fashion history

The retro fashion for Steampunk has been well covered by other bloggers. Steampunk extends to more than clothes, and includes novels, films, music, and accessories. A tribute to the age of steam which culminated in sleeker industrial designs by the 1890s, I think of Steampunk as a mix of Sherlock Holmes, narrow-gauge railways, the Wild, Wild West television series, and the lovely lady pictured here. Her mutton leg sleeves remind me irresistibly of the pneumatic tubes we see in the Main Reading Room at the 42nd Street Library.
 
 
 
Women’s clothing in this decade reveal the final vestiges of Victorian costume shading into Edwardian dress. I think there’s something symbolic about the flaring lines and angles in feminine garments now. My second illustration depicts a woman who looks like a teapot that’s ready to be poured. Comfort isn’t the attribute that leaps to my mind when looking at these ensembles. Don’t worry, though, all this will change.

Speaking of wild, wild Wests, I’m heading out there again. After a hiatus, I will return— but on a new timetable. I’ll be posting once a week during July and August. There’s much to be done in the Education department this summer. And I mean to wrap up this foray into the nineteenth century before September. Change is good.

Bold hussies would get their comeuppance, predicted the morally offended critics of a society growing too racy for comfort. How dare they talk about a “New Woman,” ready to take part in every aspect of society? Such ideas were on a par with the fashion for progress in all things technological and scientific. Social change had come and left its mark. The outward signs of this, however, were still not apparent to all. Indeed, many considered the 1890s a time of uncertainty.

A real fashion breakthrough occurs in the late nineteenth century with the notion of specific costumes for sports. As early as 1888, advertisements show models of “bicycle-gowns.” This would lead to the adoption of bloomers and divided, or bifurcated, skirts. Modesty and seemliness were deplored in vain.

Why, that pernicious bicycle would even bring about a man and woman riding in tandem! How tame does costume of this era seem today when compared to our lycra and spandex sports outfits. Yet the revolutionary nature of this small first step toward sports clothes is more than evident. Bicycling was one more breakthrough on the road to women’s rights and liberation from confining corsets and billowing skirts. Look in the Digital Gallery under the headings Bicycle and Cycling for a visual glimpse of this “road to ruin.”

What a short stretch of time before bathing can become swimming! The social mores that prevent women from disrobing or showing their bodies will slowly be overcome by the end of the 1880s. Since the Enlightenment, women were permitted to wear flowing, concealing robes if they wanted to take a dip in the sea, or even a spa pool. The concept of a bathing suit was far from what we know today. In the 1880s, a woman might wear a slightly more relaxed form of dress, but dressed she remained.

Contrast such clothing with the adoption of a swimming costume. This was a special garment, still concerned with concealment, but now more ‘sporting” in nature. Looking at the image above, dated July 1892, we see the future opening up. If you want to pursue information on the history of swim wear, using the subject heading Bathing Suits when searching the Library’s catalog.

When would the first flowering of feminism become important for women? Sometimes it would be passed from mother to daughter, a generational questioning that quietly put down roots. In other cases, strong individuals emerged, whose devotion to the arts or social causes ignited feminine interest. Despite the frivolous silhouette of the bustle, women were increasingly caring about more than their clothes.

Historic revivals of dress styles, including a vogue for medieval and Renaissance garment details, would culminate in the Aesthetic dress of the 1880s. Women read and studied. More women attempted to earn college-level educations, and expressed their desire for further intellectual achievement. While this period doesn’t possess the outlet for angst that would drive feminists almost one hundred years later, the seeds of resolution were being sown.

Women were moving from crinolines to bustles as the 1870s began. One small revolution of sorts crept into what women wore. Clothing became modified to allow women some greater freedom to participate in sports. The 1870s saw more women taking up tennis, golfing, roller skating, and hiking. Skirts were shortened a little without raising shouts of immorality. Trousers, however, were still beyond the pale.

Garments for basketball, bicycling, and swimming were just a few decades away. Social change was happening, albeit slowly. While seeming less obvious in Europe, and particularly in England, the growth of industrialization and urbanization in America brought cause for hope. An economic boom marked Britain’s rising Empire of far-flung colonies. The desire for upward mobility was strong, infecting the young and the restless. With optimism on the move, changes in fashion were more likely than ever to happen.

Are you interested in creative nonfiction writing? Would you like to know the ins and outs of this exciting genre, from writing dynamics to ethical issues? Then come along with me on a two-hour voyage of discovery, Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing. We’ll set sail from the South Court Classrooms on Saturday, June 6, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., and repeat this trip on Saturday, July 11, at the same time and place.
 
 
 
 
 

“The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak of or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of “Women’s Rights”, with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901

I find the pictures for this post rather meaningful in light of the opinion expressed above. Throughout the nineteenth century, men were finding their own social accommodation to dress, while women were weighed down with the consequences of feminine fashion. This was the very period when questioning began in earnest. Had men become too important for fashion? Was it now just a device to be tossed to the womenfolk, something for them to worry their poor, feeble minds with?

