S. Congress. The ambivalent attitude of men in the New World toward Old World dressing didn’t stop them from pursuing similar fashionable looks. Despite a recent war, the ties between Bond Street and Wall Street remained. American 

 Men’s clothing would never be what it is today without George “Beau” Brummell (1778-1840). This ingenious man, the father of the modern dandy, was initially a court favorite who fell from grace. He was a walking advertisement for the modish man. Although he took only one dip into literature, his reformation of masculine style was transformative.  One of the things I find most interesting, however, is how few portraits exist of him. The one or two of those that have come down to us are actually suspect likenesses. And this in an age when English printmakers were at their most vicious and satirical… That Brummell’s influence endured throughout 

“A working class hero is something to be…” -John Lennon Working Class Hero (1970) A change came in the dawning nineteenth century of great significance. The trickle down of fashion grew to encompass the lives of those of the lower orders (as they were called then). A sociological interest in the dress and habits of those people in “reduced circumstances” developed, and left its mark on costume books of the period. While, previously, these books—produced for a well-heeled, erudite audience—concentrated their focus on the clothing of royalty and the aristocracy, certain publications now 

“Show me the clothes of a country and I can write its history.”

— Anatole France (1844 – 1924)

 The start of the nineteenth century has many echoes. Sometimes I can shut my eyes and see them, all the elegant men and women twirling round ballrooms to the lilt of the newly popular waltz. I belong to a generation of young women who grew up on the Regency stories of Georgette Heyer. One encounters in her literature (written mainly in the 1950s) nostalgia for a time “when men were men and women were women.” Some of this has to do with the fact that the century started out with most of Europe at war. Nowadays we 

The New York Public Library held an exhibition in 2004 that illuminated the Library’s rich holdings of the Napoleonic Era; entitled “Decoration In the Age of Napoleon: Empire Elegance Versus Regency Refinement,” it showed the cultural rivalry between the two nations, including the area of fashion. An online bibliography to the Empire and Regency styles is available on the Library’s website. In fact, the French had held the fashion edge since the time of Louis XIV. The English might have a great deal of national pride, but when French fashions arrived from across the Channel, they were the first to take them up. The nineteenth century would change this equation, 

When giving lectures for the “Decoration in the Age of Napoleon” exhibition, I often referred to Josephine Bonaparte as the Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy of her age. The comparison is apt, for Josephine epitomized the elegance of her times. She was a graceful dresser, diplomat, and a superb decorator, whose contributions to the Empire Style have been only lately fully acknowledged. An enchanting fictional account of her life was written by Sandra Gulland, and gives a vivid portrait of her joys and woes. Her lithe, long-limbed figure was suited to the empire-waist gowns of Revolutionary France. In fact, Josephine enjoyed a dubious reputation during that time as the mistress of 

The agent of Napoleon’s final downfall was known as “The Beau” to his Regency peers (behind his back of course). Arthur Wellesley, Lord Wellington, was the latest in a series of military men who enjoyed the allure of masculine fashion. He fought the French for a long time in the Peninsular War, in Portugal and France. After Napoleon’s escape from Elba and his Hundred Days, Wellington and a scattered group of Allied forces met Napoleon’s diminished army on the battlefield of Waterloo. Oddly enough, I see an echo of these men from the 1810s in the male models sashaying down the runways of New York Fashion Week. Tight pants and silhouetted jackets, for sure.  

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, one man’s name was on everyone’s lips. Napoleon Bonaparte had seized power in France with a coup, transforming himself into a living juggernaut. At first, he paid lip service to the Revolution, but there were many who were rightly suspicious of his motives. His time was the Romantic Era, when the cult of the individual first developed. This was the precursor to our contemporary world’s cult of the celebrity. Napoleon’s fame spread hope among those in Europe who were disillusioned with traditional monarchy. Even Beethoven worshipped at that shrine before becoming disenchanted with his hero. Napoleon’s grab for the 

All good writers of novels or lively nonfiction know that it’s crucial to pause their story at a certain point. Perhaps this can apply to the blogger, too. What have we learned so far in examining the path of Western fashion from antiquity to the nineteenth century? We know that clothing was modified for important class distinctions, that masculine bodies were celebrated while feminine bodies had to be concealed beneath numerous draperies, and men were given greater leeway with fashion. We’ve seen that rulers and their nobles protected the use of fine fashions as their prerogative, enacting sumptuary laws when necessary to enforce that privilege, despite those laws being 

 “Fashion is an odd jumble of contradictions, of sympathies and antipathies.” ----William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830)

The nineteenth century is when everything changes. Fashions accelerate along with the social, political, intellectual, and technological advances of each decade. Issues related to taste and aesthetics become more apparent. This is the century when men’s clothes change to take on the appearance we know today. The tailored man’s suit became the great social leveler, permitting the common man and the gentleman to share the same form of dress. The man’s suit exhibited staying power 

From this point on, we see more clearly how social history figures into fashion trends. The eighteenth century, which included the influential years of the Enlightenment, brought clothing changes of various natures. It was the French Revolution, however, that turned men in trousers against men in breeches and exposed the yawning gap between classes. The Revolution’s leaders even promoted a specific form of dress, that of the sans-culotte, for the newly liberated citizen. Trousers were considered workingman’s attire, and firmly associated with the lower orders. After the first years of the Revolution, the calls for group identity in dress ceased. The mood changed to encourage 

“Fashion is more powerful than any tyrant.” ----Latin saying It took a man like Louis XIV, King of France (1638-1715), to subvert fashion for his own gain. The importance of fashion in royal courts had long been established, but Louis took it to another level. We’d call him a control freak or a micromanager today, but his watchful soul reveled in keeping his nobles—and potential rivals and enemies—close to him. What better way than to hem them in with the tyrannies of keeping up with fashion? Many unwary men lost their fortunes in a desperate attempt to win royal favor by dressing modishly for court engagements.  

 In the seventeenth century, something interesting started to happen with clothing and dress. Men (and women) began to wear clothes that expressed what they believed in or stood for. A prime example of this can be found in Europe with the division between those who dressed in a sober manner and the more gaudy fashions of the upper classes. Whether from religious or social scruples, a rather puritanical mode of dress gained a powerful foothold with the professional and middle classes. In England, the civil strife of the times took a bloody turn.  King Charles I was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell and his Commonwealth followers. Dress played a role in the conflict of the ensuing 

 We can see, therefore, that fashion originated as a mode for the elite, long before the age of haute couture. This connotation is stamped deeply within our consciousnesses. Would it also explain why we crave fashion so much? Do we see it, as our ancestors did, as a means of social uplift? Fashion now grew ever stronger as society matured. By the time of the Renaissance in Europe, fashion as a means of social control had become a weapon in the arsenal of the ruling classes. By 1500, the notion of a “well-fashioned” man or woman had come into consideration. The use of clothing to flaunt or proclaim was popular, certainly among the wealthy and titled. Suggestive male