I don’t know about you, but the defiance of the girl seen above has more to do than a simple illustration for a book on etiquette. Professional opportunities for women were few. One could be a teacher, seamstress or milliner, and more recently, a nurse. Women on the stage were still considered to have questionable morals. Women’s suffrage was a movement waiting to be born. In the meantime, young women were caught between the embedded dress codes of society and the subtle winds of change.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The California Gold Rush of 1848, among other things, created significant changes to occupational dress for men. When enterprising supplier Levi Strauss brought heavy duty canvas cloth for tents to miners, he heard their complaints about the need for durable work pants. The birth of denim fabric and its subsequent usage was a major step in the evolution of sturdy men’s wear.

The western movement to wide open spaces continued anew after the Civil War. The U.S. Army now moved into high gear in pursuing war against the Plains tribes that still refused to settle in designated reservations. Settlers moved west more freely once these hazards were removed. Gradually, the takeover of American lifeways would affect American Indian dress, and former warriors donned the denim and canvas trousers and thick cotton shirts of their white neighbors.

“His purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy!”

— Queen Victoria after her husband’s death

Victoria was breathlessly in love with her husband, Prince Albert, the Germanic butt of modern-day tobacco can jokes. She was known to describe him as “my all in all.” A sober, conscientious prince, Albert composed formal diplomatic correspondence even on his death bed. Victoria’s grief was boundless when he died from a gastric fever in the spring of 1862. Thus began the saga of the Widow of Windsor as Victoria retreated behind a black wall of mourning dress for the rest of her life. Other women emulated her grief, making black bombazine, paramatta, and crape regular wardrobe staples.

Her widow’s weeds did not prevent her from carrying on the affairs of state, but she was also able to use her mourning as a means of evading other social obligations. Many people rued the fact that the royal court was a victim of this evasion. They looked to Prince Edward, the heir, as a means of bringing liveliness to the nobility. Edward did the best he could to live up to this, using his long tenure as Prince of Wales to carouse and idle his time winningly. He inevitably followed this path in part because of his mother’s unremitting censure. Prince Albert had been forced to travel away from home in order to rescue “Bertie” from the consequences of some youthful high jinx, and he fell ill shortly afterwards with the disease that cost him his life. Victoria, mad with grief, blamed her son for this development, and would never forgive him.

Because I’m going to a funeral at the end of this week, I thought I’d take a look at the nineteenth century’s special affection for mourning dress. Black mourning survived over the centuries in various forms. It took the mid-nineteenth century, however, to give the fashion for mourning an added fillip. The Victorian era is awash with ornaments and details affiliated with mourning, from jet and onyx jewelry to lacy veils and black tippets.

Women, of course, carried the particular burden of grief. Their physical appearance was rendered according to the dictates of society: deepest black for a full year when glossy materials were forbidden, like furs, velvet and satin, and then permission to go to half-mourning, to add dull colors—like lavender or gray—before a slow return to original dress. Widows were encouraged in the dowager look, aided by that most familiar of examples perched on the English throne. Black lent dignity to the rituals of grief. Yet, did it ever cross a woman’s mind, that her mourning dress isolated her further? That, here, through the vagaries of fashion, was a western way to emulate the Hindu practice of suttee?

By the mid-1870s, there were groups speaking out against the extremes of mourning wear for women. The adoption of morning clothes put an economic squeeze on poor and lower middle class families. However, the social regulations governing mourning dress didn’t really begin to relax until the 1890s. Many critics of the era consider that mourning dress was a form of conspicuous consumption, symbolic of the pervasive atmosphere of gentility and conformity. Do you agree?

Fashion held an uneasy place in the war years of the North-South conflict in America. The Union and Confederate armies, uninterested in flashy uniforms, chose practical wear, while women remained ensconced in thick petticoats and triangular-shaped gowns. Some fashion textbooks call this the “crinoline period”. Hoops, or the cage crinoline, made women’s dresses billow as they did, and also made mobility more problematic.

Since the North controlled ports and shipping, and therefore received whatever fashion plate publishing there was, women in the South had a harder time keeping up with the modes. Southern ingenuity in refurbishing clothes made skirts and blouses more popular, and reintroduced tight sleeves that had been cut down from the wide sleeves of an earlier fashion cycle.

The beneficial effects of the sewing machine were apparent by the early 1860s. In fact, the number of sewing machines available doubled between 1860 and 1865. Almost all dresses were partly machine-sewn, although they continued to be finished by hand right up to the end of the century. Ready-to-wear developed at a slow pace for women, largely because the fashionable styles that originated after 1860 made achieving a correct fit difficult.

Men were luckier, and a ready-to-wear trade for their garments gained ground after the 1840s.

Masculine tailoring had always been affected in some degree by military uniforms. In the 1850s, an important element crept into this form of dress: increased comfort. Such an impulse would be more than revolutionary—it would be downright inspirational. Against such practicality, the occasional flare-up of dandyism had no traction. In fact, the onus was now on the would-be dandy to prove his character wasn’t in question.

The term “Broadway Brummell” or “Bowery Brummell” could be used with a curled lip. Men were groping their way toward some accommodation with how they appeared. Military trousers now acquired volume, allowing for greater ease of movement. Although a military cut and shape still held true, this small advance toward comfort was an indicator of change ahead.

Paris maintained its lead for fashion as the middle of the nineteenth century approached. No matter that 1848 was The Year of Revolutions, political change was less influential than the widening pervasiveness of the moralistic social atmosphere of the period.

Yet Americans must be the one thanked for that most important of inventions: the sewing machine created by Elias Howe in 1846. Paris, without really realizing it, was also being affected by the growing democracy of this time. Social historians talk about the leveling of classes. More than ever before, people of all economic and social classes began dressing alike. Nevertheless, it was morality, rather than any deeply political strain, that guided what they chose to wear.

Americans still kept a close eye on fashion in Europe. Fashion periodicals found their way to those who could afford them, or appeared in circulating libraries. Later, Godey’s Ladies Book would offer homegrown interpretations of the latest fashions. Waistcoats for men changed in cut according to what was seen in newspapers from abroad. The stovepipe hat began its popular run. In fact, the 1840s mark a turning point in the fortunes of men’s jackets.

At the same time, America’s more egalitarian society meant more latitude for everyday dress. Wealthy ladies in urban locations still played at continental panache. And, of course, the Grand Tour was a major event in the lives of those Americans who had the means to undertake such a progress through Europe. The fashion for “Turkish trousers” helped give credence to the bloomer costume, an early sign of feminist unrest.

Perhaps the truly telling factor in women's lives in the 1830s was how little civil rights they possessed. The women of the later Enlightenment years were more brazen in their demands for personal and legal freedoms. Even the French Revolution had done nothing real for women's liberty. Someone like the late Mary Wollstonecraft would be derided in this century' all her thoughtful writings now criticized in terms of her dubious morality.

Her daughter, the future Mary Shelley, would inherit none of the advantages her mother pleaded for. From an early age, the younger Mary had the gift of storytelling. Unfortunately, her later years, which included the 1830s, were spent under the shadow of her dead poet husband. She woudl turn to hackw riting in periodicals to support herself and her son. The woman of this time had no identity other that that of being a daughter, sister, wife, mother- or widow.

Fashions of the Napoleonic era for women had been dashing. However, larger social forces were at work that now placed a disapproving stamp on this look. While the daintily-shod foot could still peep out from under voluminous skirts, necklines rose and the feminine figure was concealed beneath jaunty collars, puffed sleeves, and other additions.

Another indicator can be seen in the hats - frothy and a harbinger of mroe to come during this century. Rackety King George IV was long dead, and his old sea dog brother would sit on the throne for only a few more years.

A new era was coming. It would be marked by a transition from the House of Hanover to the House of Windsor. Yet this change wasn’t endemic to Britain alone. The same reaffirmation of a sterner morality included continental Europe and America. This new zeitgeist took form in the shape of a slender eighteen-year-old. The young Queen Victoria was ready to re-order society into an image of her making.

The 1830s were a time when men’s clothing was affected by the tug and pull of Brummell’s austere dandy elegance and the more ornate flair of D’Orsay’s early dandyism. Men in general didn’t think of themselves as dandies, but the philosophy of men’s dress was heading for an identity crisis. Tailors still reigned supreme at this time, but fashion cycles made for conflicting modes of wear. Men were more and more inclined to move away from the frills and furbelows of earlier phases of dandyism.

While women’s dress grew more elaborate, men’s clothing wavered between hugging and enveloping the masculine figure. The cut of some clothes in this time couldn’t have been comfortable for the wearer. While the dandy would never completely disappear, his representation was subject to some revisionism.

p.s. Someone called me the other day asking about my costume class, and I inadvertently lost their message. Sorry! I don’t usually do this. In case that person reads this post, the next Researching Costume and Fashion History class will be held on Tuesday, June 9 from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the South Court classrooms here at 42nd Street.

I want to offer one last example of the state of men’s tailoring in the 1830s. We can see in these two illustrations the effects of military tailoring on civilian jackets and trousers. In both cases, a nipped-in waist is regarded as necessary. The models are quite robust in proportions, excepting this convention—something we’d more readily expect in feminine dress. Clearly, well-fashioned men from this time were expected to display the kind of body type utilized in these illustrations.

The reaction I feel is one of tyranny. How many longed to emulate this look but failed to do so, unless forced into male corsetry or similar bindings? Asking men to achieve a particular look through artificial means was one more reason to finally rebel. These pictures show the seeds of that rebellion.

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 suggests that gender identity was in flux, although the man on the street would hotly deny that this was so.
 
 

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, she’d give her name to the popular culture that would pervade the world until the end of the century: Victorianism. Peter Gay, our former head of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, has written a series of books that describe the zeitgeist of that period, Bourgeois experience, from Victoria to Freud.

p.s. Researching Costume and Fashion History is being offered on Tuesday April 7, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the South Court Classrooms